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I agree that voice is lousy for many things, maybe even most things. And I think Apple is uniquely positioned to offer an end-to-end experience across devices (

by stdgy 9y ago

I agree that voice is lousy for many things, maybe even most things. And I think Apple is uniquely positioned to offer an end-to-end experience across devices (desktop, laptop, phone, watch, house/speaker) and that their design sensibilities could lead to a top notch speaker. I think the product will find buyers. But it's ultimate utility will remain in question until Siri improves. I think part of the problem is that the things 'voice' is good for tend to have humans on the receiving end that then carry out complex, human actions. "Stu, could you schedule a dinner for me at a good local Italian place at 7:30 and invite Scott and Robin?" Well shoot, that is a lot to unpack! It's a hell of a lot for a computer to unpack. It's a lot for anyone to unpack unless they know you and your circle of contacts. Carrying it out would require interaction with at least 3 people over a variety of mediums. I suspect that by opening Siri up (And other digital 'assitants') it might promote the growth of infrastructure and services that would begin to make some of these more advanced queries a little more tractable.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
I think that's very much the problem. Current voice systems are really just API-command-by-voice, maybe with a tiny amount of context awareness. To be really compelling, voice needs to offer the whole AI concierge experience. At a basic level, it needs to be able to deal with queries like "Find me a good place to stay in Barcelona" and "Find me a new jacket". It needs to ask questions as needed, to operate with the initiative to search tens or hundreds of sites, and to recognise the useful data in the results. With Google, Amazon, and the rest, search is becoming more and more of a problem, not less. For non-trivial searches, finding good products and/or reliable information can be incredibly time-consuming. So currently voice is a bandaid on top of search tools that aren't progressing much, and may even be regressing. Voice has to solve the search problem first before the recognition and context awareness problems really become important. It looks as if the industry is to trying to do this the other way around. I'm not convinced that's going to work. It works up to a point, but the point isn't as advanced as users expect it to be, and the overall experience can be disappointing.

by stdgy 9y ago

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago

I think that's very much the problem. Current voice systems are really just API-command-by-voice, maybe with a tiny amount of context awareness. To be really compelling, voice needs to offer the whole AI concierge experience. At a basic level, it needs to be able to deal with queries like "Find me a good place to stay in Barcelona" and "Find me a new jacket". It needs to ask questions as needed, to operate with the initiative to search tens or hundreds of sites, and to recognise the useful data in the results. With Google, Amazon, and the rest, search is becoming more and more of a problem, not less. For non-trivial searches, finding good products and/or reliable information can be incredibly time-consuming. So currently voice is a bandaid on top of search tools that aren't progressing much, and may even be regressing. Voice has to solve the search problem first before the recognition and context awareness problems really become important. It looks as if the industry is to trying to do this the other way around. I'm not convinced that's going to work. It works up to a point, but the point isn't as advanced as users expect it to be, and the overall experience can be disappointing.