[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.