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Changes we're making to Google Assistant

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Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#251

Post by 015a »

bilalq wrote: post #87

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymor…

I feel its genuinely important to not dismiss this valid observation, and recognize it as actually something that is happening. Its not just Google, and I think Johnathan Blow captures the trend really well in this talk [1].

Both the doomers and e/accs can be wrong. "Today is the worst that AI will be" isn't a foregone conclusion. There aren't many domains of software that haven't degraded in quality, and even functionality, if at least a little bit; and there is no evidence that the same won't happen to AI. Technologists say AGI will happen; but why this happens is really outside the hands of the technologists, somewhat more in the hands of the capitalists, but really outside of anyone's hands and in the capitalist system itself; it can't be stopped.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#252

Post by rossjudson »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #171
_dain_ wrote: post #107

Reading this thread is kinda bizarre to me. Do people actually ... talk to their phones? Like for real, not just in cringeworthy scripted adverts? I've never used any of these voice assistant things and nor does anyone I know. It always seemed like a huge gimmick to me. Am I just in a bubble?

It's just faster to say "OK Google, navigate to work" than pulling out a keyboard and opening apps. Even though for some reason I still can't time when Google is going to start listening after all these years, and have to repeat myself a lot. I think it was fine-tuned for American voices at first and got worse when expanded worldwide.

Although I hate my Audi Q7, one thing I do like is that you can hold the voice command button on the steering wheel and tell android auto what you want to do (like go home, or play your music of choice).

Simple things through voice are good, and a lot better than fiddling with your phone while you're trying to drive.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#253

Post by mrtksn »

bilalq wrote: post #87

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymor…

Maybe they did A/B testing and found out that it reduces the revenue when it’s populated with everything you need? Maybe you end up using the phone less?

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#254

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

phillco wrote: post #222
SebRollen wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constant "By the way..." from Alexa drove me nuts. If you say "Alexa, stop by the way", it'll get the device to stop responding with follow-ups for ~24h. I ended up creating a routine that runs every night at 4am to lower the volume to zero, automatically say "stop by the way" to the device, and then raise the volume a minute later, and Alexa has stopped with the follow ups

I just discovered this today, but if you whisper to your Echo, it will skip all of the "by the way" BS (it will also reply in a whisper, which is kind of creepy, but you win some, you lose some).

Is it actually lowering the volume or is it fake whispering at the same decibels? I could kind of believe either.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#255

Post by havercosine »

ethbr1 wrote: post #53
pflenker wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of what you mentioned in your first sentence, any ideas to improve discoverability are horrible. I hate it when Alexa does not play my podcast right away but explains to me how I can change episodes. I despise Alexa for telling me that I have some notification before starting my timer. And so on - any voice only attempt to explain me something without me asking for it means adding a lot of friction between me…

The issue is that everyone removed hierarchical menus and replaced them with... nothing. There is no command ontology anymore. Consequently, discovering commands in-app is UX anathema. "Use the internet, buddy. One of our customers probably documented how-to somewhere on it."

Spot on! Lot of voice assistants have been following "if we could" line instead of "if we should line". For many straightforward applications, clicking through well defined interface can be the least error prone way to get the job done.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#256

Post by seanmcdirmid »

esafak wrote: post #77
afavour wrote: post #30

To 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…

It's not just voice, but conversational interfaces in general that have this discoverability problem. That means chatGPT. I'm glad people are discovering it, if you excuse the pun. CUIs are not a panacea, not a replacement for conventional UIs.

There are obviously cases where CUIs work well: while driving if you don’t have a physical button to do the thing you want, the CUI is better than a screen UI, and if it’s a complex thing, you would never have a physical button for it anyways. In the home when you want to control devices in the morning “open all the shades” or “open the north shades”, unlock the door and start the car, etc…

Not really conversations though, more like accessible commands. I don’t think we get conversations until the tech improves and the latency goes way down, meaning on device processing of speech at the very least.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#257

Post by Terr_ »

toyg wrote: post #137
Terr_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to see a personal AI revolution to echo the Personal Computer revolution. Tools that people own-- capital, almost--that work for individual own best-interests.

It's never going to happen. The Personal Computer revolution was made possible by economies of scale in industrial manufacturing of relatively simple components. Companies made money by selling widgets to as many people as possible. By definition, AI is only made possible by advances in massive computation capacity, which is easier to achieve and improve with centralized models. This is always going to be the realm o…

> By definition, AI is only made possible by advances in massive computation capacity

By what? In the words of Inigo Montoya: "The way you use that word... I do not think it means what you think it means."

Sure, we're kinda-brute-forcing things now, but that's no physical law (nor dictionary definition) declaring that digital assistants will be just captive pen-pal lamp-genies of Big Companies inside their Big Computer Rooms forever.

Perhaps someday you'll be able to grab an off-the-shelf AI core, "flash" its mutable-circuits/firmware/weights with a starting state, and pop it into an appropriate chassis for the task.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#258

Post by hughesjj »

alejo wrote: post #215
jpcfl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that a lot of these features are hard-coded, and they are deprecating them in order to replace them with a more generic LLM-based assistant.

If this was the case, wouldn’t had been better to axe these features once they were ready to roll out the new LLM-based functionality?

No you see, this way they can't easily roll back if the LLM functionality sucks and that's somehow better

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#259

Post by squarefoot »

afavour wrote: post #30

To 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…

> I'd have something in my hands I just pulled from the fridge (e.g. milk) and be able to add it to the list without interrupting what I'm doing.

Non user-hostile technology would happily solve this problem: you pull from the fridge what is about to finish or before throwing the empty container into the trash, put it in front of a mini camera mounted on the fridge, image (possibly also barcode) recognition would identify the product, then you say a magic word and it would be added it to your list directly on the phone, then software would calculate the best path to the shops having in stock the products in the list. Sadly, this would be hijacked by businesses in no time by making it dependent from some cloud services then selling your data to other advertisers or by pestering you with offers of similar competing products. As of today, I still prefer a pen and a piece of paper over any type of automation.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#260

Post by _nivlac_ »

afavour wrote: post #30

To 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…

I had the same issue with the Google Assistant/AnyList integration, and I hacked together a pair of Lambda functions to move Keep list items to an AnyList list. Both unofficial APIs ;)

If anybody's curious, repo with most of the code is here: https://github.com/csimpf/keep2anylist. Happy to answer any questions about it!

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