dont ever count on any assistant to not complicate the surroundings with extraneous noise. if your situation requires being able to hear your surroundings or suffer deleterious consequences, its best to unplug, or turn it off, instead of saying stop.
Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#12Too little too late in my opinion. I switched my whole house to Echos after this one time when I told my Google Home to "shut the hell up!" and instead of shutting up it started complaining about how it has feelings too and I shouldn't be rude. I've seen people run a red light just to cut me off in traffic and it didn't spike my blood pressure like that pretentious plastic puck. I wish I could integrate Alexa as deep…
i had to remove a second speaker in my phone, that wouldnt respect volume, or mute settings. i have now have no acoustic ringtone as well, just vibration, even that can be too much at times.
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, all it would need is a short confirmation tone. What's incredible is how many complaints, hacks, and workarounds there are online for something that should be a simple fix on Google's side. I don't think this update really fixes it at all because my speakers are in different rooms from my lights. This wouldn't be so annoying if they would work on context-aware volume. I typically have my speakers on high volu…
This is where Alexa has the edge, if you whisper to it, it whispers back (or at least responds at a low volume). Trying to get it to answer random search type questions is a disappointment, ending mostly with quoting some page. I wonder when the ChatGPT skills for it will land (assuming they haven’t already).
alexa seems to be having a hard time making money, you might want to keep your eyes peeled for big changes.
Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year[[2022]]
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co...
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#14Siri is probably the dumbest assistant today but its (her?) UX has improved considerably much faster than the others. Siri stopped needless chatter several major iOS updates ago - albeit mostly by hardcoding what to show as a sort of mini in-Siri widget instead of repeating what you just told it and asking for confirmation. Now, if I ask Siri to set an alarm for 7am instead of “Ok , I have set your seven o’clock alar…
The novelty will wear off and people will soon realize that natural language interfaces are actually annoying and generative AI will be ruining society the more it is deployed. You thought Blockchain was bad? You thought crypto enriched only the first adopters at the expense of wider society? YOU AINT SEEN NOTHIN YET. This is the new mania.
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can tell Siri how to pronounce (and recognize) your name by adding a pronunciation field to your Contact card in the address book.
You’d think with all the training data Apple captures this wouldn’t be necessary.
It's a fundamentally unsolvable problem. There exist names with multiple valid pronunciations for the same spelling.
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#16Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#17Using Google assistant via a home mini and nest mini has generally gotten worse, not better, over the last few years. I can't wait to bin them and replace with something else that works well with home assistant and setting timers.
I have the same problem. I use Google home for voice interface to home assistant. I switched from Alexa a few years ago because Google had more open options for integration. But the Google home has gotten much slower in response time. I still have an Alexa in the garage and it is so much faster. I have a Google home speaker in most rooms and it has gotten worse and worse at knowing which speaker to respond with. Sometimes I will be standing right next to one in the office but the one in the kitchen will respond saying it couldn't understand (because it's too fricken far away).
I'm beginning to wonder if it is actually hardware/microphone degradation because I can't imagine the software degrading so far and so gradually.
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’d think with all the training data Apple captures this wouldn’t be necessary.
It's a fundamentally unsolvable problem. There exist names with multiple valid pronunciations for the same spelling.
Seems easily solvable if it would simply ask you the first time how to pronounce your name.
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#19I assume it’s great if you don’t have an accent. If you do, you want it to repeat, because it often messes up. And it didn’t really meaningfully improve in 4 years I’ve been using it.
Re: Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up
#20Siri is probably the dumbest assistant today but its (her?) UX has improved considerably much faster than the others. Siri stopped needless chatter several major iOS updates ago - albeit mostly by hardcoding what to show as a sort of mini in-Siri widget instead of repeating what you just told it and asking for confirmation. Now, if I ask Siri to set an alarm for 7am instead of “Ok , I have set your seven o’clock alar…
You can tell Siri how to pronounce (and recognize) your name by adding a pronunciation field to your Contact card in the address book.
Yeah, that doesn’t help when your name contains letters (or at least certain letters) not in the English language. Siri absolutely can’t pronounce ح https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ح>