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.<p>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.
The Ars Technica writeup is superior, IMHO:<p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-calling-we-talk-to-the-revolutionary-but-limited-phone-ai/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-cal...</a>
So is Gruber eating his hat yet?<p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/11/duplex-skepticism" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/11/duplex-skeptici...</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/gruber/status/995538518016487425" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/gruber/status/995538518016487425</a>
> 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.<p>I chuckled. From experience, it turns out some humans don't understand the subtle nuances of human conversation either.
>“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.”<p>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?<p>- Hi. I'm a robot trying to book for 4 at 20 tonight for my client. Is it possible? Please say Yes or No<p>- Wait what?<p>- I'm a robot trying to book for 4 at 20 tonight for my client. Is it possible? Please say Yes or No<p>- No<p>- Is it possible at any other time tonight? If yes, when?<p>- Yes, at 21<p>- I would like to book for 4 at 21. Thank you.<p>We have had this kind of technology for years.
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.
<i>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.</i><p>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.
"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."<p>I'm a little confused by this and it never seems to be explained. How does this system make the restaurant's job easier?
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.
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...
> While the disclosures weren’t there in the earliest stage, the company has said since the beginning that it intended to add them.<p>> 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.<p>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.
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.'<p>Would the initiator feel silly if a service called for them and sounded robotic, rather than like a friend?<p>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.
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...
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.
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. =)<p>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!
Interesting 'the next round will find Assistant inquiring about business hours.'<p>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).<p>Google search and maps in particular are so great because of all these sources of data that come together to give me actionable info.
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.
Ethics aside, Duplex was built to overcome one key constraint: Restaurants are technology laggards.<p>Yes, booking a reservation with few taps IS easier/more accurate, etc, but that requires restaurants to pay/integrate with those systems.<p>With Duplex, you can schedule a reservation at ~100% of restaurants, right now, for free.
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.
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?
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?
"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."
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.<p>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.
> Duplex represents a rare early look into an ongoing project from a company notorious for playing it close to the vest.<p>Wat. Google is notorious for announcing dozens of projects only to cancel/downplay them a year, a year and a half later.<p>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).