Google's True Moonshot

The one part of this thesis that I pretty strongly disagree with is the idea that people would prefer to have long, meandering voice conversations with an AI, compared to text.

Just look at anyone under the age of 25 (35 maybe?) They can easily have long, meandering conversations with actual humans using voice, yet I see them go for text 9 times out of ten. As someone on the backside of middle age, I often find it pretty baffling. I like the succinctness of text when I need to send a quick update or ask a short question, but I normally always call someone for an in-depth conversation. But I'll see my nieces text back and forth with friends for literally hours, sometimes getting emotionally worked up, and I'm thinking "OMG, just pick up the phone to your ear and just talk to them."

But I think the reason people prefer texting is the same reason most people still prefer typing, despite tech that, these days, could easily transcribe with great accuracy. At least for me, typing frees up my brain to actually move faster. When typing, I can think about the next phrase or sentence. When talking, I find it much more difficult to "think ahead", so to speak.

So I'm really skeptical that voice interfaces will be "the wave of the future". Sure, I use OK Google a lot, but basically for the same sets of commands as everyone else (What's the weather? Set my alarm. What's next on my calendar? Etc. etc.) Occasionally I'll ask it "search-like" questions. Perhaps I suffer from a dearth of imagination, but I just have a hard time believing long voice conversations with a machine are something most folks would want.

> Yes, Android has its advantages to iOS, but they aren’t particularly meaningful to most people, and even for those that care — like me — they are not large enough to give up on iOS’s overall superior user experience.

That's not the real question though - the real question is whether people find iOS compelling enough to pay a premium for using it and put up with the ecosystem lock-in. And the user experience is only superior when you're used to it, as a longtime Android user I regularly get frustrated when having to use an iOS device...

Does anyone know if it is actually possible to completely disable the voice assistant on Android? I've changed every setting I can, and no matter what, if I plug in headphones, it'll prompt me if the connection goes loose.

Not all people experience thought the same way. Some people (like me) find it no problem to compose a sentence in advance while speaking some previous words. The speaking doesn't conflict with the composition. Some people can count, do math, or keep time silently in their head while reading. Other people can't do that because their thoughts and language processing are linked differently somehow.

For me, I prefer to dictate to my Android phone in contexts where most people choose to type, such as in a short message. It's faster than typing on-screen, and the way I think I am able to compose ahead in a way I can't do while typing. The dictation is so good these days that there are relatively few mistakes and ambiguities to correct, and the UIs for doing so have become easier.

Oh I am pretty certain someone™ will put the whole personal record into an LLM on someone elses computer (aka the cloud) and ask who needs to be fired and come up with a reason. Then they will fire them. Then the reason will turn out to be bullshit.

On the other side, there will be a ton of cowards who will say the computer told them to do X, where X is the thing they wanted to do all along. And the neat part is that you don't even need to ask a computer for that, you just pretend you did. And in the end if Xbturns out to be a shit choice, you can use the famous software error-excuse and be off the hook immediately, because apparently liability ends there automatically or something.