Comment by the_snooze

Comment by the_snooze 2 days ago

18 replies

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Alexa is in the same boat. Compared to old-fashioned finger-and-screen interfaces, maybe voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case. It's inconvenient, unreliable, and even if it works quite slow. Yet you see companies continue to chase the dream in the current generative AI craze.

I get the sci-fi "wow" appeal, but even the folks who tried to build Minority Report-style 3D interfaces gave up after realizing tired arms make for annoyed users.

kshacker 2 days ago

> voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case

You know I have talked to chatGPT for maybe a 100 hours over the past 6 months. It gets my accent, it switches languages, it humors. It understands what I am saying even if it hallucinates once in a while.

If you can have chatGPT level of comprehension, you can do a lot with computers. Maybe not vim level of editing, but every single function in a driving car should be controllable by voice, and so could a lot of phone and computer functions.

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  • the_snooze 2 days ago

    I think the utility of voice commands is marginal at best in a car. In isolation, voice commands don't make sense if you have passengers. You basically have to tell everyone to shut up to ensure the car understands your commands over any ongoing conversation. And in the context of old fashioned knobs and buttons, voice is seriously a lot of complex engineering to solve problems that have long been non-issues.

    Not to mention the likely need for continuous internet connectivity and service upkeep. Car companies aren't exactly known for good software governance.

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    • AgentMatt 2 days ago

      Modern cars have several microphones or directional microphones and can isolate a speaker.

      I think well-done voice commands are a great addition to a car, especially for rentals. When figuring out how to do something in a new car, I have to choose between safety, interruption (stopping briefly) or not having my desires function change.

      Most basic functions can be voice-controlled without Internet connectivity. You should only need that for conversational topics, not for controlling car functions.

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    • dhussoe 2 days ago

      > Not to mention the likely need for continuous internet connectivity and service upkeep. Car companies aren't exactly known for good software governance.

      I don't own a car but rent them occasionally on vacation in every one I've rented that I can remember since they started having the big touch screens that connect with your phone, the voice button on the steering wheel would just launch Siri (on CarPlay), which seems optimal—just have the phone software deal with it because the car companies are bad at software.

      It seems to work fine for changing music when there's no passenger to do that, subject to only the usual limitations with Siri sucking—but I don't expect a car company to do better, and honestly the worst case I've can remember with music is that played the title track of an album rather than the album, which is admittedly ambiguous. Now I just say explicitly "play the album 'foo' by 'bar' on Spotify" and it works. It's definitely a lot safer than fumbling around with the touchscreen (and Spotify's CarPlay app is very limited for browsing anyways, for safety I assume but then my partner can't browse music either, which would be fine) or trying to juggle CDs back in the day.

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    • Marsymars a day ago

      How I miss old fashioned knobs and buttons. The utility of voice commands goes up when all your HVAC controls and heated car elements are only accessible on a touchscreen that you can’t use with the mitts you need to wear when it’s cold.

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    • dyauspitr a day ago

      Again, I disagree. I almost entirely use Siri to get directions to places using Google maps with my voice when I’m on CarPlay. I also use Siri to respond to texts in my car, not as frequently but often enough.

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  • scoot 2 days ago

    Why on earth would you want to accelerate, brake, and steer by voice?

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    • neural_thing 2 days ago

      I'm assuming they meant things like "change temperature" or "seat massage" or "play Despacito" - things you might need to look for in a rental car

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      • maccard 2 days ago

        Or more helpfully “find me a fuel station near my destination”

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    • dboreham 2 days ago

      Step on it Jeeves, and go through the park.

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      • esafak a day ago

        You'd better hope Jeeves doesn't use MapQuest or you might have to drive through a river before you get to the park!

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PunchyHamster 2 days ago

It's great interface when your hands are doing something else so I do see the appeal.

Just that... nobody is willing to pay much for a thing that will do some basic search, dictate a recipe, or do unit conversion, or add a thing to a list.

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perryizgr8 2 days ago

Alexa has this annoying habit of being non-deterministic.

> Alexa, turn on the bedroom lights.

> OK lights turn on

In the evening:

> Alexa, turn on the bedroom lights.

> I'm sorry, I don't know a device called "bedroom lights".

How is it even possible to build a computer system that behaves like this?

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  • mike_hearn a day ago

    Internal timeouts on backend calls, eventual consistency...

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  • cmiles8 a day ago

    OMG yes this! It’s infuriating.

    Even basic tasks like “play this song” get screwed up and wonder off into the abyss. Absolute pile of garbage from Amazon on this AI stuff.

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evan_ 2 days ago

Alexa has gotten significantly worse with the "Alexa+" AI updates. I used to be able to say stuff like "Alexa, set the lights to 5" and it would turn the lights to 5% in the room I was currently in. Now half the time it tries to start a conversation about the number 5, or the northern lights, or other random nonsense. Absolute garbage.

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dyauspitr a day ago

Strong disagree. I would say 90% of the text I “write” on my phone is speech to text. I wouldn’t use ChatGPT nearly as much if I had to type out paragraph prompts every single time.

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems like text to speech in the ChatGPT prompt window uses the context around it in the paragraph to fix what I’m saying so it is inordinately accurate compared to the rest of the iOS system.

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