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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#201

Post by pintxo »

mojuba wrote: post #75

This example illustrates how difficult AGI is and how far we are from it. We, humans, tend to take advantage of the context to make communication simpler and shorter. Just think about all the implications of this one simple question: what time is it in London? Or e.g. how can I get from London to Dublin? If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH). Some…

How about asking for context if it's not clear? Any reasonable human assistant would ask if the context is not clear (enough).

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#202

Post by AmericanChopper »

nromiun wrote: post #183
AmericanChopper wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of products, US sales are just worth so much more than sales from anywhere else, that it is reasonably common to not care much about the rest of the world. I’ve worked for a few companies that started out with a heavy focus on localization, but eventually realized it was just a massive waste of money.

The issue isn't doing business in just America. The issue is the communication. Some services will have big banners like "Works everywhere flawlessly" and then (if you are lucky) in some dark corner of the FAQ there will be a tiny sentence, "Only available in US for now" (translation: it will never be available anywhere else). Even global companies like Google, Amazon do this.

In situations like that non-US consumers aren’t their customers, and they’re simply not interested in communicating with them.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#203

Post by huffmsa »

teruakohatu wrote: post #37
SirHound wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Siri is a digital assistant. The point is it should be held to a much higher standard. It's currently awful to the point of uselessness. So what standard of assistant is it? Not one you'd employ.

I think treating Siri like a digital version of a Personal Assistant is going a bit far. It is a simple Voice Interface to a bunch of apps, local databases and cloud databases. Nobody has ever said "Should I buy an Apple Watch for $750 or hire a PA for $35,000/year?".

I would expect a 10 year old core feature on my $1750 phone / watch combination to perform better than my 3 year old.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#204

Post by nsavage »

mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

To be fair, where I'm from, "London" would probably refer to London, ON, but that's just because I live in Southern Ontario. So it's not like no one has heard of it.

On the other hand: no one in Southern Ontario will be asking what time it is in London, ON because it's all in the same time zone, so this seems like a problem.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#205

Post by pndy »

DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

I think that up until the real AI appears that can mimic human personality and expand it, understand variety of languages, virtual assistants will remain what they are: virtual assistants capable of executing basic commands provided by a human (preferably in English). This technology isn't bad per se - in particular cases is helpful (blind people) but it's still far for what we dream about.

My Nokia 1320 with Windows Phone 8.1 come with a very basic VA that was capable of understand Polish but only if I drop all grammar and talk like a robot. The "call mum" is "zadzwoń do mamy" in its proper form, but I had to do "zadzwoń do mama" which sounds unnatural; not mention that stuff is also being read without proper Polish grammar; "calling mum" is synthesized as "dzwonię do mama", not "dzwonię do mamy". The grammar complexity is a problem for VA technology and probably that's why neither Siri nor Cortana supports Polish or other Slavic languages, not mention dozen of other languages.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#206

Post by brailsafe »

I'll throw in a broader question that's derived from the apparent declination in praise toward Apple by famously apologetic writers/podcasters. What the hell do people buy new tech—and more specifically iPhones and iPads—for exactly? Where can the value proposition actually be made unless you're an illustrator or very frequent camera user? I have an older iPad, 2019 mbp, and One Plus 3 phone. They're fine, but not really any better than the crap I previously had, and struggle to see how newer stuff would markedly improve anything, save for apps working that stopped supporting my devices.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#207

Post by tragomaskhalos »

nicbou wrote: post #174
mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

This is rather inconvenient when shopping for niche products. American website assumes that everyone on the internet is American, and you have to go through the shopping cart experience to learn that they don't ship to Canada or Europe.

To be fair, there is a tendency among Americans full stop (with the honourable exception of the good denizens of this and other likeminded sites) to assume that everyone on the internet is American.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#208

Post by nicbou »

Hamuko wrote: post #11

Same thing happens with Frankfurt. If I order something from Amazon.de, my package usually goes through Frankfurt. When I checked my package tracker app on my iPhone, I was surprised to find out that Frankfurt is actually on the Germany-Poland border. Turns out that if I enter "Frankfurt, Germany" into Apple Maps (which I assume is what the package tracker app does), it takes me to "Frankfurt (Oder), Germany" instead…

It's a massive difference. Frankfurt am Main is one of the largest cities in Germany. Frankfurt (Oder) has a population of 50000. You seldom refer to Frankfurt (Oder).

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#209

Post by stuaxo »

nicbou wrote: post #174
mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

This is rather inconvenient when shopping for niche products. American website assumes that everyone on the internet is American, and you have to go through the shopping cart experience to learn that they don't ship to Canada or Europe.

Almost any results from DuckDuckGo have this affliction.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#210

Post by jen20 »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #159
jen20 wrote: post #10

I’ve always phrased the question as “What is the time in the UK” (as a British person living in the USA). It’s unclear to me whether my form of asking the question is because it’s the best way to get a “good” answer from Siri, though I don’t think it would ever occur to me to ask what the time is in London versus the last city I lived in (Bath) in the first place, since they’re always the same.

It's fairly established that picking a capital / large city is the correct way to specify a time zone, that usually gives you what you want. The alternatives have various problems: * Pick a country: Some counties have multiple time zones. * Abbreviations like EST, CET: Not right in summer. * Words like "Eastern Time": assumes the country from context. * Offsets like UTC-5: Doesn't follow summer time. * Click on a map…

I'd suggest that the correct way to specify a time zone is the name from the IANA time zone database, which uses area (currently a continent or ocean) and location, avoiding most of these problems. Thus:

- America/New_York

- Europe/London

- Indian/Mauritius

- Pacific/Chatham

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