Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Siri, What Time Is It in London?

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 776 posts

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#541

Post by ghaff »

pdonis wrote: post #534
pow_pp_-1_v wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution for it is, sadly, more data. So I imagine if Google or Apple can listen, "see" and has access to your every electronic communication do. They could eventually build a model that "knows" everything about you. I am pretty sure we have the technology to do it. But the privacy implications for this is terrifying.

> The solution for it is, sadly, more data. I don't see why that would be necessary, since a human does not need to know everything about you or have access to everything you've ever communicated to anyone to guess accurately that when you ask about "London" you probably mean London, England.

>to guess accurately that when you ask about "London" you probably mean London, England.

It depends on your circles/bubble and the context.

Sure, for me and almost certainly the majority of people the majority of the time, assuming London = London, England is almost certainly the correct disambiguation. However, maybe not someone in Ontario or Ohio asking a question about "London." And I expect that the person who sees London, England as this far away place they certainly don't have regular questions about would find that always being the default annoying.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#542

Post by jodrellblank »

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…

I think you're making basically the same mistake that Gruber is in the article, and that all "location based services" are making. The context isn't the current location, it's where people's attention is.

To take Gruber's example, if you had an office in London Ontario, were talking about setting up a video call, then asked your assistant "what time is it in London", and they picked London England because it's the most famous, you'd question how smart they were.

The context is not where you are, or which "London" is largest or most popular or least driving distance away or where you grew up or where you lived once, the context is why you are asking about the time in London, it's all of the present brain/attention/conversation/local state bundled together.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#543

Post by pdonis »

jason0597 wrote: post #474
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge swaths of Americans who will literally not know what 17:00 translates to in AM/PM. And even for the Americans that do know, virtually all of them (unless they are in the military or another profession that commonly uses 24h time), will have to "translate" by subtracting 12 in their head for PM times. 24h time is extremely rare in everyday use in the US.

>subtracting 12 in their head for PM times. Is that how you're supposed to do it? All my life I've been subtracting 2 and ignoring the fist digit for PM times (with the exception of post 20:00 times). I just noticed that when I was a kid and been using that all this time e.g. 17:00 - 2:00 = 15:00 => 5:00

> All my life I've been subtracting 2 and ignoring the fist digit for PM times (with the exception of post 20:00 times)

Which is the same as subtracting 12 (subtracting 2 and then subtracting 10, which is what ignoring the first digit does for times before 20:00).

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#544

Post by pdonis »

ghaff wrote: post #541
pdonis wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution for it is, sadly, more data. I don't see why that would be necessary, since a human does not need to know everything about you or have access to everything you've ever communicated to anyone to guess accurately that when you ask about "London" you probably mean London, England.

>to guess accurately that when you ask about "London" you probably mean London, England. It depends on your circles/bubble and the context. Sure, for me and almost certainly the majority of people the majority of the time, assuming London = London, England is almost certainly the correct disambiguation. However, maybe not someone in Ontario or Ohio asking a question about "London." And I expect that the person who se…

> It depends on your circles/bubble and the context.

But not on the intimate personal details and communications of the individual person, which was what the post I was responding to was about. Sure, there are going to be circumstances where London, England is not the most likely guess, but you don't need to have access to someone's entire personal history to know what those circumstances are, since a human can spot those circumstances without having that knowledge.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#545

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jordanpg wrote: post #489
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they should have just left it in the lab until they can. Totally disagree, because the only way these assistants get better is with real-world usage (which is why I can definitely agree that one should wonder why Apple isn't improving as fast as the competition). It was only a couple years ago that using Google Assistant was an extremely frustrating experience. I'd say it got about 5-10% of my words wrong, which me…

It is still an extremely frustrating experience. All of them: Google, Amazon, Apple. That it gets it wrong, ever, is too much for me. The first time I ever had to repeat myself getting directions on the road I was done. I don't understand why anyone other than hobbyists can stand to use these things. They are so obviously years away from ready for serious use, and the novelty value wore off years ago. Not shitposting…

> That it gets it wrong, ever, is too much for me. The first time I ever had to repeat myself getting directions on the road I was done.

How can you stand to deal with humans?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#546

Post by austinl »

I've returned to manually calling people manually from the Contacts app because of how frustrated I'd get every time I'd try to make a phone call through Siri. The whole exchange takes about 20 seconds:

"Hey Siri, call John Smith"

Siri: "Did you mean John Smith?"

"Yes John Smith"

Siri: "Calling John Smith"...

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#547

Post by akira2501 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #542
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…

I think you're making basically the same mistake that Gruber is in the article, and that all "location based services" are making. The context isn't the current location, it's where people's attention is. To take Gruber's example, if you had an office in London Ontario, were talking about setting up a video call, then asked your assistant "what time is it in London", and they picked London England because it's the mo…

> you'd question how smart they were.

If I'm physically in a city named London, and you ask me literally "what is the time in London" that's actually an ambiguous question. Why would you specify the name of the place you're currently in? Typically someone in that instance would just ask "What time is it?"

I don't hire people to make "educated guesses" on my behalf. If they detect an ambiguity then I expect them to initiate a dialog that resolves that, not just blithely pick the first thing that comes to their mind.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#549

Post by sgjohnson »

ranieuwe wrote: post #345
larrik wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually didn't realize am/pm wasn't something Europeans did...

We love what US calls “military time”

24h clock isn't exactly military time.

14:30 in military time would be fourteen hundred thirty hours, or one-four-three-zero hours, or in written format 1430Z, Z being Zulu (UTC), or an actual offset.

Post reply on HN