5 ms·

Google home's speech recognition can't even reliably turn my lights on and off every time, why would I trust it to book a restaurant reservation? I'd expect to

Google home's speech recognition can't even reliably turn my lights on and off every time, why would I trust it to book a restaurant reservation? I'd expect to tell it to book a 6pm table for 2 and wind up with an 8pm table for 10.

strictnein 8y ago
Listen to the audio examples. The person at the restaurant misheard the bot and repeated incorrect information back to it and it handled it in stride.
- SilasX 8y ago
  I just hope it never gets one of the 9 out of 10 humans who don't repeat back important information to prevent miscommunication...
  - strictnein 8y ago
    How would the bot fair worse than a normal human in that situation?
  - davidcbc 8y ago
    How does that differ from a human having the same conversation? If I call a restaurant and say "Can I have a reservation for 6 at 8:00" and they write down a reservation for 8 at 6:00 without repeating it back I won't know until I show up at 8:00 with my 5 friends.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      True -- I was mainly snarking about people with poor communication practices, not the technology (which seems great -- a godsend for people like me who hate phone communication).
  - jonas21 8y ago
    Those humans won't be taking reservations for long, even from other humans, if they don't learn to repeat back the important information.
- ris 8y ago
  Should I be surprised that it happened to work in the example they decided to showcase in the release announcement? I'm afraid I foresee this whole thing going quite hilariously wrong on the order of magnitude of Microsoft's Tay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)
jacquesm 8y ago
> I'd expect to tell it to book a 6pm table for 2 and wind up with an 8pm table for 10. That's a win, consider: It's the right restaurant, on the right date and 10 is larger than 2 so there'll be room enough. Ok, you have to wait two hours but given that this tiny place is normally so busy you have to book in advance what you lost in time waiting you will more than make up by the fact that you'll be the only people there expecting service.
- buvanshak 8y ago
  There is something so wrong with this comment that all the problems with today's tech culture can be extrapolated from it...
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
You're comparing different generations of technologies.
- kingnothing 8y ago
  I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that Google would have one backend service or set of services for all speech to text translation, and that all related products would be powered by it. They've been iterating on speech to text interfaces for at least 15 years now.
comboy 8y ago
I'm so very disappointed by google home. It feels like they left this project behind. It's infuriating how dumb this machine is, and how many times I have to repeat "ok google, hey google" for my old google home device that was working way better at the beginning. Google assistant on android also seems to work much better.
allenu 8y ago
I'm with you. We've seen a demo, not a real product that people are using. I wish people would temper their expectations a bit. If product development has taught me anything, it's that it's easy to put together a demo to show how well a product can work in the golden path, but once you stray from it, it becomes incredibly difficult to solve all edge cases. With something like conversation, there are lots of edge cases that need to be handled. Once you have a missed edge case, the illusion of reliability falls apart.
lgleason 8y ago
The Pixelbuds were supposed to be something similar, but did not live up to the hype....and I've experienced the same things with my home automation with Google Home, and don't get me started on using it so control Spotify etc..
jchiu1106 8y ago
Exactly my thought! I appreciate Google's effort in many fields such as distributed computing but in the past few years, a lot of Google IO announcements feel like vapourware/demoware that they're going to scrap/rebuild in a few years.

strictnein 8y ago

Listen to the audio examples. The person at the restaurant misheard the bot and repeated incorrect information back to it and it handled it in stride.

SilasX 8y ago
I just hope it never gets one of the 9 out of 10 humans who don't repeat back important information to prevent miscommunication...
- strictnein 8y ago
  How would the bot fair worse than a normal human in that situation?
- davidcbc 8y ago
  How does that differ from a human having the same conversation? If I call a restaurant and say "Can I have a reservation for 6 at 8:00" and they write down a reservation for 8 at 6:00 without repeating it back I won't know until I show up at 8:00 with my 5 friends.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    True -- I was mainly snarking about people with poor communication practices, not the technology (which seems great -- a godsend for people like me who hate phone communication).
- jonas21 8y ago
  Those humans won't be taking reservations for long, even from other humans, if they don't learn to repeat back the important information.
ris 8y ago
Should I be surprised that it happened to work in the example they decided to showcase in the release announcement? I'm afraid I foresee this whole thing going quite hilariously wrong on the order of magnitude of Microsoft's Tay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)

jacquesm 8y ago

> I'd expect to tell it to book a 6pm table for 2 and wind up with an 8pm table for 10. That's a win, consider: It's the right restaurant, on the right date and 10 is larger than 2 so there'll be room enough. Ok, you have to wait two hours but given that this tiny place is normally so busy you have to book in advance what you lost in time waiting you will more than make up by the fact that you'll be the only people there expecting service.

buvanshak 8y ago
There is something so wrong with this comment that all the problems with today's tech culture can be extrapolated from it...

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

You're comparing different generations of technologies.

kingnothing 8y ago
I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that Google would have one backend service or set of services for all speech to text translation, and that all related products would be powered by it. They've been iterating on speech to text interfaces for at least 15 years now.

comboy 8y ago

I'm so very disappointed by google home. It feels like they left this project behind. It's infuriating how dumb this machine is, and how many times I have to repeat "ok google, hey google" for my old google home device that was working way better at the beginning. Google assistant on android also seems to work much better.

allenu 8y ago

I'm with you. We've seen a demo, not a real product that people are using. I wish people would temper their expectations a bit. If product development has taught me anything, it's that it's easy to put together a demo to show how well a product can work in the golden path, but once you stray from it, it becomes incredibly difficult to solve all edge cases. With something like conversation, there are lots of edge cases that need to be handled. Once you have a missed edge case, the illusion of reliability falls apart.

lgleason 8y ago

The Pixelbuds were supposed to be something similar, but did not live up to the hype....and I've experienced the same things with my home automation with Google Home, and don't get me started on using it so control Spotify etc..

jchiu1106 8y ago

Exactly my thought! I appreciate Google's effort in many fields such as distributed computing but in the past few years, a lot of Google IO announcements feel like vapourware/demoware that they're going to scrap/rebuild in a few years.