
Talking to Google Duplex: Google’s human-like phone AI feels revolutionary - el_duderino
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-calling-we-talk-to-the-revolutionary-but-limited-phone-ai/
======
tsycho
It was amusing to read John (Daring Fireball) Gruber's posts accusing Google
of lying on State at I/O, and making up the demo phone calls.

A simple question to ask would have been: What would Google gain by lying? And
how much more credibility would it lose by blatantly lying about its
capabilities, on stage, at its biggest annual event? The incentives don't
align, and hence the simplest explanation was that they weren't.

~~~
s3r3nity
While I didn't agree with Gruber, I could understand and see there are many
reasons / incentives. Two possibilities

1) Getting excitement about a product before it's fully baked and ready

2) Evaluating consumer response to a potentially "scary" project (recall that
a lot of opinion pieces came out after I/O mentioning how unnerved some folks
were to the idea of an AI voice mimicking human speech "ticks," like "umm"'s
or "ahh"'s.

------
TimJYoung
So, what is the solution if, for social reasons, people simply reject talking
to an AI assistant by hanging up the phone ? I'm not sure that I would be
particularly happy to know that the person themselves couldn't be bothered to
call me in person.

And, wasn't this the same issue with Google Glass, that it was somewhat
problematic in social environments ?

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Presumably businesses are willing to put up with a fair amount from their
prospective customers - especially if many people start using Duplex. Your
argument would hold for a CEO who has her executive assistant call to make the
appointment too - would the employee on the other end be upset she couldn't be
bothered to call herself?

------
s3r3nity
Not to jump on the bandwagon critical of Google's Product Marketing /
Branding, but this just bothers me: why center it as "Duplex," and not just a
new feature for "Google Assistant?"

This in no way diminishes how game-changing the tech could be, nor how
fascinated / excited I am by it.

------
mooneater
Duplex is likely built with deep reinforcement learning, though i have not
seen that disclosed yet.

