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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#121

Post by empath75 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #107
andy_ppp wrote: post #89

I just bought a Homepod because the price has been reduced to a more normal amount, I think it started at £319 so it being £200 in the UK seemed quite good. I have to say the sound quality seems average to me - I admit it produces a lot of sound and bass from it's small frame but I like a bit of top end sparkle and it basically seems to have zero top end at all. As for Siri there is no point in asking it questions or…

> no point in asking it questions or talking to it for anything but changing volume and setting timers. A smart speaker this is not. For what it’s worth, that’s what anyone uses any “smart speaker” or assistant for. Settings timers/alarms, asking for the weather, and maybe starting music. Whether Siri is capable of more is a good question, but people don’t use them for any more.

They only use them for that because it sucks at everything else.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#122

Post by ninkendo »

lqet wrote: post #22

Ranking and NLP aren't easy. If you are asking a slightly related question (for example, "What is the weather in London"), and if you are living at some place where the nearest major town is called London, but is not London in England, you would expect it to give you the weather in "your" London. However, it you are asking for the time in a particular city, then the ranking should of course consider whether the timez…

> A simple "Which London?" could've removed the ambiguity and given Siri the opportunity to learn something about that particular person (that London, England is more important to him than London in Canada).

IMO I would be very disappointed if Siri started asking clarifying questions at a significantly higher rate. Siri is already a bit too chatty, and I never feel like having an extended conversation with her.

I’d rather she just say the wrong thing (but make it clear that the answer is for a specific London, e.g. “The time in London Ontario is...”) and I can correct her. It’s the same number of conversational “turns”, but in the happy path when she actually gets it right the first time, it’s one-shot and done.

It’s a lot harder to get signal on this for learning, but I feel like there are ways around this as well. (Maybe saying “thanks” can signal she got something right, and prefixing the next utterance with “no” could signal it was wrong...)

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#123

Post by simondw »

irishsultan wrote: post #104
qayxc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of context, the best answer is London, UK. You actually need to imagine additional context to make any other answer plausible. If you hear the sound of hooves clip-clopping nearby, you think horses, not zebras.

In the absence of context there is no best answer. You need context to know why London, UK is much more likely to be the right London "without additional context".

Sure, but maybe a reasonable default context would be "a human currently living on Earth is asking the question."

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#124

Post by dustinmoris »

Veen wrote: post #35
avip wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm too lazy to clarify my thoughts, you're fired.

If you have to constantly "clarify your thoughts" because your assistant is incapable of basic inferences based on context and general knowledge, then they aren't likely to be much use as an assistant.

Maybe GPS data and the fact that due to a pandemic there's a travel ban the actual intelligent answer is in fact "London, Canada" and only a stupid person would fail to see that?

We can spin this all day long. The truth is, if you want a very specific answer, and you fail to ask a specific question, then you're the only one to blame.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#125

Post by empath75 »

irishsultan wrote: post #104
qayxc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of context, the best answer is London, UK. You actually need to imagine additional context to make any other answer plausible. If you hear the sound of hooves clip-clopping nearby, you think horses, not zebras.

In the absence of context there is no best answer. You need context to know why London, UK is much more likely to be the right London "without additional context".

The context is being an ordinary human being in the world. I think a significant chunk of people _in_ Ontario would expect the one in England.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#126

Post by erikbye »

molteanu wrote: post #103
erikbye wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that this piece of "news" is front page is really stupid. There was a BBC piece yesterday about the condition in the Malakasa camp in Greece ... HN is not a news website in the traditional sense, even though "news" is in the name. How is this not obvious? For what you are seeking you should go to reuters.com, you'd probably have better luck.

Meaning, the rest of the world literally has other pressing problems than the ones the planet's most capable people are spending their days with. But I get it now. This new technology is not actually about saving the people, is about controlling them, regardless of what the motto of big tech might be. That quote from Dune is still right on track: "Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this…

> the ones the planet's most capable people are spending their days with.

I think you are greatly exaggerating the capability and means of the average HN visitor, submitter, and commenter.

That said, I think people, generally, are unable to work non-stop, 24/7 on just the important problems.

Commenting on some trivial shit here doesn't mean you don't give a fuck about the problems of the world, or that you're not working on them.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#127

Post by t-shaped »

mojuba wrote: 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…

All of these situations are fairly complicated. So the best thing to do ( even for a human assistant ) is to ask more questions. That is the best way to get clarification rather than just trying to figure out what the context is. The assistant should be able to ask a simple question: "Are you talking about the London in UK or Ohio?"

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#128

Post by molteanu »

kristiandupont wrote: post #119
molteanu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning, the rest of the world literally has other pressing problems than the ones the planet's most capable people are spending their days with. But I get it now. This new technology is not actually about saving the people, is about controlling them, regardless of what the motto of big tech might be. That quote from Dune is still right on track: "Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this…

Your outrage rings pretty hollow as you are on Hacker News spending your time complaining rather than doing something about all the problems in the world.

I am doing something. I am raising awareness. Isn't this the national sport in fighting the world problems?!

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#130

Post by globular-toast »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #111
globular-toast wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any developer who thinks dates, times, UTC offsets and locales/cultures is "easy" is grossly incompetent (unless, of course, they've never worked with human-facing software before, in which case their naiveté can be forgiven).

“Human facing”? Any software worth it’s salt needs to deal with this stuff. Unless it’s a toy program. I quite enjoy Timezone stuff, perversely. Might be Stockholm?

If you're writing firmware for an embedded device without a clock then you'll never have to deal with this. If your software only ever has to interact with other software then you wouldn't ever use time zones unless you really have to. Only humans demand time zones.
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