The True Limits of Believability

Not a bad problem to have. Robot voices have become so good that we can't tell they're robots anymore. But this is against our unspoken code of ethics; we as humans have to know when we're dealing with something that is indistinguishable from a human when it's not. (Unless it's a dating website of course.)

Notes

What happens when the robots sound too much like humans?
May 2018, phys.org

The assistant added pauses, "ums" and "mmm-hmms" to its speech in order to sound more human as it spoke with real employees at a hair salon and a restaurant.

Got Your Semiotics Right Here

Running on Trumpism but without Trump
Nov 2017, BBC

Nothing to do with the president. Rather, this is a great example of what semiotics is. If I'm holding a sign that says "Trump" but what I really mean is "Gillespie", then I'm playing with semiotics. The sign itself is one part, and the meaning another. The sign can say lots of different things, and it can mean lots of different things too. And "no" doesn't always mean "no". And vice versa. And "would you like to come up and see my etchings" doesn't mean lets check out those etchings.

The fact that we can talk about things that aren't even there is what makes us special. They say, although I'm sure it'll be discovered otherwise one day, that if a monkey doesn't see something happen, then it doesn't happen. They can't talk about things that aren't there, but we can. And not only that, we can use signs that stand for one thing and use it to mean something else. So cerebral.