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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#601

Post by astrea »

recursive wrote: post #575
astrea wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's good enough. Sure, in this very cherry-picked example it fails. But for a lion's share of functionality it works just fine.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#602

Post by saagarjha »

cannam wrote: post #596
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminds me of when I worked at Yahoo, for not very long in the early 2000s. Yahoo had a consumer product called My Yahoo, a customisable home page with various feeds in it, and at the time they also had a My Yahoo Enterprise Edition, which they tried to sell to companies to serve as an intranet home page. I worked (in a junior sort of way) on the European deployments of MYEE. Anyway, one of our customers - representi…

You could replace Yahoo with any other company and this would be equally true.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#603

Post by derefr »

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.

Right. A good test for a conversational AI is whether it could perform the Abbott & Costello “Who’s on First” sketch with you. It should make assumptions where the characters in the sketch make assumptions, and ask questions borne from confusion where the characters do.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#604

Post by saagarjha »

AareyBaba wrote: post #598
jvm_ wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone want to guess where this sign is located? https://imgur.com/XyTJHEc

Try this sign pointing to Mecca https://thesearchforbeauty.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/img_0...

I wonder if it actually points at Mecca…

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#605

Post by reaperducer »

kempbellt wrote: post #566
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…

What if you asked Google "what's the weather?" and it gave you a dictionary response of "weather" as an answer? Or with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside". "What is the weather report for today/this week?" is a more accurate question, despite an annoying amount of verbosity. But answers are still given relatively. "Cloudy" could be an accurate answer, for now . But it will be "Sunny" this aftern…

Or with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside".

One of my meteorologist friends always answers "What's the weather?" with, "The state of the atmosphere."

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#609

Post by saagarjha »

akira2501 wrote: post #547
jodrellblank wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making basically the same mistake that Gruber is in the article, and that all "location based services" are making. The context isn't the current location, it's where people's attention is. To take Gruber's example, if you had an office in London Ontario, were talking about setting up a video call, then asked your assistant "what time is it in London", and they picked London England because it's the mo…

> you'd question how smart they were. If I'm physically in a city named London, and you ask me literally "what is the time in London" that's actually an ambiguous question. Why would you specify the name of the place you're currently in? Typically someone in that instance would just ask "What time is it?" I don't hire people to make "educated guesses" on my behalf. If they detect an ambiguity then I expect them to in…

> If I'm physically in a city named London,

But Gruber is not in London. If he was, perhaps we'd have a discussion about what the right answer might have been, maybe we need some more clarity, that kind of stuff. If I ask a stranger outside (well, if I did before everyone isolated themselves) they would immediately give me the time in London, England, and if I actually wanted the time in Ohio I would have to clarify myself.

> I don't hire people to make "educated guesses" on my behalf.

Of course you do. Do you really want people asking you questions all day when there could be any ambiguity?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#610

Post by reaperducer »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #524
DenisM wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only a zip code can span cities, a single city/zip can span multiple tax authorities e.g. parts of Redmond, WA zip code 98052 are under Regional Transit Authority and others are not. I think that pretty much any assumption we're making about strict hierarchy are bound to be broken at some point.

I worked with zip codes on a project. Zip codes are a nightmare. They cross everything. There are zip codes which cross state-lines. Zip codes which are not a single contiguous area of land. So many issues.

I feel your pain. It turns out there are even a group of ZIP codes that apply only to specific businesses, buildings, or even people (if you're important enough).
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