Siri, What Time Is It in London? • Hacker News Board

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#571

Post by ianferrel » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #563

>If you had a human assistant and asked them “What’s the time in London?” and they honestly thought the best way to answer that question was to give you the time for the nearest London, which happened to be in Ontario or Kentucky, you’d fire that assistant. An obvious sign that you would be a shit employer to work for. OP is probably exaggerating here (at least I hope so), but if you were to fire someone over this wi…

I'm with the author here. There's a certain amount of base knowledge that not having is just indicative of general cluelessness.

It's like if you asked someone to get you a cup of coffee and they came back with a measuring cup of coffee beans, it's not that you can't educate them that you actually wanted them to grind the beans and filter some water through it. It's that they're going to screw up lots of other stuff too.

You probably wouldn't fire them after the first time, but do you really think someone who makes that mistake won't just be more trouble than help to work with?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#572

Post by kstrauser » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

ahyattdev wrote: post #401

trombonechamp wrote: post #106

For a related example, type "11:00 EST to UTC" into Google and DuckDuckGo. Google says 15:00 because it interprets "EST" colloquially as "the current time on east coast US". DuckDuckGo says 16:00 because it interprets EST literally as "the time on east coast when it isn't daylight savings time" (compared to ET or EDT). It isn't clear which behavior is more desirable.

I'd argue that DuckDuckGo's behaviour is the correct one, but they should display a warning when the east cost is on EDT and someone requests conversion with EST. Maybe we will stop using daylight savings before the masses learn the difference between ET/EST/EDT.

Edge case: what would you do about Mountain Time? Check out this "fun" time zone map of Arizona where you could fly a straight line through 6 time settings in one hour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona#/media/File:AZ...

The ET/EST/EDT question is reasonable because ET is heavily populated and behaves sanely (as far as I know). Other popular US time zones are... different.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#573

Post by dag11 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #523

Siri doesn't know that my front door is called "FRONT DOOR". I only have one smart lock, which works perfectly, and it is called "FRONT DOOR" in HomeKit. When I ask Siri about my FRONT DOOR she responds that she cannot find it. When I ask Siri about the status of my DOOR, she responds with "The FRONT DOOR is locked/unlocked". I'll then say 'Alright Siri you literally just used the phrase "FRONT DOOR" five seconds ago…

Similarly, I have two smart outlets and one smart lightswitch in a room. One is called "Drew's LEDs", and the other is called "Drew's Heater". When I ask google to "Turn off the lights!" it turns off the switch and the "Drew's LEDs" smart outlet, but not the "Heater" smart outlet!

I definitely appreciate the effort they put into understanding the semantic nature of a device from the name I assigned it. Nowhere did I ever designate one of the smart outlets to "behave like a light."

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#574

Post by nisse72 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #495

mojuba wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously virtual assistants should ask for clarifications. Now imagine every time you ask for the time, weather or a flight to London and you always mean only London UK, imagine how annoying that can be. Makes me wonder if VA's are more productive in such cases compared to typing.

"The time in London, England, is 8:23pm." "No, I meant the time in London, Ontario" "Sure. The time in London, Ontario, is 3:23pm." You start by doing a best guess, and actually listening for a correction. For other kinds of requests, you reply with a best guess and ask for confirmation or for clarifying questions. Hard, yes. Not impossible.

"The average time in London is 5.53 pm"

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#575

Post by recursive » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

astrea wrote: post #512

recursive wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's hard to implement right doesen't mean Apple should get a pass. I mean, they aren't forced to create a voice assistant by regulation. If they can't make a good one, (and this applies to Amazon and Microsoft too) they should have just left it in the lab until they can.

So they should go completely counter to the way that businesses traditionally function and keep something in a lab for potentially decades instead of shipping a "good enough" solution that can be fixed along the way? Especially one that would get valuable information and edge cases from a live system? It's not like it's safety critical software. It's neat to have, sure, but you won't die if you get the wrong London's…

> shipping a "good enough" solution

I think the debate here is about whether anything has shipped that is actually "good enough". I don't think it's that controversial to avoid shipping stuff that's not good enough.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#576

Post by markstos » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

There is a known list of "Global Cities" which should be treated exceptionally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city

The world is on a first name basis with these cities, and AI should know to treat them exceptionally.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#577

Post by ImminentDugong » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #523

Siri doesn't know that my front door is called "FRONT DOOR". I only have one smart lock, which works perfectly, and it is called "FRONT DOOR" in HomeKit. When I ask Siri about my FRONT DOOR she responds that she cannot find it. When I ask Siri about the status of my DOOR, she responds with "The FRONT DOOR is locked/unlocked". I'll then say 'Alright Siri you literally just used the phrase "FRONT DOOR" five seconds ago…

What's most likely happening here is that any door can be classified as "front door", and Siri doesn't know whether you want to open the door which has been marked as "front door" (you have none?) or the one named "FRONT DOOR".

File a bug and it will probably be fixed.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#578

Post by iso1210 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #443

jvolkman wrote: post #357

At some point about a year ago I noticed that I could no longer ask my Google Home devices "what's the weather?". I'd just get a generic "I don't understand" response. But more specific queries such as "What's the weather in Seattle?" would work. After a couple of weeks of this, I somehow got the idea that it was related to the devices' configured locations. And sure enough, telling the Home that I lived in the next…

But if you had not worked at Google at the time, there’s basically zero chance you could’ve got anyone at the company to do anything about it.

Write a blog and post it to HN, hopefully you'll gain traction

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#579

Post by thenewwazoo » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

killion wrote: post #538

The fact that there isn't a feedback mechanism to let the Siri team know that it responded incorrectly tells me everything I need to know. Until they have real metrics around how often Siri fails they will continue to think that their correct response rate is great.

I'm just waiting for my toddler to start repeating "Hey Siri, nobody was talking to you."

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#580

Post by Lammy » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #561

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #523

Siri doesn't know that my front door is called "FRONT DOOR". I only have one smart lock, which works perfectly, and it is called "FRONT DOOR" in HomeKit. When I ask Siri about my FRONT DOOR she responds that she cannot find it. When I ask Siri about the status of my DOOR, she responds with "The FRONT DOOR is locked/unlocked". I'll then say 'Alright Siri you literally just used the phrase "FRONT DOOR" five seconds ago…

About once a week Siri and I have this conversation: Me: "Siri, turn off the bedroom lights." Siri: "OK. Your 6am alarm is off." For the most part Siri works for me, with the exception of the above and her insistence on adding "ginger ale" to my grocery list as two items. /Native English speaker, specifically trained in non-regional diction because I used to work on-air in radio.

That conversation sounds like Siri thinks you're about to go to sleep and wants to make sure you remember to enable your wake-up alarm.