Block's Dessa model learns to speak from human conversation
The Verge: Jack Dorsey’s Block made an AI model that talks to you like an awkward new friend
Jack Dorsey's Block announced an AI model called Dessa that's trained "from scratch on nothing but human conversation," and to show off the model, Block shared chats it has had with humans that can occasionally be a little awkward and uncanny. Take this one, for example, shared by Dessa lead Ragavan Thurairatnam. The conversation between the model and the speaker does have a mostly natural back and forth (though for some reason, the model initially mistakes the speaker for some
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Jack Dorsey's Block has created an AI model called Dessa that is trained entirely on human conversation and operates as a speech-to-speech system rather than converting speech to text first. The model can run locally on high-end computers and demonstrates the ability to have natural conversations with humans, though some interactions show awkward or uncanny moments. Block's team developed Dessa to explore whether models could learn to speak without written language, to create a more natural interface between humans and AI, and to improve how AI systems understand human emotion and timing in speech. The company plans to give early access to the model to a small group of AI safety researchers.
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