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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#691

Post by behnamoh »

pow_pp_-1_v wrote: post #475
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…

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.

The problem is these "AI"s are plain stupid. The solution for it is moving on from gimmicky and hacky solutions to true AI.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#692

Post by odysseus »

_ps6d wrote: post #497
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you had not worked at Google at the time, there’s basically zero chance you could’ve got anyone at the company to do anything about it.

My address has been blatantly broken in Google Maps for years now. When you enter it, for some reason it deletes the house number and just looks up the street, which ends up pointing to somewhere about a 10 minute drive away. For example, if my address was "123 Elm Street" it just ignores the "123" and searches for "Elm Street" instead. We have to give special instructions all the time to delivery drivers and other p…

Curious if the address is correct in Apple Maps?

With Apple, I've submitted perhaps 5 corrections for 5 different (usually minor) problems in 5 years. Problems like a place claims to take Apple Pay when it doesn't. Or the actual place is across the street from where Maps claims it is.

In each case, Apple sends back a notification within 2-3 weeks saying they've fixed the problem, and when I've checked, it has always been resolved. Pretty happy with the service.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#693

Post by odysseus »

kempbellt wrote: post #566
jvolkman wrote: post #357

At some point about a year ago I noticed that I could no longer ask my Google Home devices "what's the weather?". I'd just get a generic "I don't understand" response. But more specific queries such as "What's the weather in Seattle?" would work. After a couple of weeks of this, I somehow got the idea that it was related to the devices' configured locations. And sure enough, telling the Home that I lived in the next…

What if you asked Google "what's the weather?" and it gave you a dictionary response of "weather" as an answer? Or with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside". "What is the weather report for today/this week?" is a more accurate question, despite an annoying amount of verbosity. But answers are still given relatively. "Cloudy" could be an accurate answer, for now . But it will be "Sunny" this aftern…

I've actually had this with Siri. I've asked about the wind and Siri gave me the definition of wind.

Other times it will tell me the wind speed.

Other times, for the same query, it will tell me the wind speed AND direction, which is what I want.

But it's always random what I get: wind speed, wind direction, a combination of both, or (occasionally) the definition of wind.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#694

Post by pxx »

criddell wrote: post #241
Recursing wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think almost everybody in European countries knows about AM/PM, but I certainly get confused by 11:59 AM vs 12:00 AM

I've never been able to keep 12 AM vs 12 PM straight in my head. If I have to put something on my calendar or set an alarm for that time, I always use 11:59 AM or PM. Is there a mnemonic or trick for remembering?

You can use first principles. "12:00pm" likely refers to the minute that contains the seconds "12:00:00pm, 12:00:01pm, 12:00:02pm... 12:00:59pm". Each of the seconds that follows the first one is non-ambiguous (they're in the afternoon). It would make little sense to have the first time be 12 hours apart from the other ones. Thus the boundary point 12:00pm refers to noon and the boundary point 12:00am refers to midnight.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#695

Post by caycep »

rm445 wrote: post #653
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #523

Siri doesn't know that my front door is called "FRONT DOOR". I only have one smart lock, which works perfectly, and it is called "FRONT DOOR" in HomeKit. When I ask Siri about my FRONT DOOR she responds that she cannot find it. When I ask Siri about the status of my DOOR, she responds with "The FRONT DOOR is locked/unlocked". I'll then say 'Alright Siri you literally just used the phrase "FRONT DOOR" five seconds ago…

All these speech assistants are almost stateless, aren't they? I mean, they can ask you questions and go into a listen-for-an-answer state, but, at least last time I tried, you can't have a conversation about your conversation with them and improve their comprehension of anything. It's like talking to a command line, or those old Palm Pilots you had to learn a special alphabet to scribble on. It's quite interesting t…

yeah, that's what I'm wondering about - is it going to be hard to implement things like this until LSTMs with better "memory" get good enough for consumer use?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#696

Post by odysseus »

saagarjha wrote: post #612
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like an easy plausible explanation is mobile devices (like a watch or phone) take your current location into account, while a stationary device (like a HomePod) does not. Look, I'm not arguing it's not a bug, but I'm just really surprised at how software people, who I think should know better, are surprised that such bugs exist, or more importantly that completely eliminating all types of this class of bugs is…

Siri is often self-inconsistent. Ask a query again on the same device and you might get a completely different answer.

Exactly. I'll speak into my AirPods "Hey Siri, 30 minute outdoor walk" to start a 30 minute workout on my Apple Watch.

Half the time, Siri replies with "I'm sorry, you don't have an app for that. You can try searching for one on the app store."

Repeat the same exact query to the AirPods seconds later, and bam, it starts the workout on the Apple Watch.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#697

Post by NightlyDev »

Me: "Hey Google, set a timer for 15 minutes."

Google: "Created a timer for 15 minutes, how long do you want it to last?"

There is also hilarious things going on with Google assistant on iOS. Like Norwegian with English pronunciation.

These voice assistants are terrible. Sure, they are better that before, but still really bad. And it's even worse in other languages than English where stuff like the above happens.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#698

Post by vmception »

Two scientists walk into a bar.

The bartender asks what they would like to drink.

The first scientist says "I'll have a glass of H2O please." The second scientist says "I'll have H2O too." The bartender gives them both water because she is able to distinguish the boundary tones that dictate the grammatical function of homonyms in coda position, as well as pragmatic context.

Siri, be like that bartender.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#699

Post by perl4ever »

ImminentDugong wrote: post #577
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #523

Siri doesn't know that my front door is called "FRONT DOOR". I only have one smart lock, which works perfectly, and it is called "FRONT DOOR" in HomeKit. When I ask Siri about my FRONT DOOR she responds that she cannot find it. When I ask Siri about the status of my DOOR, she responds with "The FRONT DOOR is locked/unlocked". I'll then say 'Alright Siri you literally just used the phrase "FRONT DOOR" five seconds ago…

What's most likely happening here is that any door can be classified as "front door", and Siri doesn't know whether you want to open the door which has been marked as "front door" (you have none?) or the one named "FRONT DOOR". File a bug and it will probably be fixed.

My computer is a laptop, which is on my desktop, and there is a desktop on that laptop, and on the desktop is "My Computer".

I think I just made a palindrome of homonyms.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#700

Post by swinglock »

ajmurmann wrote: post #682
ratsmack wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which is why I have no confidence calling it AI... That's because it really should be called Simulated Intelligence, and would be a much more accurate description. The marketing team wouldn't like this though.

Are they even simulating intelligence. To the parent poster's point it's really just simulated voice recognition. No intelligence even gets simulated. This is more like running cucumber scripts based on voice recognition.

It's an artificial idiot, plain and simple.
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