Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead

Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by nothis on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @12:55PM (#16117162)

There's a few things glossed over that I don't think AI can solve. For example, if I want to deliver flowers, I kinda want to chose what they look like and how do you do that without, essentially displaying a website with images which would turn it into a glorified google search. If I want a restaurant recommendation... it basically opens yelp and tells me the first hit. And I kinda want to see pictures of the place and read reviews, otherwise what's the point of searching at all?

You can reduce it to a flow of information. And chat is not always the best way to convey that information.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by bluGill on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:27PM (#16117485)

When I want to deliver flowers I want $x worth of flowers to arrive, avoid roses - make sure this poem I wrote is on the tag. I don't care what they look like, any flower is the same (except my wife doesn't like roses much) - the important part is the flower came with a poem.

If we had a secretary (think 1950 when they were common) doing this job mine would choose something nice, yours would come back with your choices. Either way flowers would arrive. Your secretary would probably learn your preferences eventually and soon come with one picture for final approval (which would be right). Mine would remind me a week before our anniversary to start working on the poem.

Both perspectives are correct. There is no reason an AI couldn't handle both, and every reason they should - but of course it will be years (at best) before they do. The first time the AI comes with "I found these flowers, see the pictures [on whatever screen is handy]". I respond with "whatever, just pick something", and the ai decides to not bother asking again. I'm depending on the AI flower ordering algorithm to not make a bad choice - making me happy is harder than making you happy.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by sampl on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:05PM (#16117260)

I don’t think an AI assistant and visual feedback like google search are mutually exclusive at all.

Imagine a fashion designer having a chat with a human assistant. The designer might tell them a kind of shirt they want to use for a shoot, and if it’s not obvious what to buy the assistant will come back to them with a list of options (pictures of each on a piece of paper, for ex). The designer can ask questions about each one, ask for different shirts, and simply speak when they decide: points “this one”.

This all seems very doable with current AI assistants. Google for ex already has results from recent voice searches waiting for you on your phone.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by tootie on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:10PM (#16117302)

I have never had much use for AI assistants except using Alexa on my FireTV. I can press a button on the remote or app to start it listening, give it some keywords to search and get results on screen to scroll through and click on. Now that I can direct those voice searches to a browser, it's even better.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by colechristensen on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:27PM (#16117479)

If you have a real person as an assistant, and you ask them to buy flowers for somebody, you also don't get to pick exactly what they look like ... unless you ask them to facilitate that with pictures or descriptions.

Real AI would be fully capable of doing this just as well as a person, but it would take a lot more "intelligence" than currently exists.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by michaelt on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @03:56PM (#16119015)

The real difference is human assistants are paid well to act as their principal's agent. If a PA had a choice buying a nice bunch of flowers or a weedy bunch with a $5 kickback, they'd be dumb to take the kickback and risk their job.

But if I ask Facebook/Google/Amazon to order some flowers for me, why _wouldn't_ they monetise it? Gotta pay for those tens of thousands of engineers somehow.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by achamayou on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @04:48PM (#16119431)

Because you won't be doing it again if they mess it up?

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by dwaltrip on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @07:35PM (#16120471)

Ideally. It's possible that the Google business machine might not do a superb job collecting and synthesizing the vast number of these very fine-tuned details and pieces of feedback, at least at this early stage.

This is something a good personal assistant can do easily.

Though eventually AI will gain those capabilities, one way or another.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by ryanianian on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:05PM (#16117257)

I think you missed the point. The point isn't chat == text-only, it's that chat == natural-language-style UX. This could well be augmented with images (like is with Siri). Basically "is there a button to do what I want" versus "do I indicate what I want in a human-ish way" - imho that's the defining feature of a "chatbot", not that it's text-driven per se.

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