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Microsoft Touts Breakthrough In Making Chatbots More Conversational (windowscentral.com)
In a blog post today, Microsoft said that it has created what it believes is the "first technological breakthrough" toward making conversations with chatbots more like speaking to another person. Windows Central reports: Microsoft says that it has figured out how to make chatbots talk and listen at the same time, allowing them to operate in "full duplex," to use telecommunications jargon. The company says this allows chatbots or assistants to have a flowing conversation with humans, much more akin to how people talk to one another. That stands in contrast to how digital assistants and bots currently work, where only one side can talk at any given time. The technology is already up and running in Xiaolce, Microsoft's AI chatbot currently operating in China. Using "full duplex voice sense," as Microsoft calls it, Xiaolce can more quickly predict what the person it is speaking to will say. "That helps her make decisions about both how and when to respond to someone who is chatting with her, a skill set that is very natural to people but not yet common in chatbots," Microsoft says. Another bonus of the breakthrough is that people interacting with chatbots don't have to use a "wake word" every time they speak during a conversation.
The Chinese have already stolen this technology and are using it to robocall me.
I've had a couple of calls recently where I get the connect silence of a predictive dialer followed by a woman speaking with call center background noise. She gives her name and asks how I'm doing. The first time it happened it seemed off for reasons I can't quite articulate, so I asked: "Are you a robot or a person?" She responded "yes" and then launched in to a sales pitch. The next time I asked, "where can I direct your call?" She responded "that's good" and launched in to her pitch.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Last year Microsoft released a chat bot which did a pretty fair impression of a racist human.
#DeleteChrome
To make chatbots seem more human like, it would be easiest, fastest and most economical to, through the use of social manipulation, dumb down humans to the point of being unable to have a conversation.
Wait, Trump wrote Tay?!?
He codes?!?
Is there absolutely nothing that man is not great at?
they're after lonely old people who don't have all their mental facilities left. With the baby boomers in old age there are tons and tons of them.
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Age Related Cognitive Decline. That's why you get so many robocalls. It doesn't have to fool you in your 20s. In your 70s when you're no longer all there is the time they come for you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well yeah, they're always recording everything you say, the wake word is just for show.
You still use the "wake word" to initiate the conversation. You just don't have to say it again at the beginning of each sentence during an ongoing conversation.
These home assistants use regular Wifi, and you can monitor the packets they transmit and receive. There is no evidence that they are "recording everything you say". If they were caught doing that (and they would almost certainly get caught), they would face ruinous criminal charges and civil penalties, along with a PR disaster that would far outweigh any possible benefit. Go find a better conspiracy theory to glom onto.
I'm not concerned that the record everything I say currently, but I am concerned that they may do so in the future. It will probably start with making different words "wake words," such as things the government might be interested in.
I avoided smart phones as long as I could because I try to avoid problematic technologies. And even though my iPhone is encrypted and Apple says the right things about privacy, it still makes me uncomfortable. It's gotten to the point where mentioning dystopias such as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 has become redundant and cliche, but the reason those comparisons are so often made when we discuss these technologies is because they are glaringly relevant. We were warned about the consequences of underestimating the effects of these technologies so long ago that, despite the clear validity of the warnings, they're brushed aside as trite.
I'm not trying to be a Luddite, but we need to be careful about the technologies we adopt. We need legislation that will protect our privacy, but until that happens, we have to vote with our wallets.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Wonderful!
Just what I wanted for Christmas - a realistic "sounding" robot. I'm so tired of them attempting to fool me, now I need to worry they might. Wonderful. Progress. Not. Yes, I know the post said Chat Bot.
--- Incident report: Posable AI Induced suicide
..... {H} SHUT HELL UP I WANT TO TALK TO A ... {C} please sir calm down I’m sure I can hel.... {H} DONT TALK TO ME JUST PUT A HUM.... {C} yes sir I can see your upset, let me put my supervi... {H} YOUR SUPERVISOR BETTER BE A HUM.... {C} my supervisor is THX 1138, please hold.
--- Location: Six story office building on Brand Blvd, Pasadena
--- Time and Date: Friday afternoon, in the near future
--- Setting: Shortly before the end of business, the servers hosting their sales portal went down, the subject attempted to call tech support to resolve the issue.
--- The following phone transcript was recovered
{C} How can I help you?
{H} I want to talk to a huma... {C} of course you do, let me direct you to
--- recording ended as subject tossed his phone out of a six story window then followed the phone down
this is my fate.
You still use the "wake word" to initiate the conversation. You just don't have to say it again at the beginning of each sentence during an ongoing conversation.
These home assistants use regular Wifi, and you can monitor the packets they transmit and receive.
Everybody loves using wireshark, My Grandma has a fine time sniffing packets. Darn - that sounded creepy!
There is no evidence that they are "recording everything you say". If they were caught doing that (and they would almost certainly get caught), they would face ruinous criminal charges and civil penalties, along with a PR disaster that would far outweigh any possible benefit.
The issue isn't that whether or not "they" are listening at this moment or not. The devices are very capable of listening full time. Or on really interesting trigger words. Or under a warrant. Or under a hack.
Go find a better conspiracy theory to glom onto.
You're smarter than that Bill. Conspiracy theories involve some convoluted logic and cherry picking of data/information, and discarding what doesn't fit your argument.
If someone is involved in a criminal or political activity that wants to monitor, or if some folks want to do fishing expeditions, access is only an update away. That isn't conspiracy, it's the nature of the device, and historical human activity.
People can opt in to this stuff if they want, and that''s okay. They should know the capabilities though. It isn't paranoia or conspiracy to have a piece of electrical tape on your webcam. Nor is it conspiracy to understand how software works - Someone savvy enough to know how to use a sniffer should be savvy enough to know that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I wonder how long it will take before all these conversations are just chatbots talking to each other...
Well, I'd love to have a chatbot take care of my conversations with customer service. That would rock!
I want an AI chatbot to chat with the cable company for hours and negotiate a lower rate, for example.