5 ms·

My own thinking about conversational AI changed recently after a coworker of mine pointed out that most dictative conversations only require 2 or 3 pieces of ca

My own thinking about conversational AI changed recently after a coworker of mine pointed out that most dictative conversations only require 2 or 3 pieces of carried context. That’s a level of depth that does not require a massive technical breakthrough, but could be semi reasonably solved with tremendous effort (exists), and current technologies. It’s true that a good PA brings much earlier context, and “out of band” context to the table, but a customer support service (e.g. delta) really does not. With this in mind, I think these conversational agents are going to be much more performant than expected in the fairly near future.

meowface 7y ago
Some chatbots have been pretty passable at holding simple conversations for a while. Cleverbot's initial version started in 1986, and seems to have been okay at conversations even then. I remember using it in the early 2000s and being fairly impressed. I don't even think it's using any ML currently, and it's still giving me pretty decent results when I tried using it again just now. Alexa has more complex requirements (it's funny when Cleverbot gives an occasional nonsensical response, but not so funny when Alexa unexpectedly orders you a $2,000 lawn gnome - okay, still kind of funny), but I definitely agree with you. I don't think this is a challenge that requires anything close to AGI, unless you want to start having truly insightful and philosophical conversations with a computer.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  The existing implementations still have a long way to go. Here’s the chat I just had with cleverbot, the first thing it gave me after going to the site: > Good afternoon. Do you know any good places to get dinner? > Mot really. > What about dessert? > That's if you're a good bot. > Not for you, for me. > Okay.. Completely useless. I asked Alexa to find me the article on hacker news from today that talks about chat bots, she said “Sorry, I don’t know that one” As a random, unscientific test it’s not very useful yet.
  - mooman219 7y ago
    I remember reading that the user facing clever bot is really just for training. For competitions, a more robust dataset is used for the conversation and produces better results. [Citation needed]
  - cududa 7y ago
    ...dude. The point never had anything to do with being the modern “PA” you’re imagining. It’s a chat bot designed 30+ years. It’s a neat (and at the time, breakthrough) for having conversations. It’s not intended to go find information for you..
    - camjohnson26 7y ago
      That’s the point. It might sound vaguely human but without the context to find and deliver information it’s completely useless
  - icebraining 7y ago
    It's kinda amazing that SHRDLU still sounds advanced today, 50 years after it was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU
    - taneq 7y ago
      It sounds advanced because it operated in an incredibility restricted context. It's impressive in the way that self-driving cars in the 80s were impressive because they worked at all.
  - whoevercares 7y ago
    It’s still “fill the form”. We are far from supporting what you want

meowface 7y ago

Some chatbots have been pretty passable at holding simple conversations for a while. Cleverbot's initial version started in 1986, and seems to have been okay at conversations even then. I remember using it in the early 2000s and being fairly impressed. I don't even think it's using any ML currently, and it's still giving me pretty decent results when I tried using it again just now. Alexa has more complex requirements (it's funny when Cleverbot gives an occasional nonsensical response, but not so funny when Alexa unexpectedly orders you a $2,000 lawn gnome - okay, still kind of funny), but I definitely agree with you. I don't think this is a challenge that requires anything close to AGI, unless you want to start having truly insightful and philosophical conversations with a computer.

camjohnson26 7y ago
The existing implementations still have a long way to go. Here’s the chat I just had with cleverbot, the first thing it gave me after going to the site: > Good afternoon. Do you know any good places to get dinner? > Mot really. > What about dessert? > That's if you're a good bot. > Not for you, for me. > Okay.. Completely useless. I asked Alexa to find me the article on hacker news from today that talks about chat bots, she said “Sorry, I don’t know that one” As a random, unscientific test it’s not very useful yet.
- mooman219 7y ago
  I remember reading that the user facing clever bot is really just for training. For competitions, a more robust dataset is used for the conversation and produces better results. [Citation needed]
- cududa 7y ago
  ...dude. The point never had anything to do with being the modern “PA” you’re imagining. It’s a chat bot designed 30+ years. It’s a neat (and at the time, breakthrough) for having conversations. It’s not intended to go find information for you..
  - camjohnson26 7y ago
    That’s the point. It might sound vaguely human but without the context to find and deliver information it’s completely useless
- icebraining 7y ago
  It's kinda amazing that SHRDLU still sounds advanced today, 50 years after it was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU
  - taneq 7y ago
    It sounds advanced because it operated in an incredibility restricted context. It's impressive in the way that self-driving cars in the 80s were impressive because they worked at all.
- whoevercares 7y ago
  It’s still “fill the form”. We are far from supporting what you want