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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

daringfireball.net

621–630 of 776 posts

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#621
post #595
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that’s what Siri says when it disables your alarm lol.

She wants you to get more sleep so she's disabling your alarm.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#622

>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…

> If you saw someone write something like "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." you'd be quick to call them out as an "obvious" bad employer.

No, really, this is just a tired nitpick. I hear a lot of complaints about Hacker News on other websites, about how the commenters are too nitpicky and "Actually, …", but I usually don't mind or actually appreciate many of those. This particular one really annoys me. Everyone knows that people make mistakes all the time, and clearly you shouldn't fire them for simple ones. But that's not the point that was being made! You just sitting here claiming people are obviously horrible because you saw the word "fire" is just not productive at all.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#623
post #505
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…

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

somewhere near Versailles, KY ;)

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#624
post #616

A while ago I videoed three particularly silly Siri bugs: • Not knowing Billie Eilish on some devices only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMkZGO5iFKw • A fascinating interpretation of two and a half months: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Giq7bQl-jk0 • Playing the wrong song for no explicable reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yj6rroaXL0 They really need to get a handle on this!

Amazing examples. Thanks for the videos.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#625
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the post points out that Siri from other Apple devices gets it right. Apple’s “generic knowledge system” can answer this. It’s only Apple Watch which has trouble. That’s kind of weird. It’s not that Siri is especially bad. It’s that “Siri” is something different depending on how you query it. Other online search systems aren’t like that, and integration and consistency are typically Apple’s forte.

Seems like an easy plausible explanation is mobile devices (like a watch or phone) take your current location into account, while a stationary device (like a HomePod) does not. Look, I'm not arguing it's not a bug, but I'm just really surprised at how software people, who I think should know better, are surprised that such bugs exist, or more importantly that completely eliminating all types of this class of bugs is…

Answering (with a human voice!) the correct time zone for the wrong "London" is about the mildest possible bug you'll ever see. I might not even call it a "bug". Let's call it a mild inconvenience of modern life!

The aspect that's ruffling feathers, I believe, is that it's one of those cases where someone might have reasonably assumed something was built one way 'under the hood', and was confronted with an effect which forced them to see that it was not implemented that way at all. The issue isn't the 'bug'. It's the realization that their mental model was wrong.

Specifically, something has a name ("Siri") which might lead one to believe that everything from that manufacturer using that name refers to the same thing. (Isn't that the point of a name?) Clearly, it's not.

Your hypothesis sounds plausible, so I tested it. I have a Mac laptop, which has the same 'Location Services' that iOS has (AFAIK). I asked Mac Siri what time it is in London, and got a response for the one in England (further away from me). So that doesn't explain it, or at least not all of it.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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? I've worked with some clueless people. All of which were capable of learning with some instruction and guidance. Had a cameraman once forget to press "record" at the beginning of an event - nearly costing me a client. I was pissed at the ignorance of the mist…

That's not comparable at all. People make mistakes, they forget; if I asked someone to bring me a coffee and they brought me the beans because they had a brain fart, I might laugh and be OK with it. If they consistently brought me beans and water, I'd think they were being malicious, and if they brought me beans and water, even though they know what a coffee is, and genuinely acted clueless about it, I would be seriously annoyed. If you're going to bring up "maybe they didn't really know what a coffee was": no, that isn't the point.

> As an aside, I never ask anyone to make me coffee unless they are a trained barista, and even they make drinks that aren't what I want on occasion.

Actually, I don't even drink coffee! I fail to see how this is relevant to the discussion at all.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#627
post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically your best bet to get it fixed is almost certainly to post your real address here as part of this thread.

Or post another address with the same problem, assuming it affects the entire street.

It doesn't. Even the address for the other half of the duplex (my address + 2) works fine. Sometimes we just provide that address instead and catch the delivery people when they arrive, because it's easier than worrying about the Maps issue.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#628
post #497

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.

My address has been blatantly broken in Google Maps for years now. When you enter it, for some reason it deletes the house number and just looks up the street, which ends up pointing to somewhere about a 10 minute drive away. For example, if my address was "123 Elm Street" it just ignores the "123" and searches for "Elm Street" instead. We have to give special instructions all the time to delivery drivers and other p…

I had issues with google maps being broken for the address when I moved in. I reported it too many times to count using the website.

In the end what worked for me was registering as google maps client/customer, reproducing the issue via API, and then reporting it as an API issue. The underlaying data was fixed within a day or two, and I got my emails answered by google engineer within (literally) minutes.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#629
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? Who said they were in that state when asking? People travel.

I find it unlikely that someone in that scenario would ask "What time is it in London?" rather than "What time is it in Ohio?"

[deleted]

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#630
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Greece it's sometimes used. 10:00π.μ. = 10:00 προ μεσημβρίας = 10:00 before noon 10:00μ.μ. = 10:00 μετά μεσημβρίαν = 10:00 after noon

Transliterating this into the Latin alphabet is fun since it gives "p.m." for before noon.

Indeed! My mother once mistakenly put an alarm for 6π.μ. thinking it was 6p.m., and suddenly at 6am in the morning it was blasting off for no reason.

That's what living for so many years in another country does to your native tongue

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