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.

Comments

Robocalls

[Spazmania]

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.

old news

[93 Escort Wagon]

Last year Microsoft released a chat bot which did a pretty fair impression of a racist human.

"first technological breakthrough"

[thinkwaitfast]

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.

He codes?!?

[tlambert]

Wait, Trump wrote Tay?!?

He codes?!?

Is there absolutely nothing that man is not great at?

Re:He codes?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. There is absolutely nothing that man is not great at.

Four words

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:don't have to use a "wake word

[RazorSharp]

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.