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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#451

Post by throwaway287391 »

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…

> This example illustrates how difficult AGI is and how far we are from it.

Does it? AGI is very difficult, but I think this example only illustrates that Siri is kinda bad, given that DDG, Google, Alexa, and Bing all got it right.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#452

Post by bitwise-evan »

hi41 wrote: post #413

I have a Sony UHD TV with Android which comes preloaded with Google Assistant which support voice search. I wanted to watch a movie and I did a voice search for that movie. I expected to get a list of apps where I can watch it - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+. Instead I was presented with a list of shops few miles away. I found this interface very bad. I search on TV to watch a series/movie. Why would the Google Assi…

Likely because Google Assistant did not know it was running on a tv. It's probably the generic assistant that comes with Android. Not sure I would consider that pathetic. Tuning all the intricacies of the Assistant for each application seems like a ton of work.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#453

Post by netsharc »

enlyth wrote: post #79
jka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep; my (indirect) point is that there are multiple possible reasons why Siri may have made the judgement that London, Ontario was more relevant when answering. My guess is that Apple would find it difficult to provide robust references to John to explain why it happened, or how they've fixed it for him (and whether that fix is a one-off workaround for his complaint, etc..)

People always expect the 'obvious' interpretation, but sometimes it's difficult to define exactly what that means for everyone. As another poster said here, context is also a very important factor.

Considering (IIRC) asking about the weather is what they show on the TV ads, they should've made sure their city selection logic returns the answer that most people would find acceptable..

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#455

Post by mjhagen »

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…

I assume it triggers just on location, not in context of a time zone. I think Siri just hears tell me something about "location" and then just defaults to nearest.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#456

Post by briandear »

abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #369
tragomaskhalos wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there is a tendency among Americans full stop (with the honourable exception of the good denizens of this and other likeminded sites) to assume that everyone on the internet is American.

HN is not an exception. It's the most stark in threads about salaries.

Hacker News is an American site, specifically a Silicon Valley site. If you went to a British site, they would be talking about things from a British context. All are welcome, but it’s a bit ridiculous to complain that every conversation on the internet doesn’t support multiple currencies.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#457

Post by hn_check »

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…

"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."

You realize these do this largely based upon actual usage, right? That it turns out that a significant percentage of people are actually more interested in London, Ontario.

London Ontario has a significant military plant. An international airport. At 400,000 people, and being the hub for SW Ontario, is hardly a city "no one has heard about". I know of a number of organizations that have branch operations in London, Ontario as it's a major manufacturing city. It has a large university. It is clearly leagues below London, England, but the hilarious haughtiness by UKers about London, Ontario (always a sort of weird defensiveness and inferiority complex) does not correlate with actual reality.

Ergo, a lot of people, over time, actually are more interested in London, Ontario, among users.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#458

Post by zimpenfish »

grahamel wrote: post #441
danohuiginn wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Cambridge (UK), you can take trains either to Liverpool or to Liverpool Street Station (in London). Refugees would often be released from a nearby detention center with a ticket and instructions to take the train to Liverpool. More than one ended up lost and befuddled in Liverpool Street. [2nd-hand story from, likewise, 15 years ago. Accuracy not guaranteed]

had similar encounters with people asking how much longer it will take to get to Ashford as their Eurostar train leaves soon while on a train that stops at Ashford (Middlesex) instead of Ashford International, in Kent

cf my disaster in Italy when I got off the train at Venezia Miestra (basically an industrial estate at the wrong end of a road bridge) instead of Venezia St Lucia (the bit with the canals and architecture).

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#460

Post by r1ch »

toyg wrote: post #95
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…

TBH, Google Assistant is not that much better. In the last few months it has become absurdly racist against my Italian accent, replying to me in Italian after I ask stuff in English - and getting the question wrong anyway. But yes, Siri is the worst.

Google Assistant failed on me recently trying to set a timer. It correctly understood my "set timer for three-and-a-half minutes" request, says it's setting a timer for 3am instead and proceeds to actually set a timer for 30 seconds. How is there that much disconnect between the stages of the query?!

Screenshot: https://twitter.com/R1CH_TL/status/1252232170237640706/photo...

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