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I Fired Google

theartofdoingstuff.com

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Re: I Fired Google

#11

Post by elbasti »

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible.

I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example:

"Hey google, play Blackstar"

(Plays the album blackstar by David Bowie, not what I wanted)

"Hey google, play "Blackstar by Radiohead"

(Plays the right thing).

Now:

"Hey Google, play Blackstar by Radiohead" can result in playing... something vaguely semantically related with no way to course correct. In this exact instance (happened yesterday!) it played an album by the hip hop due Black Star.

I will admit that there are some superpowers hidden in Gemini that were not present in the previous AI assistant. I recently discovered that Gemini can manipulate the navigation app, and a prompt like "Mute alerts" works, which is kind of cool. However like OP said, it's incredibly verbose, which is super annoying.

Re: I Fired Google

#12

Post by hylaride »

The only things these "smart" speakers are good for is timers, adding to lists (especially grocery lists in the kitchen), and playing music. And even then they often stutter...

Re: I Fired Google

#13

Post by nativeit »

itodd wrote: post #3

> Then I went directly to Amazon and ordered an Alexa. Dear lord.

Well, now when she wants to know the symptoms of dehydration, she can purchase some sort of Gatorade really convenient like.

Re: I Fired Google

#15

Post by Hugsbox »

I Fired theartofdoingstuff.com for extremely obnoxious ads - particularly the "Would you like to save this stuff?" one that greys out the rest of the article you're trying to read to... checks notes... ask if you want the article emailed to you? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Re: I Fired Google

#16

Post by goopthink »

itodd wrote: post #3

> Then I went directly to Amazon and ordered an Alexa. Dear lord.

> I ordered it because when one superpower fails you, eventually you have to try the other one before they eventually ruin the thing that was working perfectly well before they tried to improve it in order to make enough money to be a trio of planets.

When your options are a few competing BigCos and you don’t have incentive to try to build it for yourself because it straddles the annoying in-between space of “frustrating enough to do something” and “ not frustrating or valuable enough to actually solve the problem.”

Re: I Fired Google

#17

Post by bilekas »

zf00002 wrote: post #14

Stopped after repeating the false claim that bmw charges a subscription for heated seats.

It was very much implemented by BMW.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/bmw-commits-to-subscriptions-e...

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...

They rolled it back though afaik because the whole idea was a comically evil idea.

Re: I Fired Google

#18

Post by RobRivera »

elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

I wonder how much of it is them trying to minmax their revenue generating marketing algos for content discovery. (Willing to bet it's somewhat relative)

Re: I Fired Google

#19

Post by chymerax »

The whole upgrade thing is stupid. For years I was able to tell my phone in the car: "Play this song on spotify" and it did it. Not any more. "Ok google! Set a timer for 20 minutes." -> "Sorry Bob, I don't have permission to do that". "Ok google, navigate home" -> "Navigating to Store@Home24!" (half a country away).

I agree. I wasn't smart but it was useful in certain cases. Now it's just lobotomized.

Re: I Fired Google

#20

Post by ncr100 »

complianceowll wrote: post #2

This was so spot on I felt like standing up and yelling, "Yes! Exactly!"

I have a similar experience.

Having used Google home assistant since it came out for all the things that it's good for, and watched its quality fluctuate, I find I really have to be more careful nowadays when I ask it questions because it can go overboard more easily.

Is there a term in AI research where it underappreciates the specificity that is being asked for?

Perhaps the AI could be default prompted, "you are a kitchen AI assistant and should tend to answer in facts and details and that are relevant to the current moment."

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