
A little Duplex scepticism - bryanrasmussen
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/11/duplex-skepticism
======
jlebar
Wow, this is a lot of FUD, even for Gruber.

Google does demo plenty of stuff at I/O that isn't available Today. In fact
that might be almost everything shown at I/O.

But utter fraud [0], as he suggests here? Is there any precedent for Google
doing such a thing on this scale? That seems absurd and, in a company of this
size and openness, likely to backfire.

Maybe Gruber doesn't believe anything he wrote and is actually trying to get
Googlers to email him in defense of the tech and reveal confidential details
of how it works. I don't have any reason to believe this, just asking the
question...

[0] I mean, the article is written such that the author could backtrack are
any point and say "that's not what I meant, I was just asking the question".
But hopefully we can get beyond that facade.

~~~
Marazan
It's classic Gruber. He wants you to definitely come away with the impression
that this is a total fraud but he also wants complete deniability that he
called it a fraud.

~~~
eksemplar
I don’t know if this is classic Gruber. I’ve read a lot of his stuff and it’s
always been interesting. Now I haven’t followed him closely either, so maybe
I’ve only seen the good stuff, but this is the first time I’ve come away from
it thinking he was an idiot.

~~~
neya
If you've been following the Markdown debacle closely[1], this is classic
Gruber.

[1] [https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-
commo...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-
markdown/)

------
lispm
There are basically two hard parts in such interactions - given that one
participant is a machine and the person involved does not know that the other
part is a machine: understanding the human when he/she thinks to be talking to
another human. The second problem is actually understanding a conversation -
not just single sentence commands. Much easier: generating sentences and
having them spoken with a natural sounding voice.

So, what does it do and how well does it perform? The demo does not really
tell. We had such dialogs in research literature 30 years ago, but they were
carefully crafted and very domain specific ('ordering a hotel room' via
natural language for example).

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-
natur...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural-
conversation.html)

> One of the key research insights was to constrain Duplex to closed domains,
> which are narrow enough to explore extensively. Duplex can only carry out
> natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains. It cannot
> carry out general conversations.

------
neya
Can somebody help me understand why Gruber's opinions even matter, in
particular, this piece? There's absolutely zero information in this article,
zero citations to backup his claims other than good 'ole FUD. I don't think
these articles belong on HN. Somebody, please correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
baxtr
Asking smart questions is a good way to start a discussion. The reaction to
his questions here are quite emotional. Why so? If they're irrelevant anyways,
why not stay cool about it? I find his questions interesting. Why didn't they
demo it why Sundar on the other end of the line for example? What's the name
of the shop owners? I can see why people pose these questions.

~~~
neya
I don't think accusing someone, a person in particular (Sundar Pichai in this
case), of fraud without any evidence whatsoever constitutes as asking smart
questions.

------
yupyup
A blogger criticizing the competitor of the company that puts food on his
table.

Just a thought, imagine how this article would be if the companies were
reversed. Would it be the same?

And that's how you recognize objectivity...

------
ballenf
There's almost no feasible way to do this demo live: Google had to get
permission of the participants to make and use the recording. California is a
two-party consent state for recording calls.

Beyond just recording you'd have to get publicity permission to broadcast such
a call to the world as marketing for your products.

If they got all this lined up in advance, they'd be accused of rigging the
demo anyway, so what's the point of taking the risk and gaining little. The
alternative would have been using a Google employee to play the part of the
business, but this too would have subjected them to accusations of rigging.

It's not like people are going to forget about the demo if it never
materializes. Google has a lot more to lose than gain from faking something
this high profile.

I can't think of a good explanation for him wording his misgivings with such
uncharitable language. I never had the feeling that he hated or resented
Google quite this much.

~~~
Angostura
> There's almost no feasible way to do this demo live: Google had to get
> permission of the participants to make and use the recording.

Apart from - "We'd like to call you next wednesday to demo some phone
technology - it'll just be a normal booking call, but it will be recorded and
go out live on stage. Is that OK?'

------
tzury
Remember Bill Gates Blue Screen Demo? [1] I think to play it safe, let alone
where AI is involved and you should expect the unexpected, recorded is "safer"
predictable than live.

I do however "believe" Google in a way that all their demos that I remember
turned out as real products working in real time, and in many cases, serving
1B+ users daily.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA)

------
danidiaz
Reminds me of "project Milo" from back in 2009
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIbGnBQcJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIbGnBQcJY)

------
kybernetikos
If I were to create a service like duplex, the first couple of years of the
service would be low paid humans. Everything would be recorded to create the
transcripts for the ai to learn from.

I would expect Google to work in a similar way.

------
TeMPOraL
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17053053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17053053)
was on the frontpage yesterday.

Speaking of which, 'dang et al., would it be hard to add a full ISO 8601
timestamp as a "title" attribute to the date permalink? I get that "1 day ago"
is more readable, but there are cases I'd love to know the actual date and
time something was posted.

~~~
yorwba
Submissions and comments now display a date when they have been posted
sufficiently long ago. E.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1)

The cutoff seems to be more than a few months, though.

------
Robin_Message
Why would Google do such a con? This technology is clearly plausible so it
doesn't really make sense.

I assume it was just fear of demo gremlins that made them use a recording.
Also, you could argue it is unethical to broadcast a phonecall with someone
live, and ruins the fun if you get permission in advance.

I assume they did it, then got permission afterwards, and Google being Google,
it didn't occur to them that people might want to talk to the callee.

------
tofflos
> Why not demo it live? Why only play recordings?

Because consent.

~~~
M4v3R
What they could've done is do another demo with a live call, not to a real
restaurant but to their employee on stage instead. The employee would respond
according to a script, but if Duplex reacted accordingly that would be a hell
of a demo.

------
Twisell
I will add this thread to the list of "the strangely flagged down because bad
buzz about Google".

You can say Gruber is wrong and argue about it. But flagging??? This is
totally bullshit.

------
kristiandupont
If it was live people would just be assuming that the person was reading a
script. I don’t see how they _could_ demo this without sceptics pointing out
the flaws.

------
baxtr
Why was this flagged?

------
throwaway84742
Even if Google cured cancer, Gruber would still find a way to complain.
According to him, tech is only flawless when it comes from Apple.

