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Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other. Things said in our home all the time: "Do you know what the weather is going to be like?" "Is

Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other. Things said in our home all the time: "Do you know what the weather is going to be like?" "Is it going to rain today?" "We need to buy some milk." "The roast need one and a half hour." We speak all the time with each other and there is nothing weird about that. I bought a Google Home and it's literally transformed our lives in the little details for the better. Before asking for the weather was something which required one of us to find the phone, open it find the weather app. It sounds banal but if you have to do it every day because you take your kids to school believe me it's a godsend. My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio. My kids love talking with it. And it's basically just a very practical assistant which is revolutionary in the little details not some sci-fi scenario. It's not disrupting anything it's improving the quality of tech by allowing us to interface with technology in one of the ways which removes yet another layer of abstraction. You don't need to know what the system can do as long as it can do enough Google Home certainly can and it's just getting started.

ghaff 10y ago
The general issue I have today is that, for a lot of things, voice can feel like an exercise in coming up with the right wizard's incantation--especially as you add Skills, etc. But that's not really an inherent issue with voice. It's just that today's systems are mostly stuck with requiring relatively strict adherence to specific syntax. This will certainly improve over time. I don't find Alexa as transformational as some people I know do but I find it useful enough.
- Ajedi32 10y ago
  Google Assistant is slowly getting better with stuff like this. While usually I stick with the commands and syntax I _know_ works, occasionally I'll try getting fancy and throw it a curveball by just speaking 100% naturally and Assistant will surprise me by actually doing what I intended. For example, a while back I was using Assistant to look up showtimes for a movie at a specific theater, and just to see what would happen I said "show me a map" without giving any explicit context. I was expecting Assistant to come back with a search query or maybe pictures of generic maps in response, but to my surprise it actually understood that I was talking about a map of the theater and gave me that. Of course, that specific response in that exact situation isn't in and of itself all that impressive, and for every time Assistant succeeds in figuring out what I meant in a situation like that there's maybe one or two other times when it has no clue, but the idea of being able to speak 100% naturally to a virtual assistant and having it "just work" is unbelievably cool.
bobx11 10y ago
Just to elaborate for those of us without kids... As a parent in New England, you have to choose between 3 jackets and when you are trying to get socks on two kids and can ask "alexa, what's the weather today" and know the answer without having to pause and get a phone and let one of the kids escape, that's really nice.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  Thank you for that. I was thinking; wait people actually care about the weather but this makes sense. As someone without kids, we have not checked the weather for over 10 years and so using that as an example 'what people talk about' sounded weird to me.
  - Normal_gaussian 10y ago
    It is interesting how little we now need to think on the weather. With modern heating systems (specifically thermostatic radiator valves) we no longer need to ensure that the heating is prepared at the right time, so we don't need to know the weather. With the prevalence of tumble driers washing doesn't need to hang out, so we don't need to know the weather. Most modern clothing is suitable for a very large range of temperatures and good waterproofs can be comparatively small and lightweight, allowing them to be brought everywhere without burden, so we don't need to know the weather. Cars and roads have improved significantly, the impact of the weather on a small or long journey is often negligible, so we don't need to know the weather. More jobs are performed indoors now and where they aren't special machines and tooling have been made that make the job easier alongside significantly reducing the risk and discomfort that weather can cause, so we don't need to know the weather. There remain some situations where knowing the weather is very important, but very few of them affect 'the general populace' is a consistent enough manner to cause them to waste time following it.
    - niftich 10y ago
      Conversely, many jobs need to be performed on the schedule that was agreed upon beforehand regardless of the weather. The weather is rarely accepted as a legitimate source of everyday disruption and misery, except in extreme events.
Spooky23 10y ago
For some tasks, yes. But even in the case of human conversation, the spoken word is often a poor medium of information exchange. Telling Alexa "send me some paper towels" only works if you have established a protocol in writing with Amazon (i.e. I want a 8 pack of jumbo bounty). Your use case "how is the weather" is useful, but is it useful enough to be "the next big thing"? It may be big, but not smartphone big.
- dgacmu 10y ago
  It's funny - we've been remodeling our house, and as part of it, added a bunch of z-wave compatible switches. I was moving some stuff back in (we've been out of it), walked into the house at night, and after living with an Echo and a Google Home for the last year and a half, had a very strong urge to say "Hey, Google, turn on all the lights." -- unfortunately, I hadn't moved the Home in yet! :) I was carrying a large box and it would have been fantastic. My experience with both devices is that there's no one Big Thing, except maybe music. There's a lot of stuff that just works surprisingly well by voice. Quoting my daughter: "Hey, Google, play Puff the Magic Dragon" - "What's the weather today?" - "Turn on/off the lights" - "Set a timer for 5 minutes" - "What's 17 tablespoons in cups?" - "How long does it take light to get to Mars?" It's probably not smartphone big. But I think that in the long term, we're going to find that some kind of voice-based interactive device like this will become very common.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  That was not my only use case though. I cook a lot, timing is important. I have fun playing games with my kids teaching them trivia, Google Home does that while we are free to do other things. We listen to a lot of different music. Google at home allow me to stream from Spotify simply by saying the type i want. My wife likes to listen to radio, she just tell Google at home to start a radio station. Listening to the news, google does a pretty good job assembling what is most important during the day. You can ask it to play the latest "Startups for the rest of us" podcast simply by asking it to play that. You can ask it when you next flight is. How long it's going to take to get to somewhere. You can add things to a shopping list which is important when you are family. And these are just things that it does out of the box. I don't care about switching on lights which it also can do and turn the heat up or down. What I think most of you realize is that just like the touchscreen removed a layer of abstraction to access technology because it allow for things humans do naturally. So does the voice. It's extremely intuitive as there is nothing to learn. As voice gets better and better it's going to change a lot of things. The sales numbers of Alexa is pretty telling too and this is from all sorts of people like my parents in law who now have one they use and understand. I don't care whether it's going to be the next big thing, but to claim as the parent did that voice is a bad interface is simply as wrong as it can be and to claim there is no value in what it can besides a few things, well it turns out at least for my family those few things are pretty useful.
nothrabannosir 10y ago
Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other. Except that humans have an average IQ of 100. They understand context, they get what I'm trying to say. Try getting Siri to turn off all repeating alarms, just for today. Or turn off all alarms until 12pm. "But that's not how Siri is supposed to work!" Sure, fine. It's just a ux to a limited api. But then you can't also compare it to how we use the same input for humans. Robots aren't humans. Not by a long shot. They have an api, a very specific and limited set of capabilities. They are not flexible. They don't get context. Voice interfaces have their place. Because once you know the api, the possibilities, voice may well be most practical. But not because we happen to talk to humans.
- JacobJans 10y ago
  Siri and Google Voice are in completely different leagues. I find Siri completely useless; I use Google's voice interface all the time; it even understands context.
  - gugagore 10y ago
    The product you're talking about I think is "Google Now". Google Voice is Google's VoIP-ish service, precursor to Google Fi
    - gcb0 10y ago
      and completely abandoned.
      - Larrikin 10y ago
        Abandoned but atleast it still works. Can make a new phone number and I can still call US numbers abroad for free.
        gcb0 10y ago
        but sending an sms via the app fails 80% of the time
alasdair_ 10y ago
My phone is always with me, either on a countertop or in my pocket. "Ok Google, is it going to rain today?" is something I can (and do) ask at any point. No need to have a new device in every room of my house and no need to learn a different interface when driving in my car etc.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  So you are agreeing with what I say :) Voice is easier than opening your phone and finding the app to launch it.
tootie 10y ago
That's because our Inteligent Designer only gave us low fidelity analog I/O ports. We can do way better with keyboards and digital signals nowadays.
jaimebuelta 10y ago
Voice is great to have conversations. To give short commands, other interfaces are good as well. For example, I can check the weather for today on my phone with minimal fuzz, clicking 2 or 3 times and getting much richer information (a full graph with short term forecast, a few hours in advance, etc) in a single screen shot. Another example, ordering a pizza. I prefer a GUI over calling and taking to some human. The options are clearer, and I can review easily what I'm ordering. Not to say that it's impractical, but voice doesnt carry a lot of info for a lot of services. We'd prefer a phone call over an specific tactile interface for everything, and that's not the case...
- ThomPete 10y ago
  I a not sure I understand what you are getting at. I gave some pretty specific examples of what it's great for. I am not saying it's great enough yet for much more complex things no disagreement there. But unlike Seamless web or mobile interface I could potentially just with the command, "order the usual from Joe's Pizza" skip a whole suite of interactions needed to order food today.
monk_e_boy 10y ago
> My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio. Oh god please. I can't understand how complicated radio is these days. Fuck me, I'm forever returning or rescanning or some bullshit just to listen to something.
- Nition 10y ago
  Is there something weird about radio in the US? Radio is still the same old AM and FM stations here, you just "turn on the radio" to listen to it like you always have. Am I missing something?
kakarot 10y ago
Lol your entire family is being data-mined, and your kids will grow up to feel like this is normal, good job. Hope it was worth the convenience.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  You are being datamined just being on this website. True but trivial.
  - kakarot 10y ago
    Well of course. But that is certainly different than having a Google-powered microphone that is always listening.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Well a microphone cant hear what website you are visiting. So not sure what your point is.
      - kakarot 10y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is? As if knowledge of me visiting a public site is comparable to Google having an always-on microphone that probably is riddled with 0days and has constant internet activity that can easily mask a malicious connection? it only takes approximately 10 minutes of recorded audio to interpret individual keystrokes with a ~96% accuracy. [1] Google / NSA / foreign state hackers / your next door neighbor could potentially find or pay for an exploit to the device and have all of your passwords down within a few days. All of your children's passwords. It can reconstruct every message you've typed in range of the microphone. Ergo unless you rely on bookmarks and not the address bar, it can in fact track which websites you visit. Furthermore, it could interact with ultrasonic sounds emitted by your computer speakers to track your ad experience, and if you live in a malevolent state, to locate you. [2] If your kids are a problem to the police state, they will be identified and marked before they even know they want to be political activists. This is the world you aren't only allowing, but are defending as well. [1] http://rakesh.agrawal-family.com/papers/ssp04kba.pdf http://rakesh.agrawal-family.com/papers/ssp04kba.pdf, https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_Emanations_Revisited/tiss.preprint.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acou... [2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-tha...
coolgeek 10y ago
> just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio Weather and traffic reports are still a staple of radio broadcasts
sametmax 10y ago
Building a huge complex and expensive system to save you 3 second to check the weather is not what I would call revolutionary.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Then it's a good thing that thats not the only thing it does and that it's never been the claim from anyone.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Right now it's pretty much what it does. Small little things that takes 2 seconds without it. And it's less reliable. I've yet to witness a revolutionary use of IoT.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      I use it for a hell of a lot more than just the weather. Google Home is reliable. Siri isn't.

ghaff 10y ago

The general issue I have today is that, for a lot of things, voice can feel like an exercise in coming up with the right wizard's incantation--especially as you add Skills, etc. But that's not really an inherent issue with voice. It's just that today's systems are mostly stuck with requiring relatively strict adherence to specific syntax. This will certainly improve over time. I don't find Alexa as transformational as some people I know do but I find it useful enough.

Ajedi32 10y ago
Google Assistant is slowly getting better with stuff like this. While usually I stick with the commands and syntax I _know_ works, occasionally I'll try getting fancy and throw it a curveball by just speaking 100% naturally and Assistant will surprise me by actually doing what I intended. For example, a while back I was using Assistant to look up showtimes for a movie at a specific theater, and just to see what would happen I said "show me a map" without giving any explicit context. I was expecting Assistant to come back with a search query or maybe pictures of generic maps in response, but to my surprise it actually understood that I was talking about a map of the theater and gave me that. Of course, that specific response in that exact situation isn't in and of itself all that impressive, and for every time Assistant succeeds in figuring out what I meant in a situation like that there's maybe one or two other times when it has no clue, but the idea of being able to speak 100% naturally to a virtual assistant and having it "just work" is unbelievably cool.

bobx11 10y ago

Just to elaborate for those of us without kids... As a parent in New England, you have to choose between 3 jackets and when you are trying to get socks on two kids and can ask "alexa, what's the weather today" and know the answer without having to pause and get a phone and let one of the kids escape, that's really nice.

tluyben2 10y ago
Thank you for that. I was thinking; wait people actually care about the weather but this makes sense. As someone without kids, we have not checked the weather for over 10 years and so using that as an example 'what people talk about' sounded weird to me.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  It is interesting how little we now need to think on the weather. With modern heating systems (specifically thermostatic radiator valves) we no longer need to ensure that the heating is prepared at the right time, so we don't need to know the weather. With the prevalence of tumble driers washing doesn't need to hang out, so we don't need to know the weather. Most modern clothing is suitable for a very large range of temperatures and good waterproofs can be comparatively small and lightweight, allowing them to be brought everywhere without burden, so we don't need to know the weather. Cars and roads have improved significantly, the impact of the weather on a small or long journey is often negligible, so we don't need to know the weather. More jobs are performed indoors now and where they aren't special machines and tooling have been made that make the job easier alongside significantly reducing the risk and discomfort that weather can cause, so we don't need to know the weather. There remain some situations where knowing the weather is very important, but very few of them affect 'the general populace' is a consistent enough manner to cause them to waste time following it.
  - niftich 10y ago
    Conversely, many jobs need to be performed on the schedule that was agreed upon beforehand regardless of the weather. The weather is rarely accepted as a legitimate source of everyday disruption and misery, except in extreme events.

Spooky23 10y ago

For some tasks, yes. But even in the case of human conversation, the spoken word is often a poor medium of information exchange. Telling Alexa "send me some paper towels" only works if you have established a protocol in writing with Amazon (i.e. I want a 8 pack of jumbo bounty). Your use case "how is the weather" is useful, but is it useful enough to be "the next big thing"? It may be big, but not smartphone big.

dgacmu 10y ago
It's funny - we've been remodeling our house, and as part of it, added a bunch of z-wave compatible switches. I was moving some stuff back in (we've been out of it), walked into the house at night, and after living with an Echo and a Google Home for the last year and a half, had a very strong urge to say "Hey, Google, turn on all the lights." -- unfortunately, I hadn't moved the Home in yet! :) I was carrying a large box and it would have been fantastic. My experience with both devices is that there's no one Big Thing, except maybe music. There's a lot of stuff that just works surprisingly well by voice. Quoting my daughter: "Hey, Google, play Puff the Magic Dragon" - "What's the weather today?" - "Turn on/off the lights" - "Set a timer for 5 minutes" - "What's 17 tablespoons in cups?" - "How long does it take light to get to Mars?" It's probably not smartphone big. But I think that in the long term, we're going to find that some kind of voice-based interactive device like this will become very common.
ThomPete 10y ago
That was not my only use case though. I cook a lot, timing is important. I have fun playing games with my kids teaching them trivia, Google Home does that while we are free to do other things. We listen to a lot of different music. Google at home allow me to stream from Spotify simply by saying the type i want. My wife likes to listen to radio, she just tell Google at home to start a radio station. Listening to the news, google does a pretty good job assembling what is most important during the day. You can ask it to play the latest "Startups for the rest of us" podcast simply by asking it to play that. You can ask it when you next flight is. How long it's going to take to get to somewhere. You can add things to a shopping list which is important when you are family. And these are just things that it does out of the box. I don't care about switching on lights which it also can do and turn the heat up or down. What I think most of you realize is that just like the touchscreen removed a layer of abstraction to access technology because it allow for things humans do naturally. So does the voice. It's extremely intuitive as there is nothing to learn. As voice gets better and better it's going to change a lot of things. The sales numbers of Alexa is pretty telling too and this is from all sorts of people like my parents in law who now have one they use and understand. I don't care whether it's going to be the next big thing, but to claim as the parent did that voice is a bad interface is simply as wrong as it can be and to claim there is no value in what it can besides a few things, well it turns out at least for my family those few things are pretty useful.

nothrabannosir 10y ago

Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other. Except that humans have an average IQ of 100. They understand context, they get what I'm trying to say. Try getting Siri to turn off all repeating alarms, just for today. Or turn off all alarms until 12pm. "But that's not how Siri is supposed to work!" Sure, fine. It's just a ux to a limited api. But then you can't also compare it to how we use the same input for humans. Robots aren't humans. Not by a long shot. They have an api, a very specific and limited set of capabilities. They are not flexible. They don't get context. Voice interfaces have their place. Because once you know the api, the possibilities, voice may well be most practical. But not because we happen to talk to humans.

JacobJans 10y ago
Siri and Google Voice are in completely different leagues. I find Siri completely useless; I use Google's voice interface all the time; it even understands context.
- gugagore 10y ago
  The product you're talking about I think is "Google Now". Google Voice is Google's VoIP-ish service, precursor to Google Fi
  - gcb0 10y ago
    and completely abandoned.
    - Larrikin 10y ago
      Abandoned but atleast it still works. Can make a new phone number and I can still call US numbers abroad for free.
      - gcb0 10y ago
        but sending an sms via the app fails 80% of the time

alasdair_ 10y ago

My phone is always with me, either on a countertop or in my pocket. "Ok Google, is it going to rain today?" is something I can (and do) ask at any point. No need to have a new device in every room of my house and no need to learn a different interface when driving in my car etc.

ThomPete 10y ago
So you are agreeing with what I say :) Voice is easier than opening your phone and finding the app to launch it.

tootie 10y ago

That's because our Inteligent Designer only gave us low fidelity analog I/O ports. We can do way better with keyboards and digital signals nowadays.

jaimebuelta 10y ago

Voice is great to have conversations. To give short commands, other interfaces are good as well. For example, I can check the weather for today on my phone with minimal fuzz, clicking 2 or 3 times and getting much richer information (a full graph with short term forecast, a few hours in advance, etc) in a single screen shot. Another example, ordering a pizza. I prefer a GUI over calling and taking to some human. The options are clearer, and I can review easily what I'm ordering. Not to say that it's impractical, but voice doesnt carry a lot of info for a lot of services. We'd prefer a phone call over an specific tactile interface for everything, and that's not the case...

ThomPete 10y ago
I a not sure I understand what you are getting at. I gave some pretty specific examples of what it's great for. I am not saying it's great enough yet for much more complex things no disagreement there. But unlike Seamless web or mobile interface I could potentially just with the command, "order the usual from Joe's Pizza" skip a whole suite of interactions needed to order food today.

monk_e_boy 10y ago

> My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio. Oh god please. I can't understand how complicated radio is these days. Fuck me, I'm forever returning or rescanning or some bullshit just to listen to something.

Nition 10y ago
Is there something weird about radio in the US? Radio is still the same old AM and FM stations here, you just "turn on the radio" to listen to it like you always have. Am I missing something?

kakarot 10y ago

Lol your entire family is being data-mined, and your kids will grow up to feel like this is normal, good job. Hope it was worth the convenience.

ThomPete 10y ago
You are being datamined just being on this website. True but trivial.
- kakarot 10y ago
  Well of course. But that is certainly different than having a Google-powered microphone that is always listening.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Well a microphone cant hear what website you are visiting. So not sure what your point is.
    - kakarot 10y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is? As if knowledge of me visiting a public site is comparable to Google having an always-on microphone that probably is riddled with 0days and has constant internet activity that can easily mask a malicious connection? it only takes approximately 10 minutes of recorded audio to interpret individual keystrokes with a ~96% accuracy. [1] Google / NSA / foreign state hackers / your next door neighbor could potentially find or pay for an exploit to the device and have all of your passwords down within a few days. All of your children's passwords. It can reconstruct every message you've typed in range of the microphone. Ergo unless you rely on bookmarks and not the address bar, it can in fact track which websites you visit. Furthermore, it could interact with ultrasonic sounds emitted by your computer speakers to track your ad experience, and if you live in a malevolent state, to locate you. [2] If your kids are a problem to the police state, they will be identified and marked before they even know they want to be political activists. This is the world you aren't only allowing, but are defending as well. [1] http://rakesh.agrawal-family.com/papers/ssp04kba.pdf http://rakesh.agrawal-family.com/papers/ssp04kba.pdf, https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_Emanations_Revisited/tiss.preprint.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acou... [2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-tha...

coolgeek 10y ago

> just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio Weather and traffic reports are still a staple of radio broadcasts

sametmax 10y ago

Building a huge complex and expensive system to save you 3 second to check the weather is not what I would call revolutionary.

ThomPete 10y ago
Then it's a good thing that thats not the only thing it does and that it's never been the claim from anyone.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Right now it's pretty much what it does. Small little things that takes 2 seconds without it. And it's less reliable. I've yet to witness a revolutionary use of IoT.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    I use it for a hell of a lot more than just the weather. Google Home is reliable. Siri isn't.