Modern Google is so boringly, predictably shitty.
Changes we're making to Google Assistant
181–190 of 302 posts
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#182Earlier 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.
There are supposed to be huge updates to siri this year. So lets hope they don't mess up this function.
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#183When Amazon echo came out, all the flaws of voice assistant were visible and it looked like a glorified kitchen timer but it's surprising how little they improved over the years. Nonetheless Google executives rushed to copy Alexa. At the same time the same executives did not incorporate LLMs into the Assistant when Google invented the tech. These layoffs should've fired all those dead-weight executives and the CEO fo…
That’s why I find the big tech pivot to AI so frustrating. There’s more to AI than LLM and Google and others had all the time in the world to make that. It took someone like OpenAI to show them the error of their ways.
Reminds me of legacy mobile phone makers when the iPhone launched.
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
A usual conversation my wife had with Google: > okay Google set a timer for 15 mins Certainly, and did you know I can also set an alarm for 6 am in the kitchen? > Fuck off Google
I'm not dying for them to record more than absolutely necessary, but I really hope all the voice ui engineers do log curses to know when their app is doing annoying stuff. The number of times these things screw up I definitely get really spicy and hope that feedback makes it back.
I tell my kids not to rage against voice assistants in case the machines finish up in charge.
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of click bait articles.
It’s almost like google intentionally kills good projects. I still miss Inbox more than anything. The snooze feature on an email was so amazing.
I have the opposite experience with Google Now, it is useless and showing me mostly irrelevant information.
It is like that one kid, you know he is trying hard, but he could never make it.
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes sense. What is a good LLM though? I think there's a lot of questions hidden in that part of the solution.
Yeah, beware “no true Scotsman” here. But I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that GPT-4 is “good enough” or close to it, and when the current assistant services get wired up to LLMs we’ll see a step function in their utility. Apple and Google are both definitely working on this. OpenAI’s voice mode is closer capability-wise, but doesn’t have the integrations; that would be an obvious product for them to do this yea…
Sounds to me like a silver bullet idea. "LLMs will make it good".
I don't think voice is a good interface. "It chats like a human" is the lowest possible hanging fruit in terms of product design, and bets everything on the smarts of the tech that's behind it.
We are so used to tooling faster than voice. Keyboards and taps are very, very fast. I want digital assistants as smart AND as fast as that, not something smart but incredibly slow to interact with because it needs to dumb itself down to human speech I/O.
To me, this is also not about modality or making it more generic. I just don't want an anthropomorphized smart-ass assistant. I want smart tools that actually assist me directly, no chat.
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#187Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#188To 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…
> Discoverability is zero
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#189To 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…
> Discoverability is zero What's wrong with that? In VIM I like the fact that there is no interface cluttering my workspace. If I need a feature, I search for it online.
Vim has an actual manual and things stay relatively stable across releases. It's not the case for the voice assistants, where stuff breaks randomly and features are added/removed without notification.
Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant
#190To 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…
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.
I think this kind of highlights the ios vs android user mentality. afavour is annoyed that google is trying to lock them into only using google's shopping list while you love when apple "just works" within their ecosystem.