8 ms·

If you replace "fuzzy human speech-command detection" with "buttons which can accidentally be pressed" - how is this different from butt-dialing?

zymhan 8y ago
I don't think there is much of a difference. People took a while to understand butt-dialing, and not do it as much. It'll take a while for people to get used to voice assistants that trigger seemingly randomly.
- sdenton4 8y ago
  AFAIK, pocket dials have mainly been reduced by improvements in phones, rather than changes in user behavior; if the camera just sees inside of a pocket, it's unlikely to be an intentional button press.
  - zymhan 8y ago
    I mean way back in the day when people had candy-bar phones and had to remember to enable the keypad lock :D
    - EvanAnderson 8y ago
      I made a number of emergency calls from my pocket on my Nokia 1100 even with key lock enabled. It was infuriating. It happened once when I was having a heated argument with somebody and it took some work to convince the dispatcher not to send a law enforcement officer. (There was nothing physical happening and no threats of violence, but we were speaking very sharply to each other.) I do not miss that about my Nokia 1100 at all.
- modzu 8y ago
  when my phone is locked (which it always is in a pocket) it can't butt dial. whats the analogous behaviour for alexa? also remember these are shared devices in a home, not a personal device in your hand. could i shout into somebody's window, "hey alexa send my browsing history to bob@hotmail.com"!
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    They can still call the police while locked, which is something that happened to a friend with an old feature phone while were were in the process of illegally hiding/dumping an old car.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Mike, is that you?
  - notatoad 8y ago
    The "lock" analogue on an Alexa device would be the mute button on the top of the unit. https://www.safety.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/mute-button-cropped-1.jpg https://www.safety.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/mute-butto...
  - coatmatter 8y ago
    The analogous behaviour would be you being aware of Alexa's flaws and not triggering it accidentally. While you may have never pocket dialled, plenty of people have. I've received more than a few accidental calls in the past. I equate this to some phone users placing their devices hanging over the edge of tables - as if they don't care about them hitting the floor. Should phone makers toughen their phones and should Amazon improve Alexa anyway? Sure.
edwhitesell 8y ago
Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"
- modzu 8y ago
  some kind of acoustic biometrics would be helpful here (ie respond only to account holder, or disable some actions for others) along with better heuristic recognition of directives thats not foolproof but much better than what we have now, and i think we are pretty close
  - edwhitesell 8y ago
    Agreed, but I think vocal biometrics is a significantly more difficult problem to solve when even the best speech recognition still has issues like this. Phonetics is hard. Especially with ambient noise, echo and such. I had a conversation with one of the speech engineers when I worked at a speech recognition company and the level of detailed problems to solve was impressive. Totally made sense after talking about it, but things I would not have thought about before. I'd imagine the next thing to come in this area that would really make an improvement is an "on person" microphone. Maybe it's a pen in your pocket, or some kind of vibration detection (that could pick up the wearers voice), that would then allow some improvemnts in the domain of "who is talking" and how well the voice is processed.
    - jwandborg 8y ago
      And once you've managed to achieve perfect biometrics your next task is to prevent replay attacks. An alternative, "wireless" approach to near-perfect security would be to invent-plement some kind of vocal, human-executable GPG/TLS.
      - 8y ago
cookiecaper 8y ago
a) Your phone has a microphone that picks up information spoke more-or-less directly into it. An Echo is specifically equipped with a microphone array designed to extract audio from anywhere in the room. b) There is a great deal less ambiguity around "pressing buttons" than there is around interpreting speech. While it is unlikely that your phone will incorrectly detect button presses, it's very common for voice-activated devices to a) incorrectly detect a wake word (either negative or positively); and b) misunderstand some particular word used in the command. Your phone is not going to think you pressed the "Clothes" button when you actually pressed "Close". c) The entire functionality of the device is accessible from behind that big ambiguous interface. On a phone, there are many distinct steps and screens to step through when you want to do something (this complex interface, by the way, is a non-trivial part of why butt-dials are quite rare these days). On a "smart speaker", most things are just one misheard statement/command away from occurring.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  It's interesting that the pattern of human communication where things are just one misheard statement/command away from occurring has been well modeled in these devices. Does having the device programmed to make mistakes make it more comfortable to use, because we know humans are infallible too.
spdustin 8y ago
Simply: no one else is dialing via my butt.
- dolessdrugs 8y ago
  hold my beer
- hunter2_ 8y ago
  Just as nobody but the primary user(s) triggered the failure in this case!
BonesJustice 8y ago
I can't pick up my coworker's phone and manually dial a number, because years of learning from our mistakes have led us to implement lock screens and such. I can, however, say "Hey Siri, call 867-5309." Or "Hey Siri, Facebook status: my anus is bleeding. SEND!" Because we are apparently incapable of applying past lessons to new technologies.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  If they operate anything like the way I operate, they know there should be some kind of lock on there, they just haven't gotten around to building that part yet. And if their management is anything like my management, they go ahead and release it anyway.
- pishpash 8y ago
  It really shouldn't be hard to do a quick safe filter and ask "You sure you want to send that?", again, like a real human. My point is they're really half-assed products right now that are behaving badly/immaturely.
  - collyw 8y ago
    Apparently it did have a confirm question.
- edm0nd 8y ago
  If the iPhone has a lock screen, Siri will not do any of those actions without it being unlocked first FYI.
  - BonesJustice 8y ago
    That was definitely not the case when I tried it a couple years ago. If they’ve since locked it down, then I’m glad to hear that.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  Hm. I can't "Hey Siri" someone else' phone, can I? It's certainly never worked for me.
wlll 8y ago
I haven't butt-dialled anyone since I got swipe to unlock on my iPhone. A 6 digit unlock code/fingerprint would make it seem even less likely to happen again.

zymhan 8y ago

I don't think there is much of a difference. People took a while to understand butt-dialing, and not do it as much. It'll take a while for people to get used to voice assistants that trigger seemingly randomly.

sdenton4 8y ago
AFAIK, pocket dials have mainly been reduced by improvements in phones, rather than changes in user behavior; if the camera just sees inside of a pocket, it's unlikely to be an intentional button press.
- zymhan 8y ago
  I mean way back in the day when people had candy-bar phones and had to remember to enable the keypad lock :D
  - EvanAnderson 8y ago
    I made a number of emergency calls from my pocket on my Nokia 1100 even with key lock enabled. It was infuriating. It happened once when I was having a heated argument with somebody and it took some work to convince the dispatcher not to send a law enforcement officer. (There was nothing physical happening and no threats of violence, but we were speaking very sharply to each other.) I do not miss that about my Nokia 1100 at all.
modzu 8y ago
when my phone is locked (which it always is in a pocket) it can't butt dial. whats the analogous behaviour for alexa? also remember these are shared devices in a home, not a personal device in your hand. could i shout into somebody's window, "hey alexa send my browsing history to bob@hotmail.com"!
- lopmotr 8y ago
  They can still call the police while locked, which is something that happened to a friend with an old feature phone while were were in the process of illegally hiding/dumping an old car.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Mike, is that you?
- notatoad 8y ago
  The "lock" analogue on an Alexa device would be the mute button on the top of the unit. https://www.safety.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/mute-button-cropped-1.jpg https://www.safety.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/mute-butto...
- coatmatter 8y ago
  The analogous behaviour would be you being aware of Alexa's flaws and not triggering it accidentally. While you may have never pocket dialled, plenty of people have. I've received more than a few accidental calls in the past. I equate this to some phone users placing their devices hanging over the edge of tables - as if they don't care about them hitting the floor. Should phone makers toughen their phones and should Amazon improve Alexa anyway? Sure.

edwhitesell 8y ago

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

modzu 8y ago
some kind of acoustic biometrics would be helpful here (ie respond only to account holder, or disable some actions for others) along with better heuristic recognition of directives thats not foolproof but much better than what we have now, and i think we are pretty close
- edwhitesell 8y ago
  Agreed, but I think vocal biometrics is a significantly more difficult problem to solve when even the best speech recognition still has issues like this. Phonetics is hard. Especially with ambient noise, echo and such. I had a conversation with one of the speech engineers when I worked at a speech recognition company and the level of detailed problems to solve was impressive. Totally made sense after talking about it, but things I would not have thought about before. I'd imagine the next thing to come in this area that would really make an improvement is an "on person" microphone. Maybe it's a pen in your pocket, or some kind of vibration detection (that could pick up the wearers voice), that would then allow some improvemnts in the domain of "who is talking" and how well the voice is processed.
  - jwandborg 8y ago
    And once you've managed to achieve perfect biometrics your next task is to prevent replay attacks. An alternative, "wireless" approach to near-perfect security would be to invent-plement some kind of vocal, human-executable GPG/TLS.
    - 8y ago

cookiecaper 8y ago

a) Your phone has a microphone that picks up information spoke more-or-less directly into it. An Echo is specifically equipped with a microphone array designed to extract audio from anywhere in the room. b) There is a great deal less ambiguity around "pressing buttons" than there is around interpreting speech. While it is unlikely that your phone will incorrectly detect button presses, it's very common for voice-activated devices to a) incorrectly detect a wake word (either negative or positively); and b) misunderstand some particular word used in the command. Your phone is not going to think you pressed the "Clothes" button when you actually pressed "Close". c) The entire functionality of the device is accessible from behind that big ambiguous interface. On a phone, there are many distinct steps and screens to step through when you want to do something (this complex interface, by the way, is a non-trivial part of why butt-dials are quite rare these days). On a "smart speaker", most things are just one misheard statement/command away from occurring.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
It's interesting that the pattern of human communication where things are just one misheard statement/command away from occurring has been well modeled in these devices. Does having the device programmed to make mistakes make it more comfortable to use, because we know humans are infallible too.

spdustin 8y ago

Simply: no one else is dialing via my butt.

dolessdrugs 8y ago
hold my beer
hunter2_ 8y ago
Just as nobody but the primary user(s) triggered the failure in this case!

BonesJustice 8y ago

I can't pick up my coworker's phone and manually dial a number, because years of learning from our mistakes have led us to implement lock screens and such. I can, however, say "Hey Siri, call 867-5309." Or "Hey Siri, Facebook status: my anus is bleeding. SEND!" Because we are apparently incapable of applying past lessons to new technologies.

rdiddly 8y ago
If they operate anything like the way I operate, they know there should be some kind of lock on there, they just haven't gotten around to building that part yet. And if their management is anything like my management, they go ahead and release it anyway.
pishpash 8y ago
It really shouldn't be hard to do a quick safe filter and ask "You sure you want to send that?", again, like a real human. My point is they're really half-assed products right now that are behaving badly/immaturely.
- collyw 8y ago
  Apparently it did have a confirm question.
edm0nd 8y ago
If the iPhone has a lock screen, Siri will not do any of those actions without it being unlocked first FYI.
- BonesJustice 8y ago
  That was definitely not the case when I tried it a couple years ago. If they’ve since locked it down, then I’m glad to hear that.
arcticbull 8y ago
Hm. I can't "Hey Siri" someone else' phone, can I? It's certainly never worked for me.

wlll 8y ago

I haven't butt-dialled anyone since I got swipe to unlock on my iPhone. A 6 digit unlock code/fingerprint would make it seem even less likely to happen again.