
Big tech products are mostly useless - ahjones
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/big-tech-products-silicon-valley
======
philipodonnell
The comments here seem to focus on the specific examples, but this misses the
point of the article, which I take to be that _every_ new product or feature,
no matter how minor or how incremental, is treated as the second coming of the
100x engineer and the cheering crowds hand-picked to promote whatever they see
aren't helping by covering it rabidly.

He's not wrong, but I've heard that complaint about the tech press in general
for years, so I'm not sure its bringing anything new to the table on HN.

But at the same time, "some of these will surely turn out to be revolutionary
eventually" isn't a great excuse to treat everything as revolutionary before
it has a chance to even be seen in the field.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I don't think the messianic cheering is the real problem.

Here's a short and not very complete list of unsolved meta-problems:

Even when products and systems are revolutionary, there are unexpected
negative consequences (e.g. FB and Cambridge Analytica)

All systems can be trolled and abused, and if they can be, they will be (e.g.
fake reviews on Amazon etc.)

AI doesn't actually work all that well yet. (Neither Siri nor Alexa truly pass
a conversational Turing test, which means there's a lot of guessing about
whether or not any novel request will generate a useful response.)

IT systems and products of all kinds are brittle, unreliable, and often
downright stupid. Users don't trust updates and feature changes, and often
they're right to do so. Given that, why would AI "products" be any better or
more reliable?

~~~
icc97
> AI doesn't actually work all that well yet. (Neither Siri nor Alexa truly
> pass a conversational Turing test...)

When we pass the Turing test it means we've got _actual_ AI.

But I'm not sure there'll ever be a clear line. So Duplex kind of passes it in
a very narrow context. Whether or not the person at the end of the line was
actually fooled or not is a slightly different question. They could have just
been humouring what they figured was a weird automated system.

But it's not like Google won't improve exponentially with this. They've now
got a basic AI conversation system that they hope people will use and feed it
data of actual conversations.

So Duplex v2 will have an expanded system where they can handle ten times the
number of scenarios and questions.

The more I think about it, the more impressive it seems. Most attempts at a
Turing test are text only where the subject is supposed to be a 13yo immigrant
boy. Here Google's jumping straight to voice conversations.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I don't think there's a clear line either. Even the Turing Test is notional -
a conversation with a high schooler is going to be easier to fake than a
conversation with an English professor.

I can imagine in the future there will be some kind of approximate
conversational AI rating analogous to Flesch-Kincaid for text.

But I left a problem off my list, which is that we unconsciously demand AI
should be _better_ than average human performance.

If you monitor your conversations with people, you'll find there are regular
misses where one person either mishears words, doesn't understand what's said,
or misinterprets a subtext.

We cut human conversations a lot of slack. We're used to thinking of humans as
independent agents, and there are social conventions about asking for more
information and admitting - or sometimes denying - mistakes.

But there's an unconscious expectation that AI should operate at a better-
than-human level before it's considered reliable.

We're more likely to think "Stupid machine!" if something isn't understood
than we would with a human. So AI will have to cross the Uncanny Turning
Valley before we really trust it. And because we're dealing with automated
interpretations of human agency, errors will be harder to forgive.

You can already see this with driverless cars, where any accident is
considered a failure. Even though statistically an AI may be much safer than
the average human, it's not considered good enough unless it can deal with
situations that an average human would have no hope of dealing with.

~~~
icc97
> we unconsciously demand AI should be better than average human performance.

Yeah I agree it's an unfair demand.

Especially given how much more powerful human brains are than computers we
should perhaps be having a go a humans for not trying hard enough.

The wins of things like Go and Chess by computers has been down played because
humans 'only' learned that stuff 100,000 years ago.

Personally I think that driverless cars work better as passive systems that
augment humans for the moment rather than the dodgy crossover that is
Autopilot. I think that car AIs can be trained to deal with extreme
circumstances by running simulations of crashes millions of times over and
then they're capable of taking over if the driver ever becomes unwell or hits
black ice.

But this is all temporary, as soon as their vision systems match humans they
will only ever improve over what we have. This Stanford self-driving car
sliding between four perfect donuts is amazing [0].

[0]:
[https://youtu.be/LDprUza7yT4?t=31m38s](https://youtu.be/LDprUza7yT4?t=31m38s)

------
Zak
_Now, when was the last time you came to book a haircut or restaurant table
and concluded that the task was so onerous that you would ideally delegate it
to a machine? And even if you can easily think of a scenario, would there not
be something ethically questionable about doing so, if the person at the other
end had no idea who or what they were talking to?_

I hate talking on the phone. If I can't fill out a web form (login-free
please) or send an email to complete some task like that, I'd love to have a
robot do it for me. I don't see anything unethical about this as long as the
robot performs the task reasonably well, doesn't waste the receptionist's
time, etc....

The classic hacker ethic says it's bad for humans to be required to waste time
on something a machine could do, and Google has just expanded the list of
things machines can do. Of course, under that framework, it would be
preferable to automate the receptionist taking the call as well.

I'm eager for this technology to become more general-purpose. For months, I've
had a case open with an airline over an item that went missing from my checked
bag. The _only_ way to get updates is to call them on the phone. It first goes
to an IVR, then a call center in India where the call is screened by a person,
and only then to the actual department that can give me useful information.
There is no direct line (I asked). The process is obviously designed to
frustrate users so they give up. The hassle is arguably not worth the $90 they
owe me, but I don't want to let them get away with it. I really wish I could
have a robot talk to them.

~~~
Balgair
Hmm, different strokes - different folks. I actually _like_ to talk to people
on the phone. Maybe I need to get out more, but when you can get to a real
human, the issues at hand tend to get easier to deal with. Phone trees are a
nightmare for me, and I just spam 0 until I get someone (typically works
alright, but not always).

The trick, I have found, is to treat the other person on the line, as well, a
real person. When they say their name, say it back to them, ask _them_ how
their day is, chat for a second about how it's their Wednesday (halfway
there!), what the weather like where they are (Broncos are going to have a
tough game, eh?), etc. Even just 30 seconds of chatter will get you _great_
service. So many people treat them as 'the help', so when you come in and
treat them as an equal human, their day just got a little better, and they'll
treat you better too, because you treated them well first.

And I mean you really get better service. That direct line to their manager's
manager? You have that now, just because you were nice. That bouquet of
flowers for your mom/wife? It just got a little larger, because you asked them
how their day is going. That bill you are having trouble paying? It's 15% off,
because you complained about the snow too. Yeah, it's not a lot. Yeah, it
happens maybe 1/10 times. But it is worth 30 seconds.

Besides, you got to make an actual human's day better. No one is too busy for
that, for good manners and a smile, even if it's over the phone.

~~~
devonkim
The reasons I would like refer a human or automaton depends upon the kind of
transaction I need. If it’s something I think is done pretty often I’ll look
for a web form with a workflow that someone has invested some time into to
make sure the business process works. Additionally, 90% of the time I call a
human to do this I can clearly tell that they’re filling out yet _another_
form or even the same one I just had problems with - this is ultimately a UX
and business process failure that results in a call center call. I typically
wind up playing “let me spell my address and e-mail to someone using
variations of military phonetic semaphores” when I can just type it in myself.
The number of errors I’ve had over repeating entries over the phone that have
resulted in rather serious repercussions are too numerous that I’d rather just
type forms in myself if possible.

Where I _want_ a person is when I want to bypass processes completely or I
have a big exception that warrants a human. So if I’m calling your call
center, you may as well send me up to tier 3 or higher because I’m going to be
a pain.

And given I did support for a couple years myself, sure I’ll try to make their
day a bit better where I can and try to have all my info ready and to be as
calm as possible. Because I know it can take a while, so I usually have an
hour or two set aside for these calls and can just wait and not have to hurry
anyone.

------
loblollyboy
Of course, like raking leaves in your lawn, you’re going to run into a kind of
diminishing returns situation. So I agree, albeit with an obvious point, My
only qualm (beyond the banality of the thesis) is that this dude is forgetting
about some other cool advances, such as the sharing economy (Uber/Lyft and
airbnb) which kind of changed the world a little, messenger apps (which made
day to day life a little more convenient for many and also played a role in
some big geopolitical events). Also just b/c google launched its search engine
in 99 or whatever doesn’t mean that they stopped innovating - incremental
improvements in search have made it 1000x what it was then, and if you showed
google maps to someone from 2000, they would think it is magic. The tools for
making tech have gotten a lot better too, even if most of the use cases have
already been covered. AI and blockchain can be revolutionary. The problem is
how we structure society, where we’re all either just trying to make our daily
bread or get rich, and this leads to a lot of misdirected effort.

~~~
acdha
> this dude is forgetting about some other cool advances, such as the sharing
> economy (Uber/Lyft and airbnb) which kind of changed the world a little

Beyond the “sharing” misnomer, those were proven concepts with existing
industries. So far what's been proved is that if you're willing to pour
billions of dollars into a company you can produce a better app than the
incumbents, and that you can see short-term gains if you're willing to break
the law and/or subsidize heavily.

> if you showed google maps to someone from 2000, they would think it is
> magic.

By 2000 the most likely reaction would have been “oh, it's like MapQuest but
faster”. Google Maps reflects a lot of evolutionary improvements but the big
change was the rise of the advertising model meaning that you didn't have to
pay a third-party for GIS software or a subscription service to get annual map
updates.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > if you showed google maps to someone from 2000, they would think it is
> magic.

> By 2000 the most likely reaction would have been “oh, it's like MapQuest but
> faster”.

Depends on context. Sure, maybe if you showed it to them on desktop with basic
operations (e.g., turned off traffic display, etc.)

Show using it on mobile for navigation with “Ok, Google, navigate to...” with
turn-by-turn navigation and real-time, traffic-based route adjustment with
voice promoted and confirmation, and it's at least as far beyond 2000s
MapQuest as that version of MapQuest is above a dead-tree book of maps.

------
ribchinski
Well... I don't particularly agree with everything this guy is saying, but he
is right about the internet of things. In my experience, it is quite useless,
and it is a danger to privacy. One of the my friends constantly uses Amazon
Alexa and Siri for even the most basic questions like, "What is x + y?" which
could be easily done faster on a desk calculator. Either I am a person who
likes to make things more inconvenient for myself, or I just don't understand
modern technology.

~~~
wakkaflokka
I can agree on the privacy concerns front, but for what it's worth, I've found
my Google Home to be quite helpful. So if we're solely talking about how it
can be helpful:

\- When I'm cooking and my hands are dirty and I want to set a timer

\- When I'm cooking and my hands are dirty and I want to change music/lower
volume/raise volume/call someone (or do a measurement conversion)

\- Turning off all the lights in my house when I'm already in bed and forgot
whether I left some on

\- Laying in bed with the gf and asking random questions out of curiosity

\- Asking how long it will take to get somewhere if my gf and I are pondering
some place to eat but are at the dinner table without our phones

\- Get home after having a few beers and dive into the messy chicken wings
with both my hands, and then realize I want to turn on the TV, play a show or
change the current one on my Shield.. perfect use for the GH

\- Since I already look at my phone way too much (potentially straining
muscles in my neck), I can leave my phone in another room and still get quick
answers to deep life questions without tilting my neck downwards

They're all __super__ minor of course, but honestly, I'm so used to the
convenience now it actually feels weird to have to do some of these things
'manually'. I do understand there are serious concerns about privacy that may
or may not offset the benefits, definitely plenty of room for discussion on
that.

~~~
ribchinski
Yeah, I see. I don't know, due to my Russo-Ukrainian accent, I have been
dissuaded from using voice recognition software since Siri was released.

But, I see how useful it can be when your hands are busy! My home has an
ancient early 2000 smart home installed, which can be updated at a pretty big
price, so I don't bother. I guess I am just used to my "inconvenience."

------
mLuby
"It’s years since Silicon Valley gave us a game-changer. Instead, from curing
disease to colonies on Mars, we’re fed overblown promises" Come on. "We don't
have a colony on Mars yet" doesn't mean there isn't crazy innovation going on
with extremely tangible benefits. Any of the following is a game-changer.

1\. Dec'15 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on land.

2\. Apr'16 SpaceX performs first ever orbital-class rocket landing on a ship.

3\. Mar'17 SpaceX reuses first orbital-class rocket.

4\. Feb'18 SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, the highest payload capacity of any
currently operational launch vehicle.

5\. May'18 SpaceX launches Falcon 9 Block 5, set to give USA direct human
access to space (in late 2018) for the first time since Mar'11.

~~~
Eridrus
"Why is Elon Musk wasting his time getting us to Mars when there are problems
on Earth that need fixing?!?"

~~~
dexen
You jest, but it's worth referencing the "Why explore space?"[1] letter.
Penned back during the Space Race, as a response to a nun concerned with
apparently wasteful spending, contrasted to poverty suffered by the people she
was working with.

On a lighter note: we've put people on the Moon before we've put wheels on the
luggage[2]. Exploration before comforts.

[1] [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-
space.html](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html)

[2] [https://betafactory.com/what-came-first-wheeled-luggage-
or-a...](https://betafactory.com/what-came-first-wheeled-luggage-or-a-man-on-
the-moon-20f8b22529a3)

~~~
Eridrus
I'm joking, but only because people are still writing these articles, e.g.:
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/02/elon-
mu...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/02/elon-musks-mars-
project-is-the-ultimate-symbol-of-our-throwaway-culture)

~~~
hoosieree
The pessimistic response to articles like that is that making Mars habitable
is a more realistic goal than preventing humans from making earth
uninhabitable.

~~~
sincerely
If Mars eventually becomes habitable, how long do you think it will take
before we make it uninhabitable?

------
icebraining
Unfortunately, this article seems as empty and uninteresting as the products
it's criticizing. The Guardian should ask idlewords to write one for them
instead.

~~~
arca_vorago
I'm not surprised since the day I got into an argument with the guardians
senior tech editor and he tried to argue Foss didn't matter and Linux was a
fanboy fad...

The senior editor...

~~~
acdha
If you're a software developer that's certainly a valid gripe but what if
you're part of the 99.999% of people who use computers but don't run servers?
Linux doesn't run your desktop or iOS devices and if Google swapped the kernel
on Android the users wouldn't notice.

~~~
hawski
It might be true in case of the Linux kernel, but I think that most software
that one is using is made of many many FOSS libraries. Imagine that all
libraries and compilers are either from the OS vendor or proprietary. We would
see much less software. People may not run servers, but they are surely using
the software running on them - same thing applies. Android has much more FOSS
than only kernel, and I'm not talking about AOSP.

Chrome, Safari, OS X, Firefox are standing upon millions of lines of open
source code.

Now FOSS is at least a crankshaft of software world. Even if that would be all
there is to it, you couldn't say that it doesn't matter.

------
jaimebuelta
The main point of this article is mostly misguided, IMO. The real one is that
you don't know which tech innovation will have a great impact before hand.

Most of the things that has big impacts are actually things we skip through.
For example, we have a pretty decent camera in our pockets at all times. We
take pictures constantly. The "selfie" revolution, one that has big impacts in
how we perceive ourselves and want other to perceive us is enabled by having
an small quality camera around. At some point passing from "terrible quality"
to "good enough quality" made a jump in that. Sure, not everyone takes
selfies. But it has been a big change in photography in the last 10 years or
so. So big we have a new name for something it exist before.

I'm pretty sure that being able to track a run and share it on social networks
is a big motivator to do exercise, for example.

I seems weird to me talking to AI, and even weirder that "the future" is
calling to a shop with an AI instead of using some sort of web
shop/app/whatever to get an appointment.

But who knows...

~~~
redial
Most revolutions have been silent revolutions. The only one that was an
instant world event was the iPhone launch. All the technologies named in the
article; Wifi, Google Search, Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube and Wikipedia
were not introduced to millions of people at once in a Silicon Valley event.
AI will change the world, but it'll be slow, like how the internet changed the
world little by little replacing retail, letters, phone calls, and now maybe
40 years later, TV. AI is a process revolution, not a product revolution. So
he's right, big tech products have been mostly useless, specially compared to
their promises.

------
deweller
My takeaway: Many technological innovations don't turn out to be world-
changing events. And those that do take several years to trickle down to
mainstream usage.

For those of us that keep a skeptical mindset when evaluating new technology,
none of this comes as a surprise.

------
redleggedfrog
Let's remember this, from the last few years, written by numerous major media
editorial pages (paraphrasing, of course): "Silicon Valley never tackles the
big issues. They just invent frivolous new gadgets which no on really needs,
or some new app that shares pictures of cute kittens or is the next social
network. They should focus on big picture issues - hunger, housing, crime,
etc."

Those are harder to approach and solve, and you need more patience for
results. Now we see complaining that the nifty gadgets aren't coming like they
used to. Hmm.

~~~
philipov
Hunger, crime, these are not technological issues solvable by tech companies,
unless your idea of a solution involves building a more effective police
state. These are political issues our leadership has neither the will nor
incentive to solve.

For example, Housing isn't a problem, it's an investment opportunity. The
people donating to your campaign wouldn't like it if their investments were
pushed down in value.

An app can't fix your economy being dominated by bad actors.

~~~
galieos_ghost
hunger- Has been mostly solved thanks to GMO increasing crop yields.

crime- Is strongly correlated with poverty, which has been rapidly reduced
globally thanks to technological innovation

Housing- Will be solved by tech making remote work viable and thus reducing
demand in cities. Automation and some form of income stipend could also allow
people to live in more affordable places rather than cities.

Your view of "tech" is pretty stunted if you only think web apps.

~~~
mcphage
> Will be solved by tech making remote work viable and thus reducing demand in
> cities

Remote work _is_ viable, and yet the major tech companies are focused on
hiring developers in a small number of overcrowded cities (or moving
developers that it hires into those cities). I expect no solution to housing
_or_ remote work from them.

~~~
amarkov
Isn't that exactly why we _should_ expect a solution from them? Google knows
first-hand why some leaders are opposed to remote work, and stands to make a
lot of money if they can overcome it.

~~~
mcphage
They haven’t shown any interest in doing so; if they are going to, I’d first
expect some indications from them that they see it _as_ a problem.

------
bertil
Wait, is that article simply ignoring that self-driving car are now
commercially available in Phoenix? That’s probably a bigger revolution than
the steam engine, and someone’s take on this is “That’s it?”

Let’s ignore the shattering impact of incredibly convenient video streaming,
content filtering via image tagging, electric cars, transportation or food on
demand, having contactless payment available to anyone for pennies…

MTurk pays offensively little, sure, but thanks to ‘Silicon Valley’ anyone can
work now, no matter how much discrimination or how remote they are — and buy
groceries with it. If the accusation is “building”, Amazon built it. If you
want it to be more lucrative, you can either legally enforce minimum wage, or
start tasks that pay more.

Shelter, like food, is a problem we solved a while ago, as long as you can
afford it: inequality is a problem, but you can’t blame AirBnB, SpareRoom and
countless others for allowing people to find others with a lifestyle, a
schedule that fit them so that they can save on rent. Let’s not talk about how
internet empowered people to compare mortgages.

Crime: Well, yes, Silicon Valley has done a lot for Law enforcement, but
expectedly and Thank God, not as a B2C business model.

I’m honestly more confused arguing that article than I would argue with a
flat-earther. At least a flat-earther is probably right when they say that you
have not personally checked yourself for what you claim.

~~~
redial
> Wait, is that article simply ignoring that self-driving car are now
> commercially available in Phoenix? That’s probably a bigger revolution than
> the steam engine, and someone’s take on this is “That’s it?

Are you being ironic? The steam engine literally reshaped the world. I think
you express exactly what the author is talking about: Acting as if just by
announcing it, it has already succeeded.

~~~
amarkov
But imagine someone sitting there in 1804 Wales, looking at the first steam
train, saying "slow down buddy you haven't actually changed anything yet". It
seems like there's a sense in which this is short-sighted.

~~~
redial
Of course is short sighted, but those are not the only two options. You _can_
think the idea will change the world without drinking the cool-aid that it
already has.

------
kerrsclyde
With constant innovation the temptation to jump to the next new thing is
great. This mitigates the value you gain by using something regularly and
consistently over a long term period.

I've used Evernote since 2012 - when I started it really wasn't that useful.
But now, after over 6 years of using it daily, I have a huge body of content
personal to me which I find tremendously useful. This only came about because
I didn't jump to the next shiny alternative.

------
jannes
I predict that AI has 5-10 more years of "mostly useless" ahead until it
suddenly becomes interesting.

Another thing he criticised was the Internet of Things and other gadgets: I
agree with the author on that one. I hope it dies a quick death. If there's a
tradeoff between an internet-connected device that lasts 1-2 years and a not-
connected device lasting 20 years, I would always chose the longer-lasting
one.

~~~
Larrikin
The crowd on here seems to have a valid complaint against the IoTs while being
very short sighted on what actually can be done.

Currently most companies want to be Facebook or Google and collect all the
data they possibly can while putting out a mediocre/bad product with no
security that only works when there is an internet. No consumer actually wants
this.

Instead of killing the industry, we need a new generation of companies that
put out products that function the same or ideally better than their analog
competitors. Data collection, such as usage information, and internet
connectivity will be what sets these products apart from their traditional
competitors. However, the emphasis should be on sending that data to the owner
of the product, instead of sending it to the cloud for the companies benefit.
Optimizing energy usage, learning usage patterns, etc will be great
differentiators. My products working together will be an even bigger
differentiator

Aggregation of that data can be useful, and could be opt in. I'd love to know
that I seem to use way more energy than other people around me. Perhaps I have
a bad AC, or my insulation is particularly bad.

The biggest issue right now is that companies are putting out insecure
products that are completely broken if the parent company of the product are
left out of the loop. The products need to work locally, with no reliance on
the parent company, and only rely on a company server for true enhancements
that can not be calculated locally.

~~~
jannes
You are describing the ideal. But for some reason all that companies can come
up with are closed "ecosystems" where systems work well with each other as
long as you buy everything from the same manufacturer. Interoperability and
open standards seem to be in no companies' interest. Where is that new
generation of companies going to come from?

------
beat
The problem is a lot of these world-changing technologies seem inevitable only
in hindsight. Read decades of science fiction before the '90s, and _nobody_
predicted the idea of everyone carrying a personal phone with them at all
times. Much less connecting it to a global data network.

These things always look inevitable in hindsight. But it takes some real
cleverness to get them in foresight.

~~~
redial
When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a
huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and
rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly,
irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony
we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face,
despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments
through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared
with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest
pocket.

\- Nikola Tesla, 1926.

[https://kottke.org/18/04/nikola-tesla-predicted-the-
smartpho...](https://kottke.org/18/04/nikola-tesla-predicted-the-smartphone-
in-1926)

~~~
zerostar07
to be fair that was not science fiction

------
Noos
I don't know about this. I think they can be useless, useful, and terrifying
all at the same time. I walked into my local petco one day and saw these:

[https://www.glofish.com](https://www.glofish.com)

Useless, all that technology expressing itself in making glowing fish. The
tech behind it however is incredibly useful. But wow, the existential dread
watching them swim around under a black light was considerable.

Or on the other shelves, looking and seeing dog or cat "calming collars" that
use pheromones tailored specifically for individual species. I mean, its funny
at how useless and useful it is at the same time. Is your dog a worrywart? Use
pheromones to make him stress free! But you wonder some day if some bright
tech baron will start to make human calming collars, or bracelets, or what
have you...

Maybe not big tech per se, but the writer of this article might have a failure
of imagination if they only see the uselessness.

------
swalsh
This is dense, I think there are a few threads of reason though. The
exaggeration in marketing common in tech is quite tumultuous. The AI behind
duplex is a staggering technical achievement, and really is a small whistle at
how AI is going to start to change some fundamental aspects of society. To say
AI is not going to be a fundamental change to our literal society in the very
near future is naive. But I can understand how the trivialness of the use case
is playing down the real achievement here.

I do think though that AI is the last "fundamental" change information
technologies will bring though. From here out, the future is in the
convergence of other hard sciences with advanced IT. Each "Big thing" has been
a fundamental building block. By themselves small, but they get significant as
they combine.

~~~
new299
What is the real technical achievement behind Duplex? What we've seen is a
rather short tech demo.

Speech synthesis has improved, but are you saying that Duplex is a massive
step forward in speech recognition and natural language processing too?

~~~
beisner
It’s a major payoff of a lot of small research advances made by Google over
the last few years. In and of itself it’s not a terribly groundbreaking
_research_ result, but a bunch of parallel AI, NLP, and systems research had
to go into this to take it from toy experience to what will eventually be a
robust service. This is the promise of AI in the 2020s: incremental services
that chip away at various low-cognition but high-variance/pattern-based tasks
that litter our home and professional lives.

------
markatkinson
I feel like more than half the earths population already talks in 'preordained
cliches'.

------
tim333
He cites social media as "These things have changed the world" and rubbishes
Google Duplex. But back when they started Twitter and the like seemed a bit of
a joke but increased in scope. And AI like Duplex will do so too. The fact
that AI is a bit rubbish in some ways just now doesn't mean it won't change
the world shortly.

------
013a
This is only one small part of the article, but: I think the revolution in
Duplex isn't about letting customers use it to schedule appointments and
stuff. I think its much more significant from the perspective of using it as a
way to improve Google's data for themselves. They mentioned they're going to
use it soon to improve the accuracy of their business open/close times.
Imagine other applications; asking businesses how busy it is right now,
confirming road closures with municipal governments, etc.

Also imagine it opened up on Google Cloud, in a product similar to AWS
Connect.

Finally, imagine this: They've always had a huge amount of data for human
voices to train their AI models. Here's one more; being able to call anyone on
the planet and get them talking in a way that is natural, then using the data
on the other end of the phone to further train the accuracy of the voices they
use. Kind of like ReCaptcha, but for voices.

~~~
zrobotics
Great, so Google can get even more data. Huzzah!? Why is that a good thing,
and what benefit does it provide to consumers? The only thing you mentioned
that has even marginal benefit to the public is better search data, and I get
less and less convinced that this will happen. I may be an outlier, but I have
found Google search less useful in the past year, unless I go through steps to
avoid personalization. Rather than search the part # that I requested, it just
thinks I want to go to digikey.

And dear God, spam calls are already bad enough, why do we want to make them
even more realistic? I fail to see even one application where I would prefer
to talk to a more realistic robot.

------
lmm
The big picture innovations take longer and arrive slower, but the small,
life-enhancing improvements deliver so smoothly and consistently that you
don't notice until they're taken away. It's only when you have to use a
5-year-old phone or application that you realise how much worse things were
back then.

~~~
mrob
I use a 6 year old phone. It has a third party extra thick battery and a
microSD card slot. It does the core functions of a phone just as well as a
modern one (voice call, SMS, clock, calculator, flashlight, music player). The
camera is worse, but if I cared about quality I'd use a standalone camera. As
for apps/Internet, it's roughly the same as modern phones: a whole lot of
barely usable garbage only suitable for emergency use when you don't have
access to a desktop. It seems to me that any modern phone would be a
downgrade.

~~~
Drakim
I saw a funny cloud today, I took a picture of it. I usually don't carry an
extra standalone camera with me all day just for moments like that.

I can also google up information about light-bulbs when I'm standing at the
store wondering if I should get X or Y. Or if some product doesn't specify if
it's gluten free or not and the ingredients look a little iffy.

There are plenty of tiny improvements. It doesn't revolutionize my life, but
having my old Nokia would definitely be a downgrade.

~~~
olavgg
A 6 year old phone is still capable of doing that I think Samsung Galaxy was
at version 3 or 4 around 2012, Nokia was big before 2007, 11 years ago.

~~~
Drakim
If the case being made is just that we don't need the absolutely latest
smartphone, I'm totally onboard.

But there is also a lot of offhand grumpiness about how we don't need all this
technology, which I disagree with. Technology improves our lives, but it's not
always apparent right away.

------
jeffreyrogers
Regardless of whether big tech is doing anything useful it's obvious that we
have fewer important innovations now than in the period around the late 19th,
early 20th century when we got: electricity, electric motors, dynamite,
phones, cars, concrete, planes, tractors, radio, plastic, assembly lines and
modern forms of business organization. If we go a little further into the 20th
century we get nuclear power and the transistor.

I don't think we'll see another time period like that. But that's not really a
bad thing. You can only discover really important things once and then they
eventually become part of everyday life. A more interesting question is how to
sustain our standard of living when we can no longer expect high economic
growth from new innovations.

------
squarefoot
To me many products are just the result of management asking engineers to
apply the company IP to make something that can be sold. The market is
saturated in every niche with a huge load of products compared to the number
of potential buyers, so they have to act creatively in the hope one day they
make a killer gimmick. Example: if IoT and AI are the new words, then
everything must be connected and/or exhibit human-like intelligence, at the
risk of developing junk product with no actual usefulness, like shoes asking
politely the user if they can twit in real time how much his feet stink after
a long walk. But again that is rather the result of management looking for
money in every possible way than brilliant minds attempting to solve vital
problems.

------
bmans94
My problem with the innovations mentioned in the article lie mainly in the
‘predictive text’ emails from the google presentation. Such a small, minutely
helpful feature, and yet like the author mentions could lead to an even more
technologically led “groupthink” society, where machines determine our current
cliches, which no one will break from. Anyways, I get that big innovations
really come as several small innovations, but who out there is imagining the
future of this technology, as some were imagining the smartphone or tablet a
decade before it’s advent? I have yet to read anything by anyone who has a
vision for the next big AI innovation, no matter how moonshot-y

------
imgabe
_And even if you can easily think of a scenario, would there not be something
ethically questionable about doing so, if the person at the other end had no
idea who or what they were talking to?_

Generally I consider something ethically questionable when a person is harmed
in some way. Can someone explain how a receptionist might be harmed by
unknowingly booking an appointment with a robot instead of a person? The real
person shows up. The business gets an appointment. The receptionist does their
job. Where does the ethical question come in?

~~~
Hydraulix989
Deception is a form of harm.

~~~
imgabe
So children are harmed by believing in Santa Claus? If you politely tell
someone you enjoyed their cooking even if it wasn't to your taste, you've
harmed them?

Context matters. Deception, in and of itself, is not inherently harmful.

It makes literally 0 difference in the life of the person booking the
appointment if it's a robot or a human telling them the desired time and date.

------
nmeofthestate
>might Duplex be a grim portal into a future in which high-flyers get digital
“assistants” to do their chores

High flyers = people that own an Android phone and get haircuts.

------
QueensGambit
Its a good thing and that's how i should be. Startups have 1% chance of
success and probably less when it reaches IPO. If big tech with deep pockets
have far better shot (say 50%), then the level playing field would slip
further and further away from startups. Innovation would stop and we will go
back to the era of Microsoft/Oracle killing companies like Netscape.

------
gymshoes
Tech inspires science fiction and science fiction inspires tech.

Although we won't ever have a time machine that travels backwards in time,
there are a lot of commonplace things that were once science fiction.

------
triviatise
Self driving cars

Tesla electric cars and electric car infrastructure

The sharing economy where we rent instead of buy things hopefully will stop or
at least slow our rabid consumption

These are huge changes in the way we will live our lives.

------
M_Bakhtiari
>I thought about a vision of the near future in which half the human race will
converse in preordained cliches.

Maybe that's how the "Darmok and Jalad" language came about.

------
ape4
Duplex has the possibility of being huge. Think of how many boring /
transactional phone calls are made each day.

------
fortythirteen
> Every now and again, at some huge auditorium, a senior staff member at one
> of the big firms based in northern California – _ordinarily a man_...

Absolutely irrelevant to the topic. I already ignore the hype, but I think
I'll also ignore this author's hyperbole.

------
IshKebab
This is just pointless pessimistic ranting.

------
barry-cotter
It’s a journalist with an opinion on something he has no expertise in. I
recommend not reading it. He doesn’t understand that the toy apps that are
barely usable by enthusiasts today improve rapidly until using them is mundane
and normal. There’s a pg essay on how the best startups are the ones where
people think it’s a toy or a feature that’s relevant.

Don’t read the article.

~~~
travis_brooks
I agree! Hy Brasil is not sinking, ignore the panic mongers, there are others
with more experience in these matters than you...
[https://youtu.be/qJh6EQ5gv7g](https://youtu.be/qJh6EQ5gv7g)

~~~
barry-cotter
For anyone else who didn’t get the reference that was sarcasm.

[http://www.subzin.com/quotes/M106664b34/Erik+the+Viking/Hy-B...](http://www.subzin.com/quotes/M106664b34/Erik+the+Viking/Hy-
Brasil+is+not+sinking).

On a non-sarcastic note the toy that’s barely usable by hobbyists is the early
adopter segment, after the innovators. There’s a reasonable explanation at
businessdictionary.

[http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/early-
adopters....](http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/early-
adopters.html)

