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Changes we're making to Google Assistant

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Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#281

Post by lxgr »

emmelaich wrote: post #191
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…

So what happened? Google Assistant was pretty cool and a groundbreaker. Then ... nothing happened for years, until ChatGPT gave them a kick. Maybe it was all the kerfuffle about AI ethics that nobbled them for a while.

I wish they'd spend some of that energy on exploring the ethics of neglecting and abandoning products that people spend time and energy on, integrating them into their homes and workflows.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#283

Post by swalling »

afavour wrote: post #277
nf3 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who in their right mind would bring this kind of intrusive technology into their home, right into their most intimate space? I seriously don't get it. I mean what's wrong with keeping a pen & paper shopping list on your fridge?

In what world is your kitchen your most intimate space?

The one where you actually have meaningful and personal conversations with your partner and family in the kitchen. You know, like a human.

Also a lot of people rent studios and one bedrooms or otherwise have open floor plans.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#284

Post by theptip »

alganet wrote: post #186
theptip wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t think I’m naively expecting LLMs to magically fix things. The reason voice is currently a bad interface is that the agents are dumb, mapping verbs to hand-coded action trees. The missing pieces are first intelligence and second long-term adaptability/personalization.

LLMs can plausibly solve both.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#285

Post by rattray »

tayloramurphy wrote: post #152
verelo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've been using (and paying!) https://simpl.fyi/ for a few years now and it makes up for missing inbox for me. It was founded by the design lead for Inbox. Highly recommend if you use a Chromium-based browser.

How does it compare to Superhuman? (I use that now)

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#286

Post by afavour »

swalling wrote: post #283
afavour wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world is your kitchen your most intimate space?

The one where you actually have meaningful and personal conversations with your partner and family in the kitchen. You know, like a human. Also a lot of people rent studios and one bedrooms or otherwise have open floor plans.

I’m not denying that personal conversations happen in the kitchen. But the most intimate space? That’s pure hyperbole.

Not to mention I think the paranoia about these home assistant devices is overblown. Do you use a smartphone? In your intimate kitchen?? It has just as much capability to listen to you.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#287

Post by pkulak »

wolverine876 wrote: post #157
pkulak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have a Google Home in the kitchen, but what I really want it to display is data from my weather station, transit info, the time, etc. I can't control that damn thing at all. I've got a TidByt coming today, which I have high hopes for!

Just setup a monitor with some browser windows on it? Or one browser window with a local page that embeds the info?

Eh, Tidbyt is cheaper, easier to set up, and looks nicer:

https://github.com/pkulak/tidbyt

It ended up working great!

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#288

Post by pkulak »

rohansingh wrote: post #117
spankalee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used it myself, but Home Assistant can cast to a Google Home Hub, so afaiu, you can set up a whole dashboard of widgets and controls and use it from a stock Home Hub.

I'm going to have to try that out, my whole apartment is mostly Google Home-based. That said, we are building a Home Assistant integration at Tidbyt as well.

Nice! What I really want, though, is a local API! I can use a starlark script to grab entity states from my local Home Assistant super easy... but then I have to cUrl them up to a Tidbyt server somewhere, only to have it sent right back into my house. Seems kinda silly, and will break anytime my internet goes out.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#289

Post by alganet »

theptip wrote: post #284
alganet wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t think I’m naively expecting LLMs to magically fix things. The reason voice is currently a bad interface is that the agents are dumb, mapping verbs to hand-coded action trees. The missing pieces are first intelligence and second long-term adaptability/personalization. LLMs can plausibly solve both.

I can see a demand for increasing or expanding LLM context without summarizing. We're not there yet though. Limits are tough.

Also, I don't want to engineer a prompt to convince my assistant to do my bidding. That's just hand coding action trees with extra steps.

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