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Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#32I have been using Google Now for a few months now and it has been amazing. Example 1: One night I was going to a Roots concert and I went through the venue's website on my Google Chrome on my laptop. Then, right around concert time, Google Now alerted me to what subway I should take to get there. Example 2: I searched for the Phillies score once on my tablet, and now my phone tells me about the score of each game. Ag…
I work from home but visit my brother's place (in the next city) fairly often. I wonder if Google Now would think I work there. If so, I wonder if there's a way to tell it what's really going on.
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure Google guessed in Example 3? It usually does the "leave now to get there on time" for every event in your calendar (for which it can find some kind of geographical reference, fitting or not).
Yes, it mines google latitude data for that. Since I left my office job and started running my own business from home. Latitude has been getting very confused about where I work. Last time I checked it thought I worked at the local shopping centre. Edit: Just checked, it now thinks I work at my kid's school.
You can explicitly tell it where you work FYI: https://latitude.google.com/locationhistory/b/0/dashboard
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#34So far Google Now is pretty impressive. I love that it will post a reminder in my notifications before an event telling me when I have to leave to make it there on time based on current traffic conditions.
This can have some amusing results when the input isn't as Google expects. For example, in my office the conference rooms are named after streets, some of which are also cities. So when I have a 2pm meeting in Folsom, I get a notification a couple of hours before telling me I should leave soon so I can make it to Folsom, CA in time.
That's cute. Is there a way to tell Google that you mean a different "Folsom"?
Google's Knowledge Graph does have a concept of name ambiguity (as does Wikipedia; it has disambiguation pages). For example, if I do a Google search for "Taj Mahal", the right sidebar shows details about the landmark in India, but below that it also offers to give me more information about the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, or Taj Mahal the musician.
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#35Interesting. I'm thinking that Android vs Apple may be decided on the simple fact that sufficiently-better AI trumps any-amount-better UI. Lawsuits and supposed openness be damned.
That actually seems like a really interesting observation. I've never specifically thought of systems in terms of UI v. AI before, but it makes sense if you think of all operations in any computational system as the result of data manipulation by some "intelligence", and user interface as more specifically the interface between that data and user intelligence.
In a computational system, computational intelligence will be used in all instances possible, until such a point as it is either insufficiently advanced or insufficiently informed to continue without making a call to the user intelligence. Thus, the more advanced a computational intelligence and the more information at its disposal, the less interface with user intelligence necessary. By that reasoning, it follows that the ideal or perfect interface would be one which treats the user purely as a data source (more precisely, as the absolute last data source in the pecking order – one to use when absolutely no other data source accessible could possibly provide the same data or make the same decision with reasonable confidence).
In that sense, it's likely that going forward we'll see UIs moving more in the direction of Now / Wolfram Alpha / Siri and using such mechanisms to manipulate and return greater amounts of information.
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it mines google latitude data for that. Since I left my office job and started running my own business from home. Latitude has been getting very confused about where I work. Last time I checked it thought I worked at the local shopping centre. Edit: Just checked, it now thinks I work at my kid's school.
You can explicitly tell it where you work FYI: https://latitude.google.com/locationhistory/b/0/dashboard
Thank you! This needs to be much more obvious.
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#37Interesting. I'm thinking that Android vs Apple may be decided on the simple fact that sufficiently-better AI trumps any-amount-better UI. Lawsuits and supposed openness be damned.
That actually seems like a really interesting observation. I've never specifically thought of systems in terms of UI v. AI before, but it makes sense if you think of all operations in any computational system as the result of data manipulation by some "intelligence", and user interface as more specifically the interface between that data and user intelligence. In a computational system, computational intelligence wil…
Butlers had a pretty good UI.
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#38I have been using Google Now for a few months now and it has been amazing. Example 1: One night I was going to a Roots concert and I went through the venue's website on my Google Chrome on my laptop. Then, right around concert time, Google Now alerted me to what subway I should take to get there. Example 2: I searched for the Phillies score once on my tablet, and now my phone tells me about the score of each game. Ag…
I work from home but visit my brother's place (in the next city) fairly often. I wonder if Google Now would think I work there. If so, I wonder if there's a way to tell it what's really going on.
I did that a while [two-city] - seems to keep a separate home/work per city.
Also the home/work thing shows up in Google's information about you on Latitude - so you can approve/edit/delete - see http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/27740/android-setup-your-home...
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#39While this is incredibly smart and a very impressive application of machine learning, does anyone actually want this? I'm quite capable of looking at traffic reports or bus times myself when I need to. I actually think I'd find this pretty annoying, if my phone told me sports score before I'd had a chance to watch the game, or if it started second guessing me at every turn. This has the feel of valet parking, while it sounds fine and convenient and luxurious, in reality I find it very undesirable and will avoid places that have it.
There's something very much at the core of life in experiencing it for ourselves without having a computer to hand hold us the whole time and remind us it's time leave for work. I don't find it creepy, just embarrassing to feel like I need to be babied so much by technology.
Re: Google's Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead
#40Google Now is awesome.
Search for a place on Google - card shows up with driving directions on phone.
Morning and evening, shows up driving time/directions for work/home.