Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 135 posts

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#51

Post by hosh »

mikeash wrote: post #41
Zanni wrote: post #5

I like to be clear on whether I'm interacting with a human or a bot because different social conventions apply. If you're human, I'll treat you like one, and that means giving you some consideration at the expense of expediency. If you're a bot, let's just cut to the fucking chase. So a bot that acts like a human (with hems and haws) is just wasting my time. Ditto a human being that has been reduced to a bot by follo…

Unless they’re being used to cover up computation delays on the back end, I feel like the hems and haws go beyond merely making the system more realistic and enters into outright fraud. By all means, sound natural and good, but don’t actually pretend to be a human if you’re not. (And suddenly I have a vision of that last sentence being used against me in court in a few decades, with a jury consisting entirely of AIs.…

That's an interesting observation.

I'm ok with the computers doing this, but it doesn't offend me that a computer is doing this. (Having said that, I take a dimmer view of dark UX patterns where I know I am being manipulated for some gain).

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#52

Post by mseebach »

joshuamorton wrote: post #13
cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

People have been saying the art of letter writing has been declining for a century for a century.[1] > A hundred years ago it took so long and cost so much to send a letter that it seemed worth while to put some time and thought into writing it. -- Percy Holmes Boynton, in 1915, 103 years ago The pace of modern life has been accelerating since before some of our grandparents were born. [1]: https://www.xkcd.com/1227/

This does hint at the root of the matter: letter writing is a format dictated by the constraints of communication. These constraints changed between 1815 and 1915, and are all but gone today - so the format of the communication changes accordingly.

The letters of yore we revere today were written by intellectuals and are fascinating, but that wasn't what all letters were like. The letters written by regular people were as banal as the IM threads exchanged by regular people today. Intellectuals still produce long form material, just not necessarily in letter form.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#53

Post by will_brown »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #31
will_brown wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve previously posted (to surprisingly supportive reception) about my Dad’s collection of letters from 1956-1966 while traveling some 4 million miles around the world in the navy and State Department. Some might find it interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mom-Odyssey-World-Travel-ebook/d... Separately, my grandfather (on my Mom’s side) was likely one of those “elites” having been a named partner of an AM100 law…

That's fantastic. “dictated not read.” means "I didn't have time to check that this is correct, please speed extra of your unimportant time to proofread for me." What a birthday gift! To be fair, though, if the message was nice, dictation is t really an alternative to a telephone message which is also dictated but not so derided.

In this instance he dictated the card to his assistant who in turn wrote the card/message.

This is old school legal professional formatting where the Initials of the assistant followed my grandfather’s name identifying which assistant typed the dictation.

He was smart, formal, thoughtful and a great sense of humor. Most of me thinks he did it as one day I would find the humor in it.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#54

Post by sandworm101 »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #34
sandworm101 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So too has the art of cave painting. We forget that the style and substance of a communication is more often an outcome of the medium than anything else. Letters were long because they needed to be. Postcards were shorter. And in Britain, during the days of multiple mail deliveries, letters too were very short. Emails and IMs are short because they also need to be short.

They don't need to be short. They just don't need to be long.

They need to be short if you want to get it sent before the next post goes out. It needs to be short if you don't have the space on the back of the card. Today's IMs and emails need to be short so that you do not burden the reader. Otherwise email conversations will take so long as to defeat their point.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#55

Post by eli_gottlieb »

emodendroket wrote: post #46
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Part of what we're seeing with the automation going on is giving ordinary people some semblance of what the elite have had for a long time: administrative assistants/personal assistants. "Take a memo for me, write up an invitation letter and send it to my wife's sister" For much of the uber powerful and wealthy, gruntwork communications have taken the original person out of the message. >We could argue whether or no…

Speak for yourself.

Sure sure. The question is how large a market people like you actually make up, since companies like Google usually want to make products that can reach as many people as possible.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#56

Post by mseebach »

stcredzero wrote: post #33

I've had autocomplete seem to deliberately try to break me up with my girlfriend. I don't have time to dig up the most egregious of those. Here's one that happened just yesterday with my wife: Wife: Thank you. Love you too. Me: Are you going to be honest nary? Me: Hungry Me: Darn spell check! My wife, having grown up in China, still didn't understand and I had some 'splainin to do when I got home. It's absolutely ter…

Honest question, this seems to be a long term issue for you, why don't you disable autocorrect? I've found that the "half-way house" of seeing the suggestions, but having to manually select the one you want, is a good compromise.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#57

Post by sumeno »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #29
pgodzin wrote: post #22

You can easily opt-out of the auto-complete feature and if it being your own words with your own personality is important to you, then you likely will actually type them rather than autocomplete to the close-enough response Google suggested. Seems like plenty of people are happy with this trade-off, and that's who the feature is for.

The problem is it affects two way communication. You might be okay with the trade off, I am not. But you may subject me to it. While a few niche businesses will make news stating they'll reject robo call based appointment scheduling because they care about their actual human employees, most will just accept it. The employees won't have a choice and will just be subjected to this. Same for email. I want to hear from p…

Why do you get to choose how I communicate?

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#58

Post by AnimalMuppet »

sumeno wrote: post #57
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it affects two way communication. You might be okay with the trade off, I am not. But you may subject me to it. While a few niche businesses will make news stating they'll reject robo call based appointment scheduling because they care about their actual human employees, most will just accept it. The employees won't have a choice and will just be subjected to this. Same for email. I want to hear from p…

Why do you get to choose how I communicate?

If you're talking to me, I get to choose whether you communicate with me. If I don't like how you communicate, I'm more likely to decide that you don't get to communicate at all.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#59

Post by brightball »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #40
cromwellian wrote: post #6

The art of letter writing has been declining for a century. Most people don't even use email for most daily communication, but instant messaging. And it seems a lot of instant messaging boils down to pictures, emoji, memes, and short responses ("I'll be there at XXX") The ship has really already sailed on longform communication, perhaps out of laziness or cost/benefit. Part of what we're seeing with the automation go…

>Part of what we're seeing with the automation going on is giving ordinary people some semblance of what the elite have had for a long time: administrative assistants/personal assistants. "Take a memo for me, write up an invitation letter and send it to my wife's sister" For much of the uber powerful and wealthy, gruntwork communications have taken the original person out of the message. >We could argue whether or no…

The closest I've ever actually gotten to having an assistant was a stretch of about 2 years after we had our 2nd child. Since my wife and I both work full time, we needed child care.

It was about the same price to hire a nanny as it was to send 2 kids to daycare, so we did some interviews and hired one.

That 2 years was probably the easiest stretch of dual working parent life that we ever had. She did a load of laundry and a load of dishes each day while the kids were having naps. If we were low on detergent or supplies that the kids needed, we gave her cash and she'd pick it up on her way in. If somebody needed to be at the house for some reason, she was there and neither my wife nor I had to remove ourselves from work to take care of it.

We literally came home from work, ate dinner, played with the kids. When the weekends came around we didn't have to dedicate a chunk of it to laundry/cleaning.

It was pretty fantastic.

I can only imagine how having a actual assistant would take things to the next level.

All that said, the types of phone calls that Google is talking about making here aren't that beneficial...yet.

When Google can call my cable company, wade through the phone tree and get a service appointment or issue resolved...I'll be all over it. Even just wading through the phone tree and sitting on hold until an actual person is reached and then handing it back off to me.

Those are the time wasters I'd want saved. What Google is doing here is equivalent of automating the functionality that people pay for with OnStar.

Re: No Thanks, Google. I'll Speak for Myself

#60

Post by ocdtrekkie »

emodendroket wrote: post #43

It's bizarre to me that this is the red line for everybody.

It is a red line, not the red line.

For a while I've felt like the solution was that I needed to be detached from Google products and services (along with similar data-driven companies), and that was good enough.

I feel like we're rapidly approaching the territory where I need to make sure nobody I talk to is attached to Google products and services. I feel like this is line we're crossing now, where Google has inserted itself directly between the people I want to communicate with and myself, and is changing (or generating) that content directly.

Post reply on HN