11 ms·

It’s just like why all voice interfaces are shitty: no one has any idea what the thing can or cannot do. They have a hidden user experience but the interface ma

by dchuk 8y ago

It’s just like why all voice interfaces are shitty: no one has any idea what the thing can or cannot do. They have a hidden user experience but the interface makes it feel like you’re talking to a human, but it’s so far from being a human. These interfaces are almost like a dark pattern because of how bad they are.

monkeynotes 8y ago
This, this, this!
mrtksn 8y ago
For me, these AI solutions always feel like I'm talking to a very stupid person who has no idea what's doing but has a booklet in possession that may or may not have the information that I'm looking for. Just give me that booklet and I will figure it out,geeez... What a frustration to deal with these smart machines. With Siri or Google Assistant, you soon figure out few things that this very low intelligence person can do(like telling the weather or setting an alarm) and stick with it. This is also why I'm excited about iOS12 with all these Siri shortcuts, instead of pretending that we are talking to a smart being let's have a concrete list of things that can do. On the other hand I do believe that these voice interfaces have some potential, just the technology is not there yet. Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17265683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17265683
- collyw 8y ago
  Maybe we should rename it to artificial stupidity.
- _jal 8y ago
  > very stupid person who has no idea what's doing but has a booklet in possession When Siri first hit the Iphone and I was trying to figure out if it was useful for me (no), I named my phone Searle[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Chinese_room_thought_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Chinese_room_thou...
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Somebody I know described Siri as "less of a Chinese room, more of a tourist's Chinese phrasebook", and it seems to sum up the issue pretty well.
degenerate 8y ago
The audio interfaces are so bad I resort to one-word answers to every question, to get me to a human as fast as possible. "Hi, in a few words, what can I help you with today?" > "billing" "It sounds like you have a question about your bill. I can help you with that! If you can give a few words to describe the reason you are calling, I can help you with your bill." > "billing" "OK, let me get you to a representative who can help!" ... instead of spending 10 minutes wrangling with the vapid AI, I can actually move on with my day after speaking to a human. Was this the future we envisioned in the 90s? I think not. Some systems let you spam 0 (zero) and it transfers to a human, but more and more are requiring you to interface with the system in some way, even if disabled or impaired.
- lostcolony 8y ago
  'Agent' or 'representiative' will usually do it faster. But I hear you. I recently wanted to change the ownership of my cellphone account. "Change ownership", "It sounds like you want to change cellphone plans, is that correct?", "Agent", "Okay, let me get you to a representative". The only tasks these things are equipped to do, are the tasks that I can do via the company's online portal, and in a much less frustrating manner. I wonder who is actually using these things.
  - gear54rus 8y ago
    It's likely that these are for company itself. Ain't no one got time to deal with questions that are already explained on the website. This is made to filter mindless or lazy drones who don't want to search and its totally fair.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      In other words, paying customers
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      So make getting to an agent at least as difficult as figuring out the web interface?
jacksmith21006 8y ago
Would not say the Google one is shitty. We started with an echo and it did require more rigid language but the Google home is pretty good. Not perfect but good enough that it provides value. I now use voice a lot because of the quality with Google tech.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  Oddly, my problem with Google is that it's too flexible. Most of the time, it understands me, and that's great. But when Alexa doesn't understand, there's usually an error. When Google doesn't, it seems to call people, cancel navigation, and do all sorts of loony things I didn't ask for. 80% success and 20% no action might be usable for an assistant, but adding in 5% random behavior makes it drastically worse than useless.
pjc50 8y ago
Relevant, excellent blog post: http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call-centres-part-one/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-...
GordonS 8y ago
I find voice interfaces absolutely infuriating to use! I invariably have to put on an American or English accent in order to get them to understand anything I say, and even then it takes several attempts.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  I’m mostly RP English and I usually have to put on a US accent to get anywhere.
hellofunk 8y ago
It's not unlike a programming language that attempts to resemble written English. Sure it looks like English at first, but really there is a rigid API there that you must adhere to, and that breaks any resemblance to natural language; at which point you wonder, why make it look like English in the first place?
bunderbunder 8y ago
They remind me a lot of the user experience of text adventures that weren't very thoroughly playtested. Except that with text adventures I was willing to overlook an obtuse parser if I was enjoying the game. I never call my bank just for the fun of it.
nkrisc 8y ago
There's an issue of trust, as well. When I call a support number, and I get a robotic voice that assures me I can speak to it as if it were a person in plain language, I simply don't believe it. It's just not true, either. So I end up trying to figure out how to structure my query so the robot on the other end will understand what I want, instead of just saying what I want. In the end, I just repeat "human" and mash the 0 button over and over until I get a real person to talk to.
jandrese 8y ago
Some are actively designed to make you give up on the call, at least that is what it seems like to me. How many times have you called and the prompts go: Press 1 to talk with sales Press 2 to talk with marketing .... Press 9 to talk to tech support, the only reason anybody dialed this number Then: Speak your 18 digit account number, being sure to pause between each digit to make sure the computer records it correctly. Then: Speak your phone number Then: Speak your 24 digit hexadecimal product code Finally you get through to a person and 100% of the time they ask you for all of that information again so they can type it in (and get it wrong). And even when you get a person on the line they make you go back and do all of the stuff you already tried before finally transferring you to someone with half a clue.
- grkvlt 8y ago
  I suspect most of the time the agents hate the systems like you describe as much as the callers. They are actually trying to make things work better and faster by asking for this info, so when you have to repeat it it's a failure rather than a deliberate design decision...
  - kolpa 8y ago
    Time spent talking to a robot is free, people are expensive. So the company prefers 1hr with robots + 1minute with human, over 10 minutes with each. It's customer-hostile though, raising the cost of the service in a hidden way.
- iagovar 8y ago
  I work for a large ISP. The reason why tech support ask again for information is one of these, or any combination. a) The backoffice is really shit, broken, and doesn't even display any info (down, badly designed, etc) b) Backoffice and/or VPN connection from outsourced call center to ISP is really slow, so they work faster by asking info. c) CRM/Customer database has no consisten quality information, so agents do not trust it. I may forget something, but those are the most common ones.
  - 8y ago
Someone1234 8y ago
Also a problem with Apple's "3D Touch." They hide key functions behind a 3D Touch, but there's absolutely no discover-ability. So you're either left trying to 3D Touch everything to see what works, or actively researching 3D Touch tricks. As phone gestures become more popular, they'll have the same issue.
- jandrese 8y ago
  This is a huge problem with phone interfaces in general. There's a big push to make them "clean" by removing obvious widgets and basically hoping the user guesses correctly that they need a horizontal half screen swipe to bring up the search bar or tap and hold on an item to bring up options. You're basically just jabbing at the thing until it does what you want. Eventually people figure out various developer's favorite tricks and try them first and it isn't quite so bad, but for new users smartphone interfaces can be quite daunting. Seriously, watch someone on a new iPhone and it's just painful. Oh, I created this contact for fun, now how do I delete it. Tap it? Nope. Tap and hold? Nope. Double tap? Nope. Is there a menu somewhere? Nope. Maybe I slide it over? Nope, that brings me back to the previous page. Maybe I pinch? Nope. Guess I'll pull up the help, oh there isn't any. Off to Google then. Oh, I have to slide it over from the middle, not from the edge.
nerdponx 8y ago
In other words: they were never a thing. They were a media-driven and fad-investor-driven hype wave. They never should have been a thing. Good riddance.
wpietri 8y ago
And I don't even want to blame the interfaces entirely. To me the real problem is people building and deploying things when there is a giant gap between hype and reality. The Web was legitimately the next big thing. And after that, mobile. Both of them have changed our lives in deep and lasting ways. But we as an industry are absurdly hungry for the next, next big thing. How many dumb-ass voice and bot and AI and blockchain projects are there out there now? That basically don't work, but have been shipped anyhow? How many millions of dollars have been wasted? And really I should say billions. Theranos alone burned through $1.2 billion of hype. And there was the wave of "Uber for X" companies, busily failing to replicate the business model of a company whose success still isn't a given. I should be clear that I'm not opposed to trying new stuff. I'm all for it! But I think if we explore technological possibilities with less flagrant waste, we'll learn more. And be able to explore more.
- intrasight 8y ago
  There are a lot of smart and motivated people putting effort into voice interfaces. It's the past (we've been speaking for over a hundred thousand years) and it is the future. It will take some time, but I'm pretty confident that computers interacting with our auditory cortex will replace small slabs of glass that we look at and touch for many tasks.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    I think that's highly unlikely. We've had radio for 100 years. The written word is still thriving and TV gets twice as much time from people as radio does. Audio's fine for some things, but it's so very limited. And as an aside, we haven't really had voice-only interfaces for 100k years. Really, they've only existed since the telephone. What existed previous to that was humans, whose in-person interactions are almost always far more than voice. People have different estimates of the amount of information conveyed in a conversation through expression, gesture, posture, glance, and the like, but it's never a small amount.
    - intrasight 8y ago
ThomPete 8y ago
I think voice is greatly underrated but that it will be the next generations (our kids) will use them without feeling weirded out. When I look how my kids interact with Google home it's becomes fairly obvious to me that to them this is completely natural. Google Home is almost like a pet to them not just a tool. We are finally at a stage where voice recognition starts to become powerful enough to understand nuances now the next question is what to connect them to. One thing that I really like is that it allow us to retrieve information without having to look at a screen. It feels like having a 5th person at the table. At First Principle, we built a little a voice app that allows you to ask Google Analytics or Salesforce for data (and potentially whatever you want to connect with) for meetings so we can ask instead of having to look up. It becomes a natural part of the conversation and everyone have access to the data. That's where I think it will first make an impact. In meetings with relevant data.
jrochkind1 8y ago
"affordances", amiright? https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html
blueyes 8y ago
Chatbots proposed to solve a problem that current technology is bad at: understanding natural language. Very few experts claimed that algorithms could master the combinatorics of natural language beyond a few very narrow domains. On top of the technical risk, the voice and chat UX does not give a lot of visibility to users, as this post points out. What happened was: algorithmic advances in other areas lead to analogous reasoning by non-experts whose self-promotion aligned with the media's need for something new, big and understandable. And then it failed. The irony, of course, is that research is making strides in NLU, it's just too late for the last wave of chatbots. Here are two recent papers from DeepMind: Learning to Follow Language Instructions with Adversarial Reward Induction https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01946 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01946 Relational inductive biases, deep learning, and graph networks https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01261 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01261
phunehehe0 8y ago
It's a funny coincidence. I've just gotten off a phone with a bank officer about a simple question "Is my card there yet?". It took 29 minutes, including a few minutes at the beginning talking to a bot before getting to a human. I'm being unfair and emotional, but right now I'm not sure if humans are really better.
elwell 8y ago
I was trying to get in contact with my bank to allow a large transaction through that they were blocking. Was impossible to talk to a real human, super frustrating. I finally decided to say I wanted to "open a new account"; was immediately connected to a human that helped me from there.
jl2718 8y ago
Humans are bad interfaces too. That’s why we have computers. People only like humans because they are also human. Nobody will miss the long lines at McD, but they might miss the smile. If a robot smiles at me, I won’t be happy, I’ll be scared.
skywhopper 8y ago
What's really sad is that this has come around multiple times. I remember hearing about intelligent agents coming anytime to MSN Messenger or whatever it was called at the time back in the early to mid 2000s. And people have had this delusion since ELIZA that natural language interfaces are just on the cusp. A good demo is very convincing, but reality creeps in as soon as you use these things for more than a few rote interactions. The only real innovation of the latest generation of natural language interfaces is their ability to somewhat reliably understand the actual words you use. But even that is highly context dependent and limited to straightforward constructions. And it's all built on just having huge massive datasets against which to compare what's being said. But "natural" language doesn't depend on having past analogues. "Natural" language is constantly finding new ways to say things. And I've not seen any evidence we're any closer to that now than we were in 1966.
cdubzzz 8y ago
Very interesting point, I never thought about why I hate voice interfaces like that so much. The tipping point for me was when the AT&T small business line I used to use changed to a voice interface and included fake keyboard taping sounds after each interaction. That just felt so damn insulting. Lately I just say ridiculous shit with these interfaces to see what happens. A few days ago I was using one for Delta that couldn't tell the difference between "Yeah" and "Yes". Sigh.
- briandear 8y ago
  That typing sound is to ensure that you are aware the call hasn’t disconnected. With just silence, users feel like they have been disconnected.
  - hermitdev 8y ago
    Doesn't make it any less condescending. Replace it with some quiet white noise or something...
    - mjevans 8y ago
      I'd prefer randomized 'hard disk seeking' noises; not the click of death, the sort of soft muted chirping you used to get from very large and slow magnetic media as you actually heard the heads seek back and forth. In an alternate pinch, licence some item get sounds from vidoegames and do A B testing on customer satisfaction.
      - cdubzzz 8y ago
        Interestingly, before making this change the line did use a simple "enter account your number" prompt that was followed by a consistent combination of little clicking sounds that seemed to indicate something was happening. I found that much more pleasant than fake key taping.
gsich 8y ago
I don't want to talk to it like a human. The main advantage is that you can just say "temperature outside" or "turn light off". And I expect short answers too, not the Google/Amazon boring long sentence shit.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
That's definitely a problem, but it seems like the promise is great enough to where we'll figure out a solution to that eventually.
chaostheory 8y ago
These chat and voice interfaces are basically the public's version of a command line interface. It has the same flaws and virtues. The main difference is marketing. Of the bots that are marketed to be more human with lots of machine learning. From my experience, they feel no more better than the original ELIZA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA) despite the leap in tech.
pwaai 8y ago
this. I feel like such an idiot when I tell Google to save a reminder in public.
oysterfish 8y ago
Depends. As the article states, the hybrid approach is becoming more common. This gives users the ability to use various applications from facebook messenger, and the UI capabilities of messenger is pretty much good enough to achieve anything. Oh and this comes along with a modern website that can execute all those use cases too. But then you throw in the natural language, enabling users to write complex queries in English. That and great funded teams focussing on niches. My experiences with bots are becoming outstandingly good.

by dchuk 8y ago

monkeynotes 8y ago

This, this, this!

mrtksn 8y ago

For me, these AI solutions always feel like I'm talking to a very stupid person who has no idea what's doing but has a booklet in possession that may or may not have the information that I'm looking for. Just give me that booklet and I will figure it out,geeez... What a frustration to deal with these smart machines. With Siri or Google Assistant, you soon figure out few things that this very low intelligence person can do(like telling the weather or setting an alarm) and stick with it. This is also why I'm excited about iOS12 with all these Siri shortcuts, instead of pretending that we are talking to a smart being let's have a concrete list of things that can do. On the other hand I do believe that these voice interfaces have some potential, just the technology is not there yet. Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17265683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17265683

collyw 8y ago
Maybe we should rename it to artificial stupidity.
_jal 8y ago
> very stupid person who has no idea what's doing but has a booklet in possession When Siri first hit the Iphone and I was trying to figure out if it was useful for me (no), I named my phone Searle[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Chinese_room_thought_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Chinese_room_thou...
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  Somebody I know described Siri as "less of a Chinese room, more of a tourist's Chinese phrasebook", and it seems to sum up the issue pretty well.

degenerate 8y ago

The audio interfaces are so bad I resort to one-word answers to every question, to get me to a human as fast as possible. "Hi, in a few words, what can I help you with today?" > "billing" "It sounds like you have a question about your bill. I can help you with that! If you can give a few words to describe the reason you are calling, I can help you with your bill." > "billing" "OK, let me get you to a representative who can help!" ... instead of spending 10 minutes wrangling with the vapid AI, I can actually move on with my day after speaking to a human. Was this the future we envisioned in the 90s? I think not. Some systems let you spam 0 (zero) and it transfers to a human, but more and more are requiring you to interface with the system in some way, even if disabled or impaired.

lostcolony 8y ago
'Agent' or 'representiative' will usually do it faster. But I hear you. I recently wanted to change the ownership of my cellphone account. "Change ownership", "It sounds like you want to change cellphone plans, is that correct?", "Agent", "Okay, let me get you to a representative". The only tasks these things are equipped to do, are the tasks that I can do via the company's online portal, and in a much less frustrating manner. I wonder who is actually using these things.
- gear54rus 8y ago
  It's likely that these are for company itself. Ain't no one got time to deal with questions that are already explained on the website. This is made to filter mindless or lazy drones who don't want to search and its totally fair.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    In other words, paying customers
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    So make getting to an agent at least as difficult as figuring out the web interface?

jacksmith21006 8y ago

Would not say the Google one is shitty. We started with an echo and it did require more rigid language but the Google home is pretty good. Not perfect but good enough that it provides value. I now use voice a lot because of the quality with Google tech.

Bartweiss 8y ago
Oddly, my problem with Google is that it's too flexible. Most of the time, it understands me, and that's great. But when Alexa doesn't understand, there's usually an error. When Google doesn't, it seems to call people, cancel navigation, and do all sorts of loony things I didn't ask for. 80% success and 20% no action might be usable for an assistant, but adding in 5% random behavior makes it drastically worse than useless.

pjc50 8y ago

Relevant, excellent blog post: http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call-centres-part-one/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-...

GordonS 8y ago

I find voice interfaces absolutely infuriating to use! I invariably have to put on an American or English accent in order to get them to understand anything I say, and even then it takes several attempts.

robin_reala 8y ago
I’m mostly RP English and I usually have to put on a US accent to get anywhere.

hellofunk 8y ago

It's not unlike a programming language that attempts to resemble written English. Sure it looks like English at first, but really there is a rigid API there that you must adhere to, and that breaks any resemblance to natural language; at which point you wonder, why make it look like English in the first place?

bunderbunder 8y ago

They remind me a lot of the user experience of text adventures that weren't very thoroughly playtested. Except that with text adventures I was willing to overlook an obtuse parser if I was enjoying the game. I never call my bank just for the fun of it.

nkrisc 8y ago

There's an issue of trust, as well. When I call a support number, and I get a robotic voice that assures me I can speak to it as if it were a person in plain language, I simply don't believe it. It's just not true, either. So I end up trying to figure out how to structure my query so the robot on the other end will understand what I want, instead of just saying what I want. In the end, I just repeat "human" and mash the 0 button over and over until I get a real person to talk to.

jandrese 8y ago

Some are actively designed to make you give up on the call, at least that is what it seems like to me. How many times have you called and the prompts go: Press 1 to talk with sales Press 2 to talk with marketing .... Press 9 to talk to tech support, the only reason anybody dialed this number Then: Speak your 18 digit account number, being sure to pause between each digit to make sure the computer records it correctly. Then: Speak your phone number Then: Speak your 24 digit hexadecimal product code Finally you get through to a person and 100% of the time they ask you for all of that information again so they can type it in (and get it wrong). And even when you get a person on the line they make you go back and do all of the stuff you already tried before finally transferring you to someone with half a clue.

grkvlt 8y ago
I suspect most of the time the agents hate the systems like you describe as much as the callers. They are actually trying to make things work better and faster by asking for this info, so when you have to repeat it it's a failure rather than a deliberate design decision...
- kolpa 8y ago
  Time spent talking to a robot is free, people are expensive. So the company prefers 1hr with robots + 1minute with human, over 10 minutes with each. It's customer-hostile though, raising the cost of the service in a hidden way.
iagovar 8y ago
I work for a large ISP. The reason why tech support ask again for information is one of these, or any combination. a) The backoffice is really shit, broken, and doesn't even display any info (down, badly designed, etc) b) Backoffice and/or VPN connection from outsourced call center to ISP is really slow, so they work faster by asking info. c) CRM/Customer database has no consisten quality information, so agents do not trust it. I may forget something, but those are the most common ones.
- 8y ago

Someone1234 8y ago

Also a problem with Apple's "3D Touch." They hide key functions behind a 3D Touch, but there's absolutely no discover-ability. So you're either left trying to 3D Touch everything to see what works, or actively researching 3D Touch tricks. As phone gestures become more popular, they'll have the same issue.

jandrese 8y ago
This is a huge problem with phone interfaces in general. There's a big push to make them "clean" by removing obvious widgets and basically hoping the user guesses correctly that they need a horizontal half screen swipe to bring up the search bar or tap and hold on an item to bring up options. You're basically just jabbing at the thing until it does what you want. Eventually people figure out various developer's favorite tricks and try them first and it isn't quite so bad, but for new users smartphone interfaces can be quite daunting. Seriously, watch someone on a new iPhone and it's just painful. Oh, I created this contact for fun, now how do I delete it. Tap it? Nope. Tap and hold? Nope. Double tap? Nope. Is there a menu somewhere? Nope. Maybe I slide it over? Nope, that brings me back to the previous page. Maybe I pinch? Nope. Guess I'll pull up the help, oh there isn't any. Off to Google then. Oh, I have to slide it over from the middle, not from the edge.

nerdponx 8y ago

In other words: they were never a thing. They were a media-driven and fad-investor-driven hype wave. They never should have been a thing. Good riddance.

wpietri 8y ago

And I don't even want to blame the interfaces entirely. To me the real problem is people building and deploying things when there is a giant gap between hype and reality. The Web was legitimately the next big thing. And after that, mobile. Both of them have changed our lives in deep and lasting ways. But we as an industry are absurdly hungry for the next, next big thing. How many dumb-ass voice and bot and AI and blockchain projects are there out there now? That basically don't work, but have been shipped anyhow? How many millions of dollars have been wasted? And really I should say billions. Theranos alone burned through $1.2 billion of hype. And there was the wave of "Uber for X" companies, busily failing to replicate the business model of a company whose success still isn't a given. I should be clear that I'm not opposed to trying new stuff. I'm all for it! But I think if we explore technological possibilities with less flagrant waste, we'll learn more. And be able to explore more.

intrasight 8y ago
There are a lot of smart and motivated people putting effort into voice interfaces. It's the past (we've been speaking for over a hundred thousand years) and it is the future. It will take some time, but I'm pretty confident that computers interacting with our auditory cortex will replace small slabs of glass that we look at and touch for many tasks.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I think that's highly unlikely. We've had radio for 100 years. The written word is still thriving and TV gets twice as much time from people as radio does. Audio's fine for some things, but it's so very limited. And as an aside, we haven't really had voice-only interfaces for 100k years. Really, they've only existed since the telephone. What existed previous to that was humans, whose in-person interactions are almost always far more than voice. People have different estimates of the amount of information conveyed in a conversation through expression, gesture, posture, glance, and the like, but it's never a small amount.
  - intrasight 8y ago

ThomPete 8y ago

I think voice is greatly underrated but that it will be the next generations (our kids) will use them without feeling weirded out. When I look how my kids interact with Google home it's becomes fairly obvious to me that to them this is completely natural. Google Home is almost like a pet to them not just a tool. We are finally at a stage where voice recognition starts to become powerful enough to understand nuances now the next question is what to connect them to. One thing that I really like is that it allow us to retrieve information without having to look at a screen. It feels like having a 5th person at the table. At First Principle, we built a little a voice app that allows you to ask Google Analytics or Salesforce for data (and potentially whatever you want to connect with) for meetings so we can ask instead of having to look up. It becomes a natural part of the conversation and everyone have access to the data. That's where I think it will first make an impact. In meetings with relevant data.

jrochkind1 8y ago

"affordances", amiright? https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

blueyes 8y ago

Chatbots proposed to solve a problem that current technology is bad at: understanding natural language. Very few experts claimed that algorithms could master the combinatorics of natural language beyond a few very narrow domains. On top of the technical risk, the voice and chat UX does not give a lot of visibility to users, as this post points out. What happened was: algorithmic advances in other areas lead to analogous reasoning by non-experts whose self-promotion aligned with the media's need for something new, big and understandable. And then it failed. The irony, of course, is that research is making strides in NLU, it's just too late for the last wave of chatbots. Here are two recent papers from DeepMind: Learning to Follow Language Instructions with Adversarial Reward Induction https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01946 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01946 Relational inductive biases, deep learning, and graph networks https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01261 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01261

phunehehe0 8y ago

It's a funny coincidence. I've just gotten off a phone with a bank officer about a simple question "Is my card there yet?". It took 29 minutes, including a few minutes at the beginning talking to a bot before getting to a human. I'm being unfair and emotional, but right now I'm not sure if humans are really better.

elwell 8y ago

I was trying to get in contact with my bank to allow a large transaction through that they were blocking. Was impossible to talk to a real human, super frustrating. I finally decided to say I wanted to "open a new account"; was immediately connected to a human that helped me from there.

jl2718 8y ago

Humans are bad interfaces too. That’s why we have computers. People only like humans because they are also human. Nobody will miss the long lines at McD, but they might miss the smile. If a robot smiles at me, I won’t be happy, I’ll be scared.

skywhopper 8y ago

What's really sad is that this has come around multiple times. I remember hearing about intelligent agents coming anytime to MSN Messenger or whatever it was called at the time back in the early to mid 2000s. And people have had this delusion since ELIZA that natural language interfaces are just on the cusp. A good demo is very convincing, but reality creeps in as soon as you use these things for more than a few rote interactions. The only real innovation of the latest generation of natural language interfaces is their ability to somewhat reliably understand the actual words you use. But even that is highly context dependent and limited to straightforward constructions. And it's all built on just having huge massive datasets against which to compare what's being said. But "natural" language doesn't depend on having past analogues. "Natural" language is constantly finding new ways to say things. And I've not seen any evidence we're any closer to that now than we were in 1966.

cdubzzz 8y ago

Very interesting point, I never thought about why I hate voice interfaces like that so much. The tipping point for me was when the AT&T small business line I used to use changed to a voice interface and included fake keyboard taping sounds after each interaction. That just felt so damn insulting. Lately I just say ridiculous shit with these interfaces to see what happens. A few days ago I was using one for Delta that couldn't tell the difference between "Yeah" and "Yes". Sigh.

briandear 8y ago
That typing sound is to ensure that you are aware the call hasn’t disconnected. With just silence, users feel like they have been disconnected.
- hermitdev 8y ago
  Doesn't make it any less condescending. Replace it with some quiet white noise or something...
  - mjevans 8y ago
    I'd prefer randomized 'hard disk seeking' noises; not the click of death, the sort of soft muted chirping you used to get from very large and slow magnetic media as you actually heard the heads seek back and forth. In an alternate pinch, licence some item get sounds from vidoegames and do A B testing on customer satisfaction.
    - cdubzzz 8y ago
      Interestingly, before making this change the line did use a simple "enter account your number" prompt that was followed by a consistent combination of little clicking sounds that seemed to indicate something was happening. I found that much more pleasant than fake key taping.

gsich 8y ago

I don't want to talk to it like a human. The main advantage is that you can just say "temperature outside" or "turn light off". And I expect short answers too, not the Google/Amazon boring long sentence shit.

TulliusCicero 8y ago

That's definitely a problem, but it seems like the promise is great enough to where we'll figure out a solution to that eventually.

chaostheory 8y ago

These chat and voice interfaces are basically the public's version of a command line interface. It has the same flaws and virtues. The main difference is marketing. Of the bots that are marketed to be more human with lots of machine learning. From my experience, they feel no more better than the original ELIZA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA) despite the leap in tech.

pwaai 8y ago

this. I feel like such an idiot when I tell Google to save a reminder in public.

oysterfish 8y ago

Depends. As the article states, the hybrid approach is becoming more common. This gives users the ability to use various applications from facebook messenger, and the UI capabilities of messenger is pretty much good enough to achieve anything. Oh and this comes along with a modern website that can execute all those use cases too. But then you throw in the natural language, enabling users to write complex queries in English. That and great funded teams focussing on niches. My experiences with bots are becoming outstandingly good.