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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#171

Post by brownbat »

Aza Raskin's Ubiquity was such a clear model of how to build voice interfaces the right way, and it wasn't even a voice interface. It was a bit of a launcher that tied APIs together on the web.

Let users create and share small commands. Create a simple natural language for commands that are easy to program, extend, and remember, and narrow the scope of inputs the voice engine has to deal with.

It was so beautiful and effective and just light years ahead of what we're getting.

Microsoft gets a special mention for lost potential here. Their voice system in Windows could be a way to navigate the layered menus of the OS, but it is mostly focused on answering general queries. Voice is a great replacement for the program launcher, except it's not customizable, but that's about the extent of how much you can control the system with it. Let me do anything buried in the control panel, show me everything you know about a process when I ask, solve that first, then worry later about telling me how big the moon is. You make an OS, don't forget what that is.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#172

Post by freddie_mercury »

ensiferum wrote: post #141
mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

Don't forget the "world series" for major league baseball played in the US and Canada. ;-)

A tired quip that doesn't get more clever with time.

Guess what?

The "World Cup" didn't invite any soccer teams from Africa or Asia to their 1930 tournament but they still called it a World Cup. The UK wasn't even part of FIFA at the time but they still pretended it was a "world cup".

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#173

Post by nmca »

raverbashing wrote: post #142
AmericanChopper wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of products, US sales are just worth so much more than sales from anywhere else, that it is reasonably common to not care much about the rest of the world. I’ve worked for a few companies that started out with a heavy focus on localization, but eventually realized it was just a massive waste of money.

Chicken and egg problem, maybe the US sales being stronger are a reflection of the system's lack of ability to deal with international customers (even if only in English) Though yes, cross-border commerce is annoying.

America is also incredibly wealthy in terms of mean disposable income - irrc about 45% higher than the UK for example, with a substantially larger population.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#174

Post by nicbou »

mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

This is rather inconvenient when shopping for niche products. American website assumes that everyone on the internet is American, and you have to go through the shopping cart experience to learn that they don't ship to Canada or Europe.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#175

Post by raverbashing »

zeristor wrote: post #136
Veen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in the same way people don't usually mean "London, Ontario" when they say London, they also don't usually mean the City of London (which, for the benefit of people who may not know, is a tiny portion of London with a population less than 10,000).

Just to make things a bit more complicated London has two cities. The City of London, and the City of Westminster, which is also a borough of London. Two cities in one City; it shouldn't be allowed.

Relevant CGP Grey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#176

Post by mojuba »

Slartie wrote: post #117
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…

> If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH). I would seriously doubt this assumption. Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? On the contrary, this context information would make it much more likely that the person actually meant "London, England". Except if ther…

> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state?

True, and that's another contextual layer to deal with: that e.g. the state of Ohio is in a single timezone and that - why on Earth should someone ask the time within the same timezone? - like you said. And then there may be contextual exceptions even from this rule...

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#177

Post by aib »

mattlondon wrote: post #76

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

Can we please also take a moment to wish tiny inconveniences upon designers of applications which ignore my locale and present me with "11:06 AM" or worse, "04/05/2020"?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#178

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #172
ensiferum wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the "world series" for major league baseball played in the US and Canada. ;-)

A tired quip that doesn't get more clever with time. Guess what? The "World Cup" didn't invite any soccer teams from Africa or Asia to their 1930 tournament but they still called it a World Cup. The UK wasn't even part of FIFA at the time but they still pretended it was a "world cup".

Aye and nobody invited Antarctica to the most recent one, so it's still not a World Cup!

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#179

Post by neor »

pjc50 wrote: post #146
DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

The problem is not just that it is wrong, nor that it doesn't have enough personal information, but that it lacks proper personalisation and the ability to learn. You can't reply with "no Siri, not that London" and have it remember. It doesn't learn your voice among the people who normally use your Siri in your household. "Artificial intelligence" is always going to make mistakes, as do real humans. Humans can perfor…

Siri indeed never learns.

I've had to disable "Hey Siri" because my daughters name is pronounced vaguely similar to Siri. Worst thing is, Siri transcribes what it hears, and it transcribes my daughters name. So it doesn't hear wrong; it just activates on a different name than Siri.

I've tried telling Siri to shut up; but it never learns not to activate when I call out my daughters name.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#180

Post by brigandish »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #172
ensiferum wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the "world series" for major league baseball played in the US and Canada. ;-)

A tired quip that doesn't get more clever with time. Guess what? The "World Cup" didn't invite any soccer teams from Africa or Asia to their 1930 tournament but they still called it a World Cup. The UK wasn't even part of FIFA at the time but they still pretended it was a "world cup".

The baseball World Series has been contested since 1903. When are they going to invite the rest of the world?
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