
A closer look at Google Duplex - Ours90
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/27/a-closer-look-at-google-duplex/
======
Itsdijital
Guys, c'mon, Google didn't make Duplex so that it could revolutionize
restaurant reservations. Everyone here is getting so hung up on how there are
better/other/existing ways to book a table. Of course there are, but that's
clearly not the point of Duplex.

Reservations are just a convenient test bed for the underlying technology. And
the underlying tech is 100% the reason for Duplex. Not table booking. It's all
about training for AI - speech generation, conversation, language parsing.
Making a reservation is a quarter step up and long staircase google sees for
this tech.

~~~
notatoad
i don't know what end goal you think they're training for, but duplex feels
enough like an end goal to me. I know everybody likes to say everything google
does is all about training the AI, but they have to be training for something.

This is a "something". it's a concrete, monetizable, and useful application of
their AI work. making a reservation is the beginning of a sale. being able to
book a reservation at any arbitrary restaurant with no extra work on the
restaurantuer's part makes google ads more valuable. They can make money off
this quite directly.

~~~
giobox
> This is a "something". it's a concrete, monetizable, and useful application
> of their AI work... They can make money off this quite directly.

The interviews I've read point to an 80% success rate - hugely impressive, but
20% of interactions requiring human intervention is still a _very_ large,
expensive staff hungry contact center to run when you are Google scale, for a
product that ultimately doesn't really bring in any direct revenue. Each time
Duplex fails in its current form, a human operator has to step in to finish
the call.

Even Google are telling us not to expect this to ship in anything anytime
soon.

From Ron at Ars' demo:

“We’re actually quite a long way from launch, that’s the key thing to
understand,” Fox explained at the meeting. “This is super-early technology,
somewhere between technology demo and product.”

~~~
notatoad
My point wasn't to say it's a product _now_ , but rather that it is will be a
product if everything pans out. The supposition was that this is just another
way for Google to collect data, I believe that it's more of a way to use data
than a way to collect data.

------
golfer
The Ars Technica writeup is superior, IMHO:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-
cal...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-calling-we-
talk-to-the-revolutionary-but-limited-phone-ai/)

~~~
Omnus
It "feels revolutionary" to the author, but it is literally only capable of
handling the simplest restaurant and hair salon reservations (the kind of
thing you could do yourself in about 90 seconds). Seems like a silly headline,
although the details are interesting.

~~~
munificent
_> (the kind of thing you could do yourself in about 90 seconds)_

I can also walk over to my kitchen, stepping around the dogs and cats, and
pour a glass of milk in about 90 seconds too, but a robot that can reliably do
that would be pretty damn revolutionary.

Don't underestimate the insane quantity of wetware computation going on during
a short conversation.

~~~
Omnus
What on Earth are you talking about? The point was _not_ that anything humans
can do within 90 seconds is non-revolutionary when implemented in machines. An
artist can create something unique and beautiful in 90 seconds, and a
mathematician can explain a short yet difficult proof in 90 seconds. Those
things would absolutely be revolutionary if implemented in machines. Who cares
about the quantity of computation? As if that matters for how "revolutionary"
a software technology is.

It is entirely unclear to me that a bot that _might_ make _simple_
reservations at _small group_ of establishments that include _only_
restaurants and hair salons is in any way revolutionary. Even if it worked
100% of the time, who is making daily hair and restaurant reservations that
would benefit from the extra 90 seconds? It's silly the amount of hype this is
eliciting. You have a very strange definition of "revolutionary".

~~~
chrisoverzero
> […] who is making daily hair and restaurant reservations that would benefit
> from the extra 90 seconds?

The wealthy have had assistants since practically time immemorial, and no one
bats an eye at their "90 seconds". The promise of this tool is a
democratization of both the convenience and the normalcy.

------
jlebar
So is Gruber eating his hat yet?

[https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/11/duplex-
skeptici...](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/11/duplex-skepticism)
[https://twitter.com/gruber/status/995538518016487425](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/995538518016487425)

~~~
bitpush
Considering that he went out of his way to express his opinion (calling it a
"fraud" and "con"), it'd be funny if he sits this one out.

~~~
AlexCoventry
He didn't, though. He said the terms of the demo made it seem like one

~~~
tacomonstrous
He said he thought Pichai was lying:

>Pichai claims these two examples are actual phone calls to actual businesses.
I’m saying I don’t think that’s true.

I'm not sure what distinction you're making.

~~~
AlexCoventry
Ok, that's a firmer commitment than he made in the blog post.

------
dqv
> For instance, asked to “repeat the last four numbers,” it restates the phone
> number in its entirety. It’s not a flaw, exactly, but it does show a simple
> place where the system is pushed to its limitations with regard to the
> understanding of the the subtle nuances of human conversation.

I chuckled. From experience, it turns out some humans don't understand the
subtle nuances of human conversation either.

~~~
kevincox
It's not that I don't understand, but I am unable to say the last four digits
of my number without saying the whole thing (or at least saying the leading
digits in my head). This is just how my brain recalls it.

------
ragazzina
>“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.

~~~
Klathmon
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
_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
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.

~~~
reaperducer
_Name a search engine that 's better than Google_

I never stated that Google isn't the best search engine out there. I stated
that I hoped the natural language learning from Duplex would filter down to
the Google search engine.

But while we're on the topic, find a search query in which Google will return
a list of movie reviewers in the city of Chicago. It can't. It is so focused
on second-guessing search queries that it will only return lists of reviews of
the film _Chicago_.

I had this exact very frustrating experience once trying to find the name of a
woman I met who publishes a popular movie review blog in Chicago. There's even
a "guild" of sorts of movie reviewers in Chicago, but Google could only
surface that as high as the 10th page of results.

I know I'm not the only person frustrated with Google's desire to second-guess
my searches because I heard a comedian on the radio last week who did a bit
that lasted five whole minutes on Google second-guessing searches.

~~~
pavs
I feel that we have such a high standard for google search result quality that
we can get frustrated by such highly specific search result edge cases. Google
search is not perfect, but its the best search engine out there by a long
margin for almost 20 years.

There will be a subset of users who will bemoan user privacy but expect highly
specific personally tailored quality search result. You can't have both and
there will always be edge cases in such a difficult domain. The fact that so
many industry heavyweights can't compete with Google in search result quality,
says a lot about how good Google is. Does it has problems? Yes, no one is
denying it.

~~~
reaperducer
_we can get frustrated by such highly specific search result edge cases_

Every case is an edge case.

"Edge case" has become the tech industry's excuse for everything.

~~~
what_ever
Every case is not an edge case. You can't be serious if you call of the
following queries as edge cases -

1\. Chicago

2\. Chicago movie

3\. Chicago movie review

4\. Movies in Chicago

5\. Movie reviewers

6\. Movie reviewers in Chicago

7\. List of movie reviewers in Chicago.

If you still feel so, you may be talking about edge case in non-technical
sense.

Disc: Googler but nowhere close to search or duplex.

~~~
reaperducer
_1\. Chicago_

But with Google, there is no pure search for "Chicago."

There is only a search for "Chicago" by someone at a particular location with
a particular device using a particular browser with a particular search
history with a particular number of other parameters that Google's pieced
together that we don't even know about.

So, I'll be more specific: Every Google search is an edge case. Google spends
billions making sure no two searches return identical results.

------
cecja
Don't get me wrong I like the tech but I don't get the sentiment. It is just a
gimmick or a bridge technology. In the end our phones should be able to talk
to the booking system and make the reservation without human interaction. I
think the resources could be better allocated, I guess it's just a show and
tell kinda project for google but the novelty wears of really fast after the
first wrong reservation.

~~~
51Cards
Your comment misses the critical point though... this hits all the places that
have no electronic booking systems. To those here that concept probably seems
absurd because we're technically oriented. My barber, doctor, mechanic and
favorite BBQ joint however still take phone calls to make appointments and you
can talk to them about electronic scheduling till you're blue in the face,
they have no desire to change. The goal of this technology is to bridge the
gap... start thinking machine to human interaction where machine to machine
isn't available.

Not to mention the language barriers. Think of a person still struggling with
a language needing to make an appointment in that language. I can see an
interface on this where you would select the location and time and have
Assistant call them in the appropriate language to handle the exchange for
you. No longer is that local pasta place out of my reach when I'm in Italy but
can't speak Italian. This opens up a huge realm of possibilities.

~~~
scarface74
_this hits all the places that have no electronic booking systems. To those
here that concept probably seems absurd because we 're technically oriented.
My barber, doctor, mechanic and favorite BBQ joint however still take phone
calls to make appointments and you can talk to them about electronic
scheduling till you're blue in the face, they have no desire to change. _

Sure they will change, my barber uses stripe, my doctor does everything else
on computer - he's over 60 and three weeks away from retirement, my mechanic
has to be technical to operate on modern cars and uses computers for
estimates, sending pictures to insurance agents, etc.

~~~
51Cards
At what point in our industry have we ever said "Let's stop innovating and
making things easier, we've come far enough, now the people have to adapt to
us." Natural language processing and conversation is the next step right
now... to me this is such a logical progression I'll be shocked if it's not
being planned by many teams.

~~~
scarface74
Natural language processing has been "the next step" since the 60s. How often
have you called in to a customer service center and as soon as you knew you
were talking to an automated system just yelled "operator" until you got a
human?

The minute a busy waitstaff person knows they are talking to a computer they
are just going to hang up.

A voice assistant on one side talking to an API on the other side can be close
to perfect -- even Apple can get that right with Siri for the intents that it
supports especially since you know you're talking to a computer. But going the
other way -- not so much.

------
Animats
_Google says that, in testing, the system has also gotten tripped up
encountering another machine by way of a phone tree. Listening closely because
our menu options have changed doesn’t appear to compute just yet._

An assistant which deals with a response tree, handles hold time, and gets to
the point where there's a human at the other end and they've been given
whatever numbers and addresses are appropriate would be useful. Before the
humans talk, the automated assistants on both sides should have all the
routine stuff out of the way.

~~~
froindt
> Before the humans talk, the automated assistants on both sides should have
> all the routine stuff out of the way.

Imagine if there wasn't _quite_ enough security built into all of this.

Store-bot: To confirm identity, what is users full name?

Phone-tree-bot: Thomas Arnold Pellington

Store-bot: What is Thomas Arnold Pellington's address?

Phone-tree-bot: 186 North 15th Street Minneapolis, Minnesota

Store-bot: What is Thomas Arnold Pellington's Social Security Number?

Phone-tree-bot: 183-44-5975

Now what if Phone-tree-bot called the wrong store number?

I remember a case awhile back where someone changed the phone number to the
FBI or CIA was changed on Google Maps. IIRC, they forwarded the calls to the
correct number, but could have just as easily intercepted the communications.
A human has a chance of noticing that "the person on the other end is asking
some weird questions that make me feel uneasy, maybe I should hang up".
Hopefully bots could develop the same ability? Having a centralized source of
phone trees for all the cable, cell phone, and service providers would
certainly help.

~~~
sangnoir
> Imagine if there wasn't quite enough security built into all of this.

Fortunately, it seems that security was a consideration. From the Ars Technica
article: _At one point, the callers ' email was asked for and Duplex responded
with "I'm afraid I don't have permission to share my client's email."_

------
skywhopper
"Thep Thai’s owner insists that such a service would be something of a godsend
for the 100-plus reservations the restaurant fields on a daily basis."

I'm a little confused by this and it never seems to be explained. How does
this system make the restaurant's job easier?

~~~
strictnein
Two possibilities:

1\. She wants it to answer the calls

2\. The average person, when told "6pm on Tuesday is not available" probably
either spends a bunch of time on the phone looking for another open spot on
their calendar, or just calls back later.

~~~
geekamongus
Third possibility: Google is pushing this narrative because Step Two of their
Duplex scheme is to automate the receiving end as well. No need for any human
interaction that way.

~~~
scarface74
So two standard APIs talking to each other or the person calling to make the
reservation knows they are talking to a computer with limited domain
understanding and speaks accordingly and the backend calls an API -- like
programming an Alexa skill....

------
TimMurnaghan
What about the question of no-shows? If your assistant can make bookings
easily - you can make a load and then choose where you actually go later.
That's actually one reason why restaurants like phone booking - because if
you've had the human interaction of talking you're less likely to not show up.
The likely upshot is that the industry will have to move to paying for
bookings.

------
rukittenme
Off topic: to all the UI/UX designers out there, I instinctively click all
prominent "X" symbols on a page before trying to determine what they mean.
Every time I visit tech crunch I end up clicking the X and then hitting the
back button to bring the article back up. A "Done" button would be better.
Non-modal article content would be best...

------
imh
> While the disclosures weren’t there in the earliest stage, the company has
> said since the beginning that it intended to add them.

> In my test call, I attempt to get Google Assistant to repeat that bit — it’s
> easy enough to not hear that opening line, particularly when you’ve got the
> phone up to your ear inside a crowded restaurant. But the AI just barrels on
> with the reservation. If you miss the disclosure, you’re out of luck — for
> now, at least. At present, the only way to opt out of being recorded is to
> just hang up the phone — not the best way to get repeat visitors.

This part makes me deeply uncomfortable. Opting out of being recorded likely
means being fired for not taking its reservations. Consent feels weirdly
coercive. For a tiny improvement in someone else's convenience, we may end up
inching even closer to everything being recorded.

------
headsoup
I get the idea of wanting to provide voiced communications for those that it
may be difficult for (or for translation), but I still cannot rationalise why
it needs to sound 'just like a real person.'

Would the initiator feel silly if a service called for them and sounded
robotic, rather than like a friend?

Why does it need to distinctly act human? I cannot see the specific
requirement for this imitation, other than it's cool/creepy. Or it's just tech
marching on to deliver sci-fi dreams.

------
turdnagel
I believe some of the questions around Duplex were not whether or not the
recordings were "real," but whether or not they were edited. The article was
not clear on this...

~~~
ehsankia
From my understanding reading the article, the journalist that were they each
got to try out the system themselves. While they don't provide exact audio, I
assume they would've pointed out if what they experienced was wildly
different. Their description of the conversation sounds a lot like what we had
heard.

------
microcolonel
I think the refinement of saying "this is the google assistant" at the
beginning is positive. Seems to solve the supposed ethical issues of the
previous iteration.

------
asafira
There are a lot of vehement responses here --- with such strong naysayers,
maybe they (Google) are setting themselves up for something that really pushes
the boundary of what's possible and people are actually quite excited. =)

I'm personally just excited to see where this goes. Either it will never live
up to expectations (i.e., good enough for people to reliably use), it will
take far longer than everyone things, or we'll see it soon!

------
dillondoyle
Interesting 'the next round will find Assistant inquiring about business
hours.'

Probably a really valuable addition to Google Search Results, if they can use
phones to verify open hours of businesses without having to pay people to make
the calls (and without annoyance of older tech IVRs).

Google search and maps in particular are so great because of all these sources
of data that come together to give me actionable info.

------
Mikho
Clever for Google to offer a tool to collect even more data about users and
businesses. The Duplex is a golden trove to get data about orders and context
-- the part that Google missed when people order just over a phone. Now Google
could be all over the conversation and collect every bit of business activity
and user data.

------
youkick
Ethics aside, Duplex was built to overcome one key constraint: Restaurants are
technology laggards.

Yes, booking a reservation with few taps IS easier/more accurate, etc, but
that requires restaurants to pay/integrate with those systems.

With Duplex, you can schedule a reservation at ~100% of restaurants, right
now, for free.

------
codeisawesome
Even the Google AI finds it frustrating to deal with automated IVR according
to this article. That concept needs to get an award for one of the most awful
UX to ever exist - to say nothing about its (mis)use in phone numbers that
could field emergencies.

------
finolex1
I'm curious how Google envisions the future of this technology. Will it be
limited to specific, Google defined use cases such as making reservations, or
will it be a versatile platform allowing developers to create various agents,
much like Dialogflow?

------
jasonjei
I wonder how Duplex would work if it rings a line powered by Duplex (for
example, a business uses Duplex to schedule bookings). Would it just talk to
the backend, or would Duplex talk to the receiving Duplex in the normal
scheduling chat dance?

------
arbie
"The wait time at REQUESTED_RESTAURANT could be longer than usual, would you
want to try GOOGLE_DUPLEX_PARTNER, instead? I already have a tentative booking
on hold."

------
jacobsenscott
The article says "Eight percent is pretty good.." Actually, 80% success is
unusable. I expect that is fairly close the the ceiling. If they really do
roll this out (spoiler, they won't) google will need an army of humans to
handle the other 20%. I guess I don't mind google paying a human to be my
personal assistant, but I don't know if google will like it.

I hope the human assistants are not randomly selected, but weighted to select
the same human you've used before. This will give the illusion that you really
have your own personal assistant.

------
dmitriid
> Duplex represents a rare early look into an ongoing project from a company
> notorious for playing it close to the vest.

Wat. Google is notorious for announcing dozens of projects only to
cancel/downplay them a year, a year and a half later.

Their I/O keynotes are usually replete with "awesome product, will be released
some undefined time in the future" (many of those never materialise, or take
on new forms).

~~~
bitpush
2 ways to look at this, although I assume you know both these already.

1\. Experimentation is key, and a willingness to accept mistakes and move on.
If all a company does is play to its strength, you'd miss disruptive
technologies. Some of these experiments work, some dont.

2\. Pursuing an idea without a viable business opportunity is suicide. The
idea might be "cool" and "well received" but if it cant sustain in the long-
run, it doesn't serve anyone.

------
lowlevel
Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done. Google
needs some non-engineers.

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

