Google I/O'18: Keynote Livestream [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
This is as close of a demo of technology passing the Turing test as I have ever seen. Sure, it's not a fully free form conversation on any subject, but incredibly impressive nevertheless.
Oh yes, and the voice synthesis is just simply amazing. I don't think I'd be able to tell that I was talking to a bot either.
So far, it's been the most impressive Google I/O keynote that I've ever seen and it's not over yet.
I'm actually quite surprised it asked for the wait time afterwards, I'm not sure I'd remember do such a thing.
here are some more examples
Assistant, "Okay, I need you to roll initiative. What did you get?"
Me: "27."
Assistant, "Umm... You're a first level Barbarian. How did you roll 27 on Initiative?"
Me: "I mean 17."
Assistant, "Uh huh."
- Google will write your emails for you so you don't have to. Is this Gmail user writing me an email or is Google? I no longer know.
- Google Assistant can now impose Google's parenting values on your kids by making them say please. Combine with the mandatory Chromebooks in my school district for full-on indoctrination from childhood.
I am so uncomfortable with this. All the people cheering for it is even worse.
EDIT: HOLY CRUD, they're unleashing their AI to call and harass people on the phone.
Some people use Gmail auto-replies more > Other people therefore receive emails in the style of these auto-replies > These other people then start manually sending emails according to this style > More people then become happier using auto-reply (since it produces replies in a style they've come to expect)
In this way, an auto-reply feature, even if used by only a subset of the population would start to move language trends.
Maybe there's nothing wrong with this, I don't know. But there is a feedback loop there, which means there's a blurrier line than we'd like between "this AI algorithm does what I'd expect" to "my expectations have become shaped by AI algorithms."
But right now, people being called have an expectation of talking to a person, and this shifts that expectation without the business opting-in to the change.
That's going to be frustrating to some businesses, and there may well be legal issues in some areas.
The reason people don't like phone trees is not because they are robots. Rather, because they often make it difficult to get the help you need or reach the right department. If a live human read the script of a phone tree to you it would be equally (more?) infuriating.
If I called a companies number and got a conversational bot masquerading as a person instead of a phone tree, that would be a dramatic improvement.
That may be a trivial case, but more generally our social contract is that we owe a duty of politeness and consideration to fellow humans. When you're interacting with another human, a big part of your brain is actively engaged in following social norms. By masquerading as human, machines co-opt this part of your brain and extract a duty that they don't deserve.
I think every machine caller should be required to identify itself as such. Restaurants will still be happy to take reservations from them. If one calls me to sell me something, I can tell it where to go without any guilt.
Voice will make this a LOT worse, not better.
I'm sure that people seeing a hypothetical AT&T I/O 1980 would think that automated telephone attendants were the end to human communication, commercial internet would ruin good letter writing and therefore society, and fax machines would be used as another form of government control. Imaginary dystopian futures never happen, but people keep imagining new ones.
Sometimes, not. When HR departments are recruiting, they avoid talking to agencies, with language like "principals only".
I wonder which one the robo-call laws are trying to cover, if not both. Google's certainly doing both, what's new is that the receiver is being misled about (2) and possibly even (1).
Duplex calls do not appear to be pre-recorded. It's unclear whether those regulating pre-recorded calls would have treated interactive automated transactional calls the same had they anticipated them, so I don't think it makes sense to blindly treat them as equivalent without new legislation.
Whether they should, on the merits, be regulated, and if so whether with the same or a different model, is perhaps an interesting debate.
I need an Alan Watts voiced Google assistant / Siri.
One example that comes to mind is "Hey, you've used social media X times today. Here are some websites you may like that would increase your attention span."
Ughh.. I really hate this - why does Google put videos like this behind sign-in walls? Now I gotta go find my g-apps sign-in info, and rmember to purge it from my browser when I'm done again. GRRRR
Auto-complete is hardly "avoiding human contact", is it?
Regardless, these features are all optional - if you feel as though you're avoiding human interaction by using auto-complete, why not just... not use it?
It is. It removes the color and nuance from typed communication. There's a lot of metadata in typos.
Oh puh-lease. Are you seriously trying to argue that TYPOS are the anchor upon which genuine human interaction hinges on?
I mean, wow. If you're trolling that's amazing.
I said no such thing. I stated, correctly, that typos convey information. Removing typos removes information.
Proceeds to show stories by: CNN, ABC, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Vox, and Politico. Yeah, really diverse perspectives. Its not as if they all hold nearly the same point of view on any issue.
Also contrast the complete lack of neutral (at least relatively), established outlets like Associated Press and Reuters with the presence of...BuzzFeed.
Every piece of news-related tech we get these days just regurgitates CNN, BBC, etc... How about sending me local content from the local newspapers to start -- you know, things that affect people every day.
Edit: here is an article on it and they are apparently 8x more powerful than the previous generation: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/google-launches-tpu-3-point-...
Welcome to almost every century in human history heh.
>My smartphone is now a black box in control of my life.
Only if you let it control your life.
I gotta hope that if I were at the helm of a multi billion dollar company that had been operating efficiently for years, I would take MUCH bigger risks than Google.
The projects in this keynote were incredibly boring, and some of them borderline useless. Leave that stuff for smaller companies to tackle, Google. Take on big problems.
As you said, Google should announce game changers and not getting woos for an application that reorients a scanned sheet of paper.
It's to the point that they are now essentially just like Microsoft during the Steve Ballmer days. They need a visionary leader that can lead and inspire the hundreds of smart people they have.
Not to mention the fact how everyone always jokes about how long a product will last after being announced before they kill it off. Their strategy seems to be scattershot, rather than having a sense of direction. I'm curious to see how their internal roadmap looks like.
They appear to be doing an entirely new OS and UI. Flutter is pretty impressive tech.
Beyond Corp is pretty revolutionary and can see it being the norm.
But so many more. The TPU 3.0. Google Home Max is a great product as well as Google WiFi.
K8s is on fire and growing like crazy. They have cars driving around without a safety driver.
So many other things. What in the world are you talking about?
Did you mean some other company?
Thanks in advance!
Machine Learning is being embedded into most of their products to make those products increasingly capable and useful that is not easy for other companies to replicate.
Those products are becoming personal and learn about you to the point that they will know more about you than you... I realize that this can lead to a scary future, but lots of useful things do.
These capabilities might look underwhelming but they are simply mind blowing given type of problems being solved.
More importantly, this technology and infrastructure are being put in the hands of developers outside of Google, so more fascinating things are yet to come.