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Well put. I don't know how much of FAANG's budget goes towards improving voice assistants, but considering how much cash these companies have on hand and their

Well put. I don't know how much of FAANG's budget goes towards improving voice assistants, but considering how much cash these companies have on hand and their operating budgets (the size of some smaller European countries), the progress in that area is just super disappointing. The 3 most common use cases were refined a long time ago (Directions, Alarms and Play Music) and everything else ran into a hard wall.

dheera 6y ago
Even with directions, it fails miserably IMO. The most it seems to be able to do is "navigate to X". I want: - "Take me on the most scenic route to X." Can't you figure that out from social media tags? Simple first order solution: routes that have more photos with more likes = more scenic. Took me 1 minute to think of that. And 1000 engineers at Google couldn't implement that? These data crunching tasks are the kind of stuff computers are supposed to be good at. - "Navigate to X but make sure you stay on paved roads." An actual problem if you are trying to use Google Maps in the back roads of California and don't have a 4WD vehicle. Google Maps loves taking you on 4WD dirt road detours. Don't you have satellite maps and street view? Can't you differentiate paved roads from unpaved ones? What the hell does your machine learning department do? - "Stop at the last grocery store before the highway 120 junction." Yeah, it doesn't even begin to understand this type of query. - "OK Google zoom out the map slightly." Nope. Sorry.
- mikestew 6y ago
  Scenic: Garmin's devices appear to do some calculation on number of times the road doesn't go straight over a given distance. Seems to work well enough. OTOH, someone at Google has to make this a feature. Paved/unpaved: that's one suck-ass assistant you've got there. I know the Garmin on the dash of my motorcycle will give that option. The Garmin RV-specific GPS has loads of other options, such as avoid any low overpasses that will rip the solar panels off my RV. Though it doesn't look like Apple is any better than Google, only because Apple Maps doesn't offer the option. Anyway, satellite and street view? Rand McNally had this information since dirt was first created, no need to get the satellites out.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Yeah, I would have expected Google to even take it to the next level: Ask what model of car the user has (better yet! Identify it from a combination of the car's Bluetooth MAC address and a machine learning model trained on the audio spectrum of the engine noise). Look at where all cars of different types are able to travel, where they make U-turns and turn around, and at what GPS locations they make calls to roadside assistance numbers. Incorporate weather data as well, e.g. what season, and whether it has rained lately. Between all of that data you should be able to advise whether a given vehicle should be able to traverse a given road on a given day of the year.

dheera 6y ago

Even with directions, it fails miserably IMO. The most it seems to be able to do is "navigate to X". I want: - "Take me on the most scenic route to X." Can't you figure that out from social media tags? Simple first order solution: routes that have more photos with more likes = more scenic. Took me 1 minute to think of that. And 1000 engineers at Google couldn't implement that? These data crunching tasks are the kind of stuff computers are supposed to be good at. - "Navigate to X but make sure you stay on paved roads." An actual problem if you are trying to use Google Maps in the back roads of California and don't have a 4WD vehicle. Google Maps loves taking you on 4WD dirt road detours. Don't you have satellite maps and street view? Can't you differentiate paved roads from unpaved ones? What the hell does your machine learning department do? - "Stop at the last grocery store before the highway 120 junction." Yeah, it doesn't even begin to understand this type of query. - "OK Google zoom out the map slightly." Nope. Sorry.

mikestew 6y ago
Scenic: Garmin's devices appear to do some calculation on number of times the road doesn't go straight over a given distance. Seems to work well enough. OTOH, someone at Google has to make this a feature. Paved/unpaved: that's one suck-ass assistant you've got there. I know the Garmin on the dash of my motorcycle will give that option. The Garmin RV-specific GPS has loads of other options, such as avoid any low overpasses that will rip the solar panels off my RV. Though it doesn't look like Apple is any better than Google, only because Apple Maps doesn't offer the option. Anyway, satellite and street view? Rand McNally had this information since dirt was first created, no need to get the satellites out.
- dheera 6y ago
  Yeah, I would have expected Google to even take it to the next level: Ask what model of car the user has (better yet! Identify it from a combination of the car's Bluetooth MAC address and a machine learning model trained on the audio spectrum of the engine noise). Look at where all cars of different types are able to travel, where they make U-turns and turn around, and at what GPS locations they make calls to roadside assistance numbers. Incorporate weather data as well, e.g. what season, and whether it has rained lately. Between all of that data you should be able to advise whether a given vehicle should be able to traverse a given road on a given day of the year.