>I hate Disqus with a passion and wish horrible flaming death upon it

I mostly just ignore it, why do you hate it with such intensity? hahah

>Admitting mistakes should be normal behavior for everyone

Agreed. But it isn't, and applauding it is a way to provide moral incentive to those who might otherwise stay quiet.

Because he is not replying to GP, he is replying to the parent:

> Every Apple device, from Macbooks to iPads to iPhones to Airpods is built to be a personal device. (...) Apple doesn’t want to sell one shared device to a family. They want to sell multiple devices to every family member.

Not sure why people are having problem understanding that.

I couldn't read the paper yet, and also I know very little about this, but listening to the audio samples it seems that one of the most notable changes was the intonation in changing phrases. Did anyone else catch something like that? I'm not sure I'm doing a good job at explaining. If you listen to all iOS11 samples it'll stand out.

Anyway, it's the only way I can still identify this as a fake voice. The intonation always follows the same cadence (not sure if that's the word?). We really shouldn't have overused the word awesome before this kind of thing came along.

There's also a kind of dread too, tbh, this kind of seamless TTS has the potential to change a lot of things. First of all criminals are going to love this, youtube pranksters too. Eventually this will shake up the voice acting industry in a possibly not healthy way for the voice actors, while at the same time allowing projects with a shorter budget to have incredible voice work (also dubbing).

What I think is really important, tho, is that as we move away from the uncanny valley we change our relationships with those voices, our brains don't have the capacity to listen to a voice this real and not imagine it as a person, even for adults.

Ironically at this moment I'm using an old threadless sweatshirt that says "this was supposed to be the future" but nowadays I can honestly say we're getting there.

Regarding voice acting, I think there is something to be said about human expression/ad-lib. Sure, you could generate a natural-sounding voice computer voice, but in the context of arts we’re still a ways to go before a computer can go off script and add just the perfect amount of intonation on a certain word that turns a phrase into an iconic quote.

Similarly, we don’t see CGI motion capture replacing Andy Serkis any time soon.

I think this is less likely to hit major films or TV shows, but it will hit the audiobook and video game markets pretty hard.

I'm pretty excited about the video game side.

I think you're overstating things. On the one hand, a lot of applications where quality wasn't that critical switched over ages ago. And, on the other hand, any application that would have spent the money on voice acting is still going to pay for both the higher quality and for a sound that isn't the same as everyone else is using. (Note that Siri's new iOS voice is based on a new training set from a new person.)

I do think there are applications that we don't just have today because TTS just isn't good enough. I've had some ideas around Alexa apps related to content that would be TTSd. But the current Polly just isn't human enough. I don't think this is there yet either but it's getting close.

I'm so filled with dread by this future we're heading into. I'm 29 and I feel impossibly tired because whatever I do I'm heading the same way everyone else is and it doesn't look good.

Sure, lots of things will get better, but I don't think it can get better overall when we're giving this much knowledge of human nature to companies that'll certainly leverage it against our rational interests.

The more I read about neuroscience and modern psychology, the more I realize how much of our more basic (in the evolutionary sense) intuitions can be exploited by people that know how to, and this much information gives them that. It's been done before, yeah, but not to this extent and it worries me to no end.

> This might be the way to introduce AI to non-technologists and get people excited about it.

Yeah, I'm almost positive that this exhibition is intended mostly to raise awareness and create this hype. Go and Chess, for most people, are simple games compared to Dota2, so if Elon is worried about AI and want people to be more aware of the threat he perceives it certainly helps to make this big show and get all those impressions with a game that is considered by the majority of people (especially younger) to be more complex/harder than what has been done before.