I'd be happy if Siri were finally able to understand a proper sentence at least most of the time. That would be helpful.
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Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#22I wish they wouldn't spy on me.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#23I whish Internet access wasn't needed for basic tasks like "play that song".
I agree. Even something like a "note to self" command requires internet for Google Now.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#24I would like to be able to tell any digital assistant enabled device in my home to "play latest episode of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on the living room TV" and have it work. I feel like that's a very simple, minimal viable product, sort of request. Siri responds with "Hmm, I'm not finding anything for that." I'd also like to be able to ask "How many steps have I taken today?" Siri responds with "I can't…
I think the health one is just Apple being conservative when it comes to health data. I'm sure it's on purpose that they don't let the Health app talk to Siri directly. However, it would be nice if you could tell Siri to play an episode of a show on a specific TV, but I think they would want you to have an Apple TV for every TV in your home, not just one to control all of the TVs.
I was thinking the same thing in regard to interfacing with the Health app. Wouldn't a simple Siri for Health opt-in fix this?
I've got a bad case of Apple lock in – Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, MacBooks. Saying, to my phone, "Play The Walking Dead on the TV" brings up TWD in the TV app (iOS 10.2, I haven't been paying attention, this is possibly beta track) which prompts me to start watching it... but it then plays on the phone. I can cast it to the TV, but I can't hand it off to the TV.
Maybe that's precisely how most people would expect and want it to work, but it seems unintuitive to me.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#25In the next 5-20 years, I think "programming and IOT without screens" will allow pretty much anyone to do a lot of useful stuff on the computer without actually being present at one, or knowing the exact technical syntax for how to do it.
"Please analyze the traffic from Y and let me know if there's any anomalous traffic regarding ISIS" --anyone
"Please start a server on local port 8080 from my computer and serve all of my birthday pictures from when I was 10 until 20, and then download the files from my phone and save it into a new album called 'Birthday Teens'" --anyone who knows what a server is
"Please transfer the files from my computer in directory X to my phone in a new album with the same name as X" --anyone
"Please send a request to bing for the first 50 pages of cat images, and save the files into Y directory, then open the first image" --anyone
"Please Open up Steam and start up Skyrim" --anyone
"After that, send a message to Henry and ask him if we wants to play again" --anyone
"Please get me a list of all of the processes about mongo" --anyone who knows what a computer is
"Please close the windows or tabs on reddit" --anyone
"Please open up my school portal email" --anyone
Thinking things into existence. That gap is still pretty big. It's easy to think of ideas, but putting them into action is hard. That gap is going to get smaller. At some point, pretty much everyone will be a commander of AI, which will be like a team of programmers working for them. When that happens, we have a reason to be scared.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#26Remember context and respond accordingly. It's getting better but still not great.
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#27I'd say AI is real when it can do everything my 4yr old son can understand and do. I used to think this is a low bar, But going by how slow and painful the progress has been, I'm not hopeful it will happen even in my son's lifetime :(
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#28Be completely open source so that you could control the privacy of it. Completely offline with local processing on the device of choice.
Protonet Zoe is trying to serve this market:
https://experimental-platform.github.io
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-s...
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#29I'd say AI is real when it can do everything my 4yr old son can understand and do. I used to think this is a low bar, But going by how slow and painful the progress has been, I'm not hopeful it will happen even in my son's lifetime :(
Could you elaborate on that for those of us who are unaware of what cognitive abilities a 4 year old child should possess?
Re: Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?
#30#1. Eliminate the need for a hub for each smart device I own.