Do this, do that. Talking
with voice assistants is not like talking to humans and, as helpful as it is to
be near the technology, we know the difference. A surprising turn has
materialized, however, and it is in the form of Microsoft's beefed-up Xiaolce
social chatbot. The Xiaolce chatbot AI is capable now of "full
duplex" conversation.
Allison Linn, writing in The AI Blog from Microsoft, wrote that most personal digital assistants or
even chatbots are part of a walkie-talkie and texting kind of experience but
Microsoft wants to raise the bar. Linn referred to a "technological
breakthrough," where a person can converse with an AI-powered chatbot
closer to a back-and-forth listening and talking experience that a person might
have on the phone with a friend.
Nat Levy at GeekWire talked about the strides Microsoft has
made. "Microsoft said the longest conversation so far under the new
technology lasted more than four hours, with 1,600 back and forth turns between
human and bot. In addition to the longer conversations, Microsoft's new voice
technology doesn't require the user to say the wake word constantly and the
bots can predict what humans will say next to keep the
discussion moving."
Not saying the wake words?
That in and of itself is a step forward in more "real" talk.
"Social chatbots'
appeal lies not only in their ability to respond to users' diverse requests,
but also in being able to establish an emotional connection with users,"
wrote Heung-Yeung Shum, Xiaodong He, and Di Li in a paper sent to arXiv earlier
this year.
In their paper, "From
Eliza to XiaoIce: Challenges and Opportunities with Social Chatbots," theauthors state that social chatbots must be able to recognize emotion and track
emotional changes during a conversation.
They called XiaoIce an
example of significant progress in the development of social chatbots.
XiaoIce developed into a
widely deployed social chatbot since its release in 2014 in China . Designed
as a 19-year-old female persona, XiaoIce, wrote the authors, has strong
language ability, visual awareness, and over 180 skills. "Currently,
XiaoIce has more than 100 million unique users worldwide and has chatted with
human users for more 30 billion conversation turns."
Arif Bacchus in On MSFT said the XiaoIce Microsoft chatbot can
now operate in "fullduplex voice sense" by listening to a user,
, and then responding more naturally at the same time.
Lucy Black, I Programmer, wrote Thursday
that the new ability is for two
way communication, akin to listening and speaking at the same time. In this
"half-duplex" mode first one party says or writes something. The
other party digests all that and responds.
Problem is, "People
don't actually talk that way," said Li Zhou, engineer lead for XiaoIce.
Microsoft would prefer something more than half-duplex for its social chatbot. Full-duplex mode is forhumans—and, now, for better chatbots. Call it coming closer and closer to the
art of conversation. We are now
looking at Microsoft's effort to build AI-powered social chatbots at a more
sophisticated level.
In telecommunications, a
duplex communication system implies two connected devices communicating in two
directions. The accent is on social. "Unlike productivity-focused
assistants such as Cortana, Microsoft's social chatbots are designed to have
longer, more conversational sessions with users. They have a sense of humor,
can chitchat, play games, remember personal details and engage in interesting
banter,"
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