6 ms·

Agree. Those are too broad. I'm thinking "get me a dinner reservation next sunday with patio seating for 5 in the east village at an upscale tapas place". As

by viksit 11y ago

Agree. Those are too broad. I'm thinking "get me a dinner reservation next sunday with patio seating for 5 in the east village at an upscale tapas place". As I mentioned elsewhere on this page, my thesis around conversational interfaces isn't that they start off broad and use more Q/A to refine your query. That's slow, and people are visual. Rather, their power lies in the user being able to express a complex query in one go - which is equivalent to tapping 10-15 filters and scrolling through results - ideally combining data from sources that aren't limited to one service. You can now execute related actions to your result set through the same interface, without needing to shift to a single purpose app that would allow you to take the action, but for most purposes, won't keep your context.

shostack 11y ago
Thanks for helping me get to the meat of what I was trying to communicate. It really is all about the interface and the efficiency. I have to wonder though at what point is adding all those filters more involved than checking a couple boxes and glancing at a map or some photos. I'm sure a lot of that depends on context (I can't do those things if I'm driving, but I can use voice recognition). The other thing I'm unclear about is how such a recommendation engine can best present information about tradeoffs. In theory, each of my filters has a weighting, and that weight might be dynamic based on several other factors. Maybe I really want chinese, but the best match is further away or I know there will be lots of traffic, so I might be willing to compromise on thai, but only if they have that one dish I like. And a lot of it is seeing the options in the moment and making a snap decision. Really curious about the approaches to solve that type of problem.
- viksit 11y ago
  > I have to wonder though at what point is adding all those filters more involved than checking a couple boxes and glancing at a map or some photos _When the filters are across datasets and services that are hosted on different platforms, and there's no way one UI that allows you to access them._ Table timings are on OpenTable/Yelp, reviews are on Google/Yelp, traffic is on Google, rides are on Uber and Lyft, menus are on the web, there are recommendations you trust amongst your friends and blogs, and pictures on instagram - and you're on a messaging platform trying to coordinate with 4 other people. At that point, whatever service helps you to narrow to 4 choices based on all of this data is a Godsend. It's about making decision taking easier. > how such a recommendation engine can best present information about tradeoffs That tradeoffs are still yours to dictate - you simply look at the results of your complex query and then use conversation/UI to refine. Faster than using 8 services to do this. Repeatedly.
pbreit 11y ago
"get me a dinner reservation next sunday with patio seating for 5 in the east village at an upscale tapas place" Nope. I don't think anyone would ever leave it up to M (or whatever) to select the restaurant.
- viksit 11y ago
  Agreed. But you could get 4 options to choose from.
- Shish2k 11y ago
  I would; though for me going out to eat with friends is more about the "going out with friends" - where we end up is a fairly minor detail
  - pbreit 11y ago
    For me, it's entirely "going out with friends". But that doesn't mean I'm going to leave restaurant selection to a bot. For many, people, selecting a restaurant is fun. And I bet you and your friends don't just go to some random place.
unabst 11y ago
I think AI researchers and engineers tend to get too carried away with decision making, when the more valuable service is about communication of refined knowledge, which if I'm not mistaken is exactly your point. The problem has nothing to do with "how can a machine guess the right answer" but instead is all about "how can a machine refine all the options based on the intentions expressed thus far". Anecdotally, if we'd ask a real person "where is a good place to eat" the chance we'd go there without more information is slim. And if we don't even trust people, trusting Siri will be a while. What we're really doing with these questions is making our hunger known, and starting a conversation. We actually don't care that much about other people's thoughts, and we may not even have anything in mind yet as far as where to eat. We do care about how people feel if they are someone we care about, but the thinking part we love to do ourselves. So to offer a service that "thinks" is rather misguided, and may even constitute a disservice. We already rejected the talking paperclip in 1996 [0]. It's failure wasn't it's intelligence, but in the value proposition itself. To have a paperclip presume to know better and to tell you what to do was not tempting. It's failure was it's existence. Is it a glitch in the Matrix or is their pitch for Cortana identical? > What is Cortana? Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.[1] -- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant [1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/getstarted-what-is-cortana http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/getstarted-wha...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Is it a glitch in the Matrix or is their pitch for Cortana identical? No, its not a glitch that Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and now M have essentially the same pitch -- they are direct competitors intended to attach people to their respective platforms.
  - shard 11y ago
    I think unabst is asking why the pitch for Cortana is similar to Microsoft Office's paperclip, which was a much ridiculed failure.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago

by viksit 11y ago

shostack 11y ago

Thanks for helping me get to the meat of what I was trying to communicate. It really is all about the interface and the efficiency. I have to wonder though at what point is adding all those filters more involved than checking a couple boxes and glancing at a map or some photos. I'm sure a lot of that depends on context (I can't do those things if I'm driving, but I can use voice recognition). The other thing I'm unclear about is how such a recommendation engine can best present information about tradeoffs. In theory, each of my filters has a weighting, and that weight might be dynamic based on several other factors. Maybe I really want chinese, but the best match is further away or I know there will be lots of traffic, so I might be willing to compromise on thai, but only if they have that one dish I like. And a lot of it is seeing the options in the moment and making a snap decision. Really curious about the approaches to solve that type of problem.

viksit 11y ago
> I have to wonder though at what point is adding all those filters more involved than checking a couple boxes and glancing at a map or some photos _When the filters are across datasets and services that are hosted on different platforms, and there's no way one UI that allows you to access them._ Table timings are on OpenTable/Yelp, reviews are on Google/Yelp, traffic is on Google, rides are on Uber and Lyft, menus are on the web, there are recommendations you trust amongst your friends and blogs, and pictures on instagram - and you're on a messaging platform trying to coordinate with 4 other people. At that point, whatever service helps you to narrow to 4 choices based on all of this data is a Godsend. It's about making decision taking easier. > how such a recommendation engine can best present information about tradeoffs That tradeoffs are still yours to dictate - you simply look at the results of your complex query and then use conversation/UI to refine. Faster than using 8 services to do this. Repeatedly.

pbreit 11y ago

"get me a dinner reservation next sunday with patio seating for 5 in the east village at an upscale tapas place" Nope. I don't think anyone would ever leave it up to M (or whatever) to select the restaurant.

viksit 11y ago
Agreed. But you could get 4 options to choose from.
Shish2k 11y ago
I would; though for me going out to eat with friends is more about the "going out with friends" - where we end up is a fairly minor detail
- pbreit 11y ago
  For me, it's entirely "going out with friends". But that doesn't mean I'm going to leave restaurant selection to a bot. For many, people, selecting a restaurant is fun. And I bet you and your friends don't just go to some random place.

unabst 11y ago

I think AI researchers and engineers tend to get too carried away with decision making, when the more valuable service is about communication of refined knowledge, which if I'm not mistaken is exactly your point. The problem has nothing to do with "how can a machine guess the right answer" but instead is all about "how can a machine refine all the options based on the intentions expressed thus far". Anecdotally, if we'd ask a real person "where is a good place to eat" the chance we'd go there without more information is slim. And if we don't even trust people, trusting Siri will be a while. What we're really doing with these questions is making our hunger known, and starting a conversation. We actually don't care that much about other people's thoughts, and we may not even have anything in mind yet as far as where to eat. We do care about how people feel if they are someone we care about, but the thinking part we love to do ourselves. So to offer a service that "thinks" is rather misguided, and may even constitute a disservice. We already rejected the talking paperclip in 1996 [0]. It's failure wasn't it's intelligence, but in the value proposition itself. To have a paperclip presume to know better and to tell you what to do was not tempting. It's failure was it's existence. Is it a glitch in the Matrix or is their pitch for Cortana identical? > What is Cortana? Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.[1] -- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant [1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/getstarted-what-is-cortana http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/getstarted-wha...

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Is it a glitch in the Matrix or is their pitch for Cortana identical? No, its not a glitch that Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and now M have essentially the same pitch -- they are direct competitors intended to attach people to their respective platforms.
- shard 11y ago
  I think unabst is asking why the pitch for Cortana is similar to Microsoft Office's paperclip, which was a much ridiculed failure.
waterlesscloud 11y ago