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Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

getmyra.co

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Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#61

Post by viksit »

vinitagr wrote: post #58
viksit wrote: post #45

PS, it's interesting that CS224d : Deep Learning for NLP is trending at the same time as Myra. A lot of stuff is common to both - for instance, the topic on Recurrent neural nets for word embedding. There are a bunch of very nice NL related experiments I've tried that are waiting in ipython notebooks, that we would love to experiment with here in production. If anyone here is interested in working on problems that re…

Have you seen luka.ai they have been doing it for quite a while. Doing something very similar.

Yes, definitely. I think they're doing a great job.

Myra is different from them in that it is first and foremost an intent understanding system, which has the ability to judge which service to use to satisfy it. The ability to help recommend/plan an evening out is the first amongst a broader set of things it can do.

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#62

Post by asimjalis »

Looks like this has some bugs. It is trapped in a loop. It asks me for my email address. When I send it it asks me again: “Hello, myaddress@gmail.com. Almost done. Please enter your email address. You'll never get spam - this is to ensure I can create a profile for you.”

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#63

Post by twsted »

viksit wrote: post #48
criddell wrote: post #47

Does anybody remember I Want Sandy? That was the first product of this type that really worked well for me.

Absolutely - I tried it! I think the ability to interact with a service in a manner reserved for other humans makes it a more intimate (and arguably natural) experience. The main motivation behind Myra is that it maintains conversational context - so you can ask questions and follow up with it without leaving that context. Eg: "Find me a restaurant" and "Show me what people say about it". Just like you would when spe…

This is very important. Whenever I retry to make experiments with platforms like Siri I miss this fundamental feature.

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#64

Post by viksit »

asimjalis wrote: post #62

Looks like this has some bugs. It is trapped in a loop. It asks me for my email address. When I send it it asks me again: “Hello, myaddress@gmail.com. Almost done. Please enter your email address. You'll never get spam - this is to ensure I can create a profile for you.”

Ah. No thats not a bug and sorry for the inconvenience.

It expects you to type your name again followed by your email. Basically, if something went wrong, you need to type both the name and email again from first principles - it's not waiting for just the email. Did I explain it right?

It's something that we would like to fix going forward.

Edit: Happy to sync offline in case I can help you further.

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#65

Post by viksit »

jonnycowboy wrote: post #57
zatkin wrote: post #56

Are we heading in the direction of WeChat where we have a single app as a platform?[1][2][3][4] [1] https://medium.com/@mg/there-s-a-chat-for-that-apple-s-bigge... [2] http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/8/1/app-unbundling-s... [3] http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ [4] http://vurb.com

You mean like email? Email is still used for just about everything: "instant" messaging, to-do lists, appointments, letters, bills, etc. SMS could do most of that as well, and if you add an "AI" messager it could be pretty powerful. That said, an "AI" email interface would be just as useful.

@jonnycowboy - Email integration is already on the cards for Myra.

Especially in things that are defer-able - for instance, in needing to do things like scheduling food delivery for 8pm via doordash, where you don't want to change from "work and email mode" to "pull out my phone to text" mode.

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#66

Post by mikeash »

viksit wrote: post #39
comrade1 wrote: post #38

The FCC has been cracking down on companies using long codes for SMS services because those long codes aren't required to follow the normal SMS rules concerning opting in, opting out, opt less keywords (help messages). For short codes the phone companies each test the short code to confirm it's following the rules. Further, these long codes switch companies frequently as they get reused when they're no longer in use,…

Makes sense. Notably, however, this is an alpha product, very much a way to see user engagement and figure out what works and what doesn't, and what people want it to do. Once those questions are clarified, all the rest of the infrastructure will definitely be built up adhering to established standards. In that respect, it absolutely makes sense to use a shortcode where you can conform to regulations. It's important…

On the spam thing, I believe what they're saying is that companies set up a service, then they disappear, the phone number they used gets reassigned to some Joe Random, and then poor hapless Joe gets spammed by all the company's former customers who think the number is still hooked up.

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#68

Post by kevin »

Alright so the first hiccup I rant into was when you sent me a postscript telling me that using WhatsApp or Facebook messenger is a better experience. Well, I wanted better so I started going down that path. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to do that. Naturally, I asked you.

http://cl.ly/image/3k2U1c0i372d

And that didn’t work. Then I tried clicking on Messenger link on your site.

http://cl.ly/image/0L1L1T3w0F1P

But none of those are links. And then I tried your FAQ.

http://www.getmyra.co/faq

And I didn’t really find it. Messaging ‘Help’ didn’t really help. The problem is probably generational and I’m just too old for that feature, but it might be nice to make it easier for old dummies like me. I did, however, finally figure it out. You go to people in the Messenger app and then you + someone, which prompts for a phone number.

http://cl.ly/image/3g0e2x3Y1z3W

This then sent me down the same signup flow and ultimately told me I can’t reuse the same email address.

http://cl.ly/image/3G0r1C2K2R36

Based on that message, I wasn’t sure whether I type in a new email address or type restart. I try the email first.

You then reintroduce yourself and ask for my first name again. I give it again. And then you ask me for my email again. And do that again. And then you say thanks for signing up and give me that postscript about using Facebook for a better experience.

Unfortunately, I stopped there and honestly, I would have stopped a lot sooner. Please note that you sent me down this route and in the end it didn’t feel like a better experience. In fact, based on what I saw, it doesn’t seem like you know whether I was on FB or not.

Basically, be really careful of your recommendations to users on your signup flow. If you present a fork, you should follow it yourself to see how that changes things. I’m going to come back and play with this some more after I get through some other Show HNs, because I love talking to bots! It looks like you have a lot of feedback already. If I have some more unique feedback, I’ll post it as a reply to here. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Myra – AI based personal assistant you can text

#69

Post by viksit »

kevin wrote: post #68

Alright so the first hiccup I rant into was when you sent me a postscript telling me that using WhatsApp or Facebook messenger is a better experience. Well, I wanted better so I started going down that path. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to do that. Naturally, I asked you. http://cl.ly/image/3k2U1c0i372d And that didn’t work. Then I tried clicking on Messenger link on your site. http://cl.ly/image/0L1L1T3w0F1P But…

@kevin - Thanks for the detailed feedback! Appreciate it.

The sign up flow messaging could definitely use more work and I'll be sure to incorporate your feedback into it. One fix would be to be to simply ask for the email again as opposed to restarting the whole flow.

I just debugged what happened with the double signup BTW. Basically, an issue with FB Messenger is that not everyone associates their phone number with FB. If thats the case, Myra gets your FB account ID and not your phone number when you sign up. And as a result - it can't figure out you're the same user. Need to figure out how to fix that. Suggestions welcome actually.

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