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>“We want to make sure that we’re not wasting the business’s time,” Fox says. “We want to make sure throughout everything we do here, that this is good experien

>“We want to make sure that we’re not wasting the business’s time,” Fox says. “We want to make sure throughout everything we do here, that this is good experience for the business and that they’re not getting frustrated talking to an assistant while they’re trying to run their business.” What's the added value of sounding exactly like a real person then? Why can't it be a robotic voice following a simple, efficient algorithm? - Hi. I'm a robot trying to book for 4 at 20 tonight for my client. Is it possible? Please say Yes or No - Wait what? - I'm a robot trying to book for 4 at 20 tonight for my client. Is it possible? Please say Yes or No - No - Is it possible at any other time tonight? If yes, when? - Yes, at 21 - I would like to book for 4 at 21. Thank you. We have had this kind of technology for years.

ehsankia 8y ago
That would be wasting time, because humans are used to talking to humans, not to robots. Do you enjoy it when you call a business and you have to sit through the annoying automated system? If you want to make the experience better for businesses, this is the way to go, although much harder to achieve. The "um"s aren't to trick the person, it's actually makes the conversation flow better.
Klathmon 8y ago
Because people will hang up on it like they do all other robocalls, or they will talk to it like many people talk to "computers". They won't use grammar, they will speak louder, they will slow down, and they will try to keep the conversation as simple as possible fearing that the system can't handle anything else. It needs to sound human so that humans will interact with it correctly. If it sounds human, then the person on the other end of the call might say things like "We don't have anything available on the 3rd but we do on the 5th, is that okay?" If it sounds like a robot, people will just respond to questions with "no", "yes", or say "phone number" instead of "can i have your phone number?" Sounding human puts the human in the drivers seat, sounding robotic means the "robot" needs to drive the conversation.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  or they will talk to it like many people talk to "computers". They won't use grammar, they will speak louder, they will slow down, and they will try to keep the conversation as simple as possible fearing that the system can't handle anything else So, pretty much how we've trained ourselves to use Google, the search engine. Nobody types "I'd like to know what the best way is to braise pork with white wine" into Google. They type "pork recipe braise wine" because we've been trained by Google that this will produce better results. If Google's current search worked as well as it claims Duplex will, then we'd finally be getting somewhere. But Google's taken its eye off the ball. Right now, at least for the things I search for, searching on Google is like playing an Infocom game.
  - pavs 8y ago
    Name a search engine that's better than Google. Nobody type "I'd like to know what the best way is to braise pork with white wine", doesn't mean Google can't give you good search result if you typed like that, you will get just as good result if you type "pork recipe braise wine", but its fewer words and more efficient to type. It's less of "google trained us to type like that" and more or "We opted to use the more efficient way of doing that same thing". If Google didn't give us good results if we typed "pork recipe braise wine", it would be a pretty shitty search engine in my book.
    - bjelkeman-again 8y ago
      In my experience the results are worse with full sentences, just as it was described.
    - Springtime 8y ago
      > It's less of "google trained us to type like that" and more or "We opted to use the more efficient way of doing that same thing". I'm a bit baffled at this, given it reads as though the past 20 years of searching hasn't been learning to adapt to what one might call search engine speak for better results. The obvious main issue was for years you had to guess how someone else would phrase something if using longer phrases, since the longer the query the less likely you'll find a matching result. If you didn't get the desired results you then would either re-phrase it to yet another natural sentence or (increasingly since it shortcuts the process) pare back the query to simpler keywords to have a better chance of success finding those same core keywords in sites. Eventually people got used to just entering keywords instead since it wasted time trying one's luck on more natural sentences for the reasons above. Obviously with better natural language tech (and with more user content generated and indexed) some queries became more successful but even today it can be a complete dice roll for many longer, naturally phrased queries whether anything useful is returned.
jdietrich 8y ago
Real humans don't behave like that. They behave in all sorts of weird ways when they know that they're interacting with a machine. They SHOUT, O-VER-E-NUN-CI-ATE and use unnatural sentence fragments, which craters the accuracy rate of a speech parsing algorithm that was trained on natural speech. They get instantly frustrated, because they assume that this machine will be just as stupid as the archaic IVR system that their bank uses. They assume it's a scam robocall or a prank and hang up without saying anything. Acting like a human is by far the most efficient option for a system that is designed to do what Duplex does.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  How are you supposed to tell whether an automated system is intelligent or not? Sometimes the voice prompt tells me to "speak in full sentences", but it doesn't understand what I'm saying anyway.
  - yifanl 8y ago
    That would be a fault of the system then.
  - jonknee 8y ago
    Google solved this by having it talk to you naturally so you never even consider responding differently. Seems like a winning idea.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      Only non native speakers think duplex sounds human
      - pnloyd 8y ago
        I'm native and I think it sounds pretty damn close. I could see myself getting through a simple conversation with it without getting suspicious (that's assuming that I had absolutely no reason to believe it was a system from the start)
jayd16 8y ago
Would you want Siri or the personal Google Assistant to talk this way? A strict binary tree structure chirped at you in low-fi synth voice like this is really not that pleasant or efficient.
pavs 8y ago
Because talking to robocall like that is annoying as hell. Not to mention fail rate is high (at least for my voice).
matt4077 8y ago
...because technology should adapt to humans, not the other way around. These voice systems are annoying as hell, as shown by the fact that they have become a comedy trope similar to airline food. It's bad enough to deal with them when you're initiating the call. Imagine being a business forced to interact with such a system because it brings in too much revenue to ignore. I'd definitely spit in every soup served to a guest willing to annoy me just to save himself the hassle of a phone call.
cryptozeus 8y ago
what @Klathmon said. If I am business , I will hang up at "hi I am robot..."
- jonknee 8y ago
  Why? People call businesses all the time and get robots, why would it be different the other way around? As soon as the boss figures out you're hanging up on people trying to get reservations you can bet hangups will stop ASAP.
  - Semirhage 8y ago
    Most of us hang up on robots too though. Robocalls are a nightmare. The best argument against Duplex IMO is that it’s going to enable a new generation of hellish scams and robocalls, if it ever leaves Google. Presumably Google knows this and will keep the tech locked down. Still, it’s only going to be a matter of time before it’s open one way or another, and then we’ll have to have the “should I be told up from that it’s a robot?” conversation again.
    - jonknee 8y ago
      Most of us aren't paid to answer the phone though... If my job was to answer the phone for people making reservations and I started to hang up on reservation bots I would expect to be fired immediately. I also hang up on real people who call me unsolicited for sales pitches, it's not the bot part that annoys me.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Why don't you want your business to get money for your products and services?
- ulfw 8y ago
  Agreed. I would hang up at "This call is being recorded". No. I don't want this. How dare you just record me out of the blue without consent?
vilhelm_s 8y ago
If you try calling a restaurant and say "Hi. I'm trying to book for 4 at 20 tonight for my client. Is it possible? Please say Yes or No", I suspect you'll discover that it's in fact not more efficient than a typical human conversion.
headcanon 8y ago
Thats assuming simple restaurant reservations are the end game. I'd be willing to bet that they will be expanding the utility of this far beyond tasks like these. This is just a way to get the right kind of training data for future projects and products, while providing value to google users to keep them in the ecosystem.

ehsankia 8y ago

That would be wasting time, because humans are used to talking to humans, not to robots. Do you enjoy it when you call a business and you have to sit through the annoying automated system? If you want to make the experience better for businesses, this is the way to go, although much harder to achieve. The "um"s aren't to trick the person, it's actually makes the conversation flow better.

Klathmon 8y ago

Because people will hang up on it like they do all other robocalls, or they will talk to it like many people talk to "computers". They won't use grammar, they will speak louder, they will slow down, and they will try to keep the conversation as simple as possible fearing that the system can't handle anything else. It needs to sound human so that humans will interact with it correctly. If it sounds human, then the person on the other end of the call might say things like "We don't have anything available on the 3rd but we do on the 5th, is that okay?" If it sounds like a robot, people will just respond to questions with "no", "yes", or say "phone number" instead of "can i have your phone number?" Sounding human puts the human in the drivers seat, sounding robotic means the "robot" needs to drive the conversation.

reaperducer 8y ago
or they will talk to it like many people talk to "computers". They won't use grammar, they will speak louder, they will slow down, and they will try to keep the conversation as simple as possible fearing that the system can't handle anything else So, pretty much how we've trained ourselves to use Google, the search engine. Nobody types "I'd like to know what the best way is to braise pork with white wine" into Google. They type "pork recipe braise wine" because we've been trained by Google that this will produce better results. If Google's current search worked as well as it claims Duplex will, then we'd finally be getting somewhere. But Google's taken its eye off the ball. Right now, at least for the things I search for, searching on Google is like playing an Infocom game.
- pavs 8y ago
  Name a search engine that's better than Google. Nobody type "I'd like to know what the best way is to braise pork with white wine", doesn't mean Google can't give you good search result if you typed like that, you will get just as good result if you type "pork recipe braise wine", but its fewer words and more efficient to type. It's less of "google trained us to type like that" and more or "We opted to use the more efficient way of doing that same thing". If Google didn't give us good results if we typed "pork recipe braise wine", it would be a pretty shitty search engine in my book.
  - bjelkeman-again 8y ago
    In my experience the results are worse with full sentences, just as it was described.
  - Springtime 8y ago
    > It's less of "google trained us to type like that" and more or "We opted to use the more efficient way of doing that same thing". I'm a bit baffled at this, given it reads as though the past 20 years of searching hasn't been learning to adapt to what one might call search engine speak for better results. The obvious main issue was for years you had to guess how someone else would phrase something if using longer phrases, since the longer the query the less likely you'll find a matching result. If you didn't get the desired results you then would either re-phrase it to yet another natural sentence or (increasingly since it shortcuts the process) pare back the query to simpler keywords to have a better chance of success finding those same core keywords in sites. Eventually people got used to just entering keywords instead since it wasted time trying one's luck on more natural sentences for the reasons above. Obviously with better natural language tech (and with more user content generated and indexed) some queries became more successful but even today it can be a complete dice roll for many longer, naturally phrased queries whether anything useful is returned.

jdietrich 8y ago

Real humans don't behave like that. They behave in all sorts of weird ways when they know that they're interacting with a machine. They SHOUT, O-VER-E-NUN-CI-ATE and use unnatural sentence fragments, which craters the accuracy rate of a speech parsing algorithm that was trained on natural speech. They get instantly frustrated, because they assume that this machine will be just as stupid as the archaic IVR system that their bank uses. They assume it's a scam robocall or a prank and hang up without saying anything. Acting like a human is by far the most efficient option for a system that is designed to do what Duplex does.

nerdponx 8y ago
How are you supposed to tell whether an automated system is intelligent or not? Sometimes the voice prompt tells me to "speak in full sentences", but it doesn't understand what I'm saying anyway.
- yifanl 8y ago
  That would be a fault of the system then.
- jonknee 8y ago
  Google solved this by having it talk to you naturally so you never even consider responding differently. Seems like a winning idea.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    Only non native speakers think duplex sounds human
    - pnloyd 8y ago
      I'm native and I think it sounds pretty damn close. I could see myself getting through a simple conversation with it without getting suspicious (that's assuming that I had absolutely no reason to believe it was a system from the start)

jayd16 8y ago

Would you want Siri or the personal Google Assistant to talk this way? A strict binary tree structure chirped at you in low-fi synth voice like this is really not that pleasant or efficient.

pavs 8y ago

Because talking to robocall like that is annoying as hell. Not to mention fail rate is high (at least for my voice).

matt4077 8y ago

...because technology should adapt to humans, not the other way around. These voice systems are annoying as hell, as shown by the fact that they have become a comedy trope similar to airline food. It's bad enough to deal with them when you're initiating the call. Imagine being a business forced to interact with such a system because it brings in too much revenue to ignore. I'd definitely spit in every soup served to a guest willing to annoy me just to save himself the hassle of a phone call.

cryptozeus 8y ago

what @Klathmon said. If I am business , I will hang up at "hi I am robot..."

jonknee 8y ago
Why? People call businesses all the time and get robots, why would it be different the other way around? As soon as the boss figures out you're hanging up on people trying to get reservations you can bet hangups will stop ASAP.
- Semirhage 8y ago
  Most of us hang up on robots too though. Robocalls are a nightmare. The best argument against Duplex IMO is that it’s going to enable a new generation of hellish scams and robocalls, if it ever leaves Google. Presumably Google knows this and will keep the tech locked down. Still, it’s only going to be a matter of time before it’s open one way or another, and then we’ll have to have the “should I be told up from that it’s a robot?” conversation again.
  - jonknee 8y ago
    Most of us aren't paid to answer the phone though... If my job was to answer the phone for people making reservations and I started to hang up on reservation bots I would expect to be fired immediately. I also hang up on real people who call me unsolicited for sales pitches, it's not the bot part that annoys me.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Why don't you want your business to get money for your products and services?
ulfw 8y ago
Agreed. I would hang up at "This call is being recorded". No. I don't want this. How dare you just record me out of the blue without consent?

vilhelm_s 8y ago

If you try calling a restaurant and say "Hi. I'm trying to book for 4 at 20 tonight for my client. Is it possible? Please say Yes or No", I suspect you'll discover that it's in fact not more efficient than a typical human conversion.

headcanon 8y ago

Thats assuming simple restaurant reservations are the end game. I'd be willing to bet that they will be expanding the utility of this far beyond tasks like these. This is just a way to get the right kind of training data for future projects and products, while providing value to google users to keep them in the ecosystem.