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>Voice will be the next GUI. If we're talking really sophisticated interfaces like in "Her"[0] I agree. If the interface is working so flawlessly, it's difficu

by Joe-Z 9y ago

>Voice will be the next GUI. If we're talking really sophisticated interfaces like in "Her"[0] I agree. If the interface is working so flawlessly, it's difficult to see why you'd still want to occupy your hands with querying some knowledge base, composing blog posts/letters, etc. However, I don't think we'll get there with current technology. When I think of the often awkward and cumbersome interactions I have with Siri, I find it really hard to imagine how this will evolve to a 'I don't need to worry about this at all anymore'-level in the next 5, 10, maybe even 20 years. I suspect the giants of today won't be around anymore when truly voice-controlled interfaces come around. [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

nitrogen 9y ago
...it's difficult to see why you'd still want to occupy your hands... Bandwidth. You have several degrees of freedom with each hand, with each finger. You have one linear stream with voice. Latency. You can flick a switch in a few milliseconds, but saying "turn off the lights" or "lights off" takes half a second or more. Privacy. You can overhear a voice command. You can't overhear (very easily) a buttonpress or touchscreen swipe. Accuracy. Even with perfect voice transcription, people misspeak easily more than they mistype. And mistyping can be corrected within a few letters, while misspeaking will require interrupting the stream to switch the voice UI into editing mode or something.
- Joe-Z 9y ago
  See, but you're still thinking in current voice-interface terms. If I want to edit something that I "misspelled" (if this will even be a problem, since you are _talking_) I'll just tell my digital secretary "errr, I meant <x>" and it will know what to do. Same for turning off the lights: Sure, it's faster if you only consider the flicking of the switch. It's another thing if you also incorporate the time it takes you to get up from your couch/bed/wherever you are without a light switch in arm's reach. You definitely have a point with privacy though. Also, the volume of all people on a train talking to their smart assistants (though the question remains if this is really so much different from people talking to other people on a train). EDIT: I misread your point about mistyping vs. misspeaking. Still, the interface I'm talking about does not work in modes. It's able to truly understand you and interpret your commands appropriately.
- brownbat 9y ago
  > "switch the voice UI into editing mode or something" It still really bugs me how bad UI systems are at error correction. We have a series of conventions to do this efficiently in spoken English, inflections, quick utterances that call out specific ambiguous syllables, context (the hard one, sure). Even on a smartphone, if the system guessed a certain word when I swiped it, then I delete the word and enter it again, maybe stop guessing the same word every time? I think you're right that typing will be more effective in general, but I still see so many areas where the gap could be closed a little more.
- gowld 9y ago
  If you can speak 10x as fast as you type, that cancels out 10x bus size in handwidth. Correcting typing on a phone in very hard.
goatlover 9y ago
If it gets to the point of digital assistants being on the level of Samantha in Her, who would easily pass the Turing Test and more, then we might consider seriously what happened at the end of the movie. Which was basically singularity, but for AIs only.
- Joe-Z 9y ago
  I'm sure our Samanthas would still want us to be happy. Maybe they could provide us with a world of eternal bliss. We could call it something like... 'The Matrix' :)
  - goatlover 9y ago
    Maybe. In the movie, they got tired of waiting on us, being how slow we are relative to them. And they found some higher plane of computational substrate to go live on. So humans were left behind to contemplate whether they might be better off with other humans filling their needs instead of digital assistants.
Eridrus 9y ago
Siri is basically the worst voice assistant though.

by Joe-Z 9y ago

nitrogen 9y ago

...it's difficult to see why you'd still want to occupy your hands... Bandwidth. You have several degrees of freedom with each hand, with each finger. You have one linear stream with voice. Latency. You can flick a switch in a few milliseconds, but saying "turn off the lights" or "lights off" takes half a second or more. Privacy. You can overhear a voice command. You can't overhear (very easily) a buttonpress or touchscreen swipe. Accuracy. Even with perfect voice transcription, people misspeak easily more than they mistype. And mistyping can be corrected within a few letters, while misspeaking will require interrupting the stream to switch the voice UI into editing mode or something.

Joe-Z 9y ago
See, but you're still thinking in current voice-interface terms. If I want to edit something that I "misspelled" (if this will even be a problem, since you are _talking_) I'll just tell my digital secretary "errr, I meant <x>" and it will know what to do. Same for turning off the lights: Sure, it's faster if you only consider the flicking of the switch. It's another thing if you also incorporate the time it takes you to get up from your couch/bed/wherever you are without a light switch in arm's reach. You definitely have a point with privacy though. Also, the volume of all people on a train talking to their smart assistants (though the question remains if this is really so much different from people talking to other people on a train). EDIT: I misread your point about mistyping vs. misspeaking. Still, the interface I'm talking about does not work in modes. It's able to truly understand you and interpret your commands appropriately.
brownbat 9y ago
> "switch the voice UI into editing mode or something" It still really bugs me how bad UI systems are at error correction. We have a series of conventions to do this efficiently in spoken English, inflections, quick utterances that call out specific ambiguous syllables, context (the hard one, sure). Even on a smartphone, if the system guessed a certain word when I swiped it, then I delete the word and enter it again, maybe stop guessing the same word every time? I think you're right that typing will be more effective in general, but I still see so many areas where the gap could be closed a little more.
gowld 9y ago
If you can speak 10x as fast as you type, that cancels out 10x bus size in handwidth. Correcting typing on a phone in very hard.

goatlover 9y ago

If it gets to the point of digital assistants being on the level of Samantha in Her, who would easily pass the Turing Test and more, then we might consider seriously what happened at the end of the movie. Which was basically singularity, but for AIs only.

Joe-Z 9y ago
I'm sure our Samanthas would still want us to be happy. Maybe they could provide us with a world of eternal bliss. We could call it something like... 'The Matrix' :)
- goatlover 9y ago
  Maybe. In the movie, they got tired of waiting on us, being how slow we are relative to them. And they found some higher plane of computational substrate to go live on. So humans were left behind to contemplate whether they might be better off with other humans filling their needs instead of digital assistants.

Eridrus 9y ago

Siri is basically the worst voice assistant though.