[tpush]

"[...] but the fact that all they did — as far as I’ve seen — was play a recording just seems off. It feels like a con."

Oh come on Gruber, it was a tech demo.

"How is what they showed, and the way they showed it, distinguishable from a fraud? The more I think about it, the more strange this “demo” seems."

Denialism of somebody who made a company part of his identity.

[RodoBobJon]

I mean, Gruber is technically correct that this demo is indistinguishable from a fraud. And yes, Google certainly wouldn't demo a completely non-existent technology, but they might very well demo a technology that only works 60% of the time at present. Let's be honest, this wouldn't be the first time we've seen large tech companies demo incredible-seeming too-good-to-be-true tech that turned out to actually be too good to be true and never made it into real world use for one reason or another.

It is kind of weird that the broad tech punditry has just accepted Google's demo at face value with respect to what the tech is actually capable of at present.

[EDIT]

For example, Google demoed object removal in Google Photos (https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/17/15654476/google-photos-ob...) last year, and as far as I can tell it never shipped.

[EDIT 2]

If a company in any other industry announced an insane-seeming new technology with a completely non-verifiable demo like this, no credible journalist who covers that beat would report it as credulously as tech journalists have covered the Duplex demo. Gruber is absolutely right that the lack of skepticism around Duplex is baffling and journalistically suspect.

[TeMPOraL]

> Oh come on Gruber, it was a tech demo.

Yup. Isn't playing prerecorded presentations standard operating procedure, to minimize risk of angering the demo gods? Doing a live demo is a really strong show of confidence.

Besides, tech demos are carefully crafted and not a honest evaluation of technology anyway.

[hndamien]

A live demo in this case would have involved a very unpredictable human on the other end of the line that had not given consent to be recorded or release the recording.

[mcphage]

Wouldn’t that issue apply to every single time Duplex is used?

[hndamien]

Yes, although recorded and publicly broadcast is a lot worse.