[ddtaylor]

It's worth noting that some prominent figures in AI/ML are saying we are due for another "AI winter" since it's being oversold again. I don't know if I agree with that, since we are seeing some interesting things, but technically Google is kind of saying they can tentatively pass the Turing Test with phones and meanwhile even a car decked out with extra sensors and 360 LIDAR cannot detect a simple stop sign with mud on it.

[aglionby]

> Google is kind of saying they can tentatively pass the Turing Test with phones

This is quite a bold claim, and one I'm not sure they're making. Their promo material suggests that it's limited to quite well-defined domains where conversations aren't really that open-ended, and we haven't seen how it'll perform in the real world.

Relatedly, I don't think headlines like "Google Duplex beat the Turing test: Are we doomed?" [0] are helpful at all. It's disappointingly low-effort clickbait where instead there's plenty of interesting discussion to be had (should machines have to identify themselves as such? What about their use of pauses and fillers?).

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-duplex-beat-the-turing-...

[computerex]

Right. I personally think the coolest thing about duplex is the end-to-end synthesis of natural speech. The actual call isn't as impressive to me because that's just handed coded stuff. IBM Watson has already had success in this regard.

[ddtaylor]

They aren't explicitly making the claim, but it seems the premise of their demo was "hey look humans think it's another humans which is somewhat like the Turing Test.

[acdha]

> Google is kind of saying they can tentatively pass the Turing Test with phones

Is Google really saying that or just the more breathless commenters? I thought they were pretty good at making it clear that Duplex took a lot of work to do well in very constrained conversational situations.

[ddtaylor]

Well, during the original AI Winter many were open and honest about the capabilities of early ML and it's limits, but what caused the winter itself was it's perception by a large audience as a magic bullet and their disappointment when it didn't work.

[nl]

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but this is a bad comment.

some prominent figures in AI/ML are saying we are due for another "AI winter" since it's being oversold again.

"Some say...". Name one.

We may have a Gartner style "trough of disillusionment", but a 1990's style AI Winter is unlikely. It works too well in too many valuable areas for the money to go away.

technically Google is kind of saying they can tentatively pass the Turing Test with phones

Could you show us where they claim that? That goes well beyond any statement I've heard Google make, and into the kinds of breathless claims click-bait blogs have tried to make.

car decked out with extra sensors and 360 LIDAR cannot detect a simple stop sign with mud on it

Do you have a specific example of that? I did Google, and I couldn't fine anything.

Most examples I've seen handle occulted road signs pretty well. There are of course adversarial examples which are an interesting case, but mud causing a failure like this is surprising to me.

[romaniv]

>I don't know if I agree with that, since we are seeing some interesting things

There were plenty of interesting results in AI research before the last two AI winters.