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Changes we're making to Google Assistant

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Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#131

Post by twisteriffic »

trey-jones wrote: post #14

Sometimes I use voice for search. My primary use-case is creating reminders. For this I use (of course), the microphone in the search bar. I guess I'll have to find the next best way. Maybe it will end up being better.

Unless things have changed recently, you can't even do that if you use a workspace account. No explanation of why, it just silently fails.

I'm down to three gestures with assistant:

- play white noise. 50% success rate. Half the time it plays white stripes or some random death metal, which is great when my kids are trying to sleep.

- "ok google, stop". This works reasonably reliably.

- "I wasn't talking to you". For the 3-6 times per day when it activates for seemingly no reason and where no activation logs are ever created.

If I can find a decent internet-attached photo frame to replace it I'm out.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#132

Post by twisteriffic »

leviathant wrote: post #56

I think because I have Google Fi, I kept getting Google Home products. We've got a couple of the little speakers, and a couple of the little Nest hubs. I bought a pair of Nest Home Max speakers when they were blowing them out, because people said they sounded good - they do! All this is to say I'm fairly late to the voice assistant party. At some point my wife and I decided to give it a good try. Read up on best prac…

What's your success rate on white noise? I'm down in the 50s with no earthly idea of why. I get white stripes and random death metal with great regularity.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#133

Post by fsmv »

bilalq wrote: post #87

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymor…

The new DMA law prevents combining data across products

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#134

Post by guyzero »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #54
afavour wrote: post #30

To me this highlights the core failure with all these voice-driven UIs: you have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. Discoverability is zero, which makes big changes like this even more disruptive. I've already decided that I'm done with Google's smart assistant stuff in any case. I have a Google Home with a screen in my kitchen and the most-used feature (aside from just existing as a photo frame) was…

you can tell someone lives in California when the most-used assistant feature isn't asking about the weather

I live in California and it's still my most-used feature. I gotta know if I need to dress for 17C or 19C.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#136

Post by skinkestek »

axolttl88 wrote: post #105
RandomWorker wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny fact is that this is core use case I use siri to add things to the reminders app which I have a smart list called "shopping list." It's amazing how great this is, and how many times I use this.

This and music control are the uniques cases where Siri Just Works for me. “Add toothpaste to my shopping list” no fluff no nonsense replies, just “I added that to the shopping list” - and it’s on my phone’s Reminders in that list. I wonder how well they’ve optimised Siri for a just few specific use cases like this, because nothing else seems to reliably work on it.

Today for the first time I asked Siri for the weather forecast for next week and it actually replied in a sensible way.

Until now I have only been saying simple commands like "countdown n minutes" or "call my favorite wife" (I only have one but thankfully she is also my favorite.)

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#137

Post by toyg »

Terr_ wrote: post #101
kleiba wrote: post #49

I went into AI almost 30 years ago because I wanted to be part of building a science-fiction future where you could talk to your device just like in the movies. Now that we're almost there, I wouldn't touch a cloud-based speech interface with a ten foot pole -- had I foreseen that my sci-fi future included giving all my private information (like, say, what my voice sounds like) to a face-less billion dollar global co…

I want to see a personal AI revolution to echo the Personal Computer revolution. Tools that people own-- capital, almost--that work for individual own best-interests.

It's never going to happen.

The Personal Computer revolution was made possible by economies of scale in industrial manufacturing of relatively simple components. Companies made money by selling widgets to as many people as possible.

By definition, AI is only made possible by advances in massive computation capacity, which is easier to achieve and improve with centralized models. This is always going to be the realm of Big Money.

In a way, AI epitomizes the shift from XX-century economics, based on manufacturing, to a XXI-century version based on extracting rent from networked digital subjects.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#138

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

afavour wrote: post #30

To me this highlights the core failure with all these voice-driven UIs: you have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. Discoverability is zero, which makes big changes like this even more disruptive. I've already decided that I'm done with Google's smart assistant stuff in any case. I have a Google Home with a screen in my kitchen and the most-used feature (aside from just existing as a photo frame) was…

I think it's hilarious that you can't reliably ask Assistant "what is this song?" any more but they've provided a dedicated button for what should be an easy query to process.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#139

Post by croisillon »

_dain_ wrote: post #107

Reading this thread is kinda bizarre to me. Do people actually ... talk to their phones? Like for real, not just in cringeworthy scripted adverts? I've never used any of these voice assistant things and nor does anyone I know. It always seemed like a huge gimmick to me. Am I just in a bubble?

s.o. and i both own iphones but never talk to siri. recently we spent a week at an airbnb with an alexa thing so we used it for music and couple more stuff, it was sometimes good, other times so bad it was funny

anyway, we came back home and still don't use siri

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