Comment by SubiculumCode
1 year ago
A chatbot that interrupts me even faster. Sorry for the sarcasm. maybe im just slow, but when I'm trying to formulate a question on the spot, I pause a lot. having the chatbot jump in and interrupt is frustrating. Humans recognize the difference between someone still planning on saying something, and when they've finished. I even tried to give it a rule where it shouldn't respond until I said "The End", and of course it couldn't follow that instruction.
Very true. I think we are a bit aggressive with the VAD timeout. The demo was intended to showcase speed, but the bot can be a bit eager! You can tinker with the VAD settings, it could definitely use a bit more air (but that will impact latency in the event the user has indeed finished talking.) As others say below, the magic will be figuring out the pace and style in which the user talks and adapting to that on the fly.
ps. The speed is impressive, but the key to a useful voice chatbot (which I've never seen) is one that adapts to your speaking style, identifies and employs turn-taking signals.
I acknowledge there are multiple viable patterns of social interaction, some talk over each other, and find that fun and engaging, while others think that's just the worst, and wait for a clear signal for their turn to speak and expect the same. I am of the latter.
I'm sure that, with an annotated dataset, a model could learn to pick up on the right cues.