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I used to come home and say “Ok Google, turn on the lights.” 80% of the time my lights would turn on. 20% of the time, I’d be greeted with: “Ok, playing ‘Turn
by acid__ 6y ago
I used to come home and say “Ok Google, turn on the lights.”
80% of the time my lights would turn on.
20% of the time, I’d be greeted with: “Ok, playing ‘Turn on the Lights’ by Future on Spotify.”
And I’d stand there in the dark, listening to music I don’t like, questioning my life decisions.
- pradn 6y agoAs a Google employee, I really don't want to be saying "Ok, Google" in my home all the time. It's totally possible for me to go to work in a subway that has Google ads, waste time on my Pixel, work at the Google office for eight hours, waste time on my Pixel, walk past the same ads on the way home, watch YouTube videos and do Google searches about random topics, and ask Google to set an alarm before I go to sleep. It's too much. :)
- xd1936 6y agoAgreed. And I have a small child. I _really_ don't want them to be forming "relationships" with brands by asking robot assistants named after corporations to do stuff.
- malandrew 6y agoYou can also think of it as a robot assistant that is named after a number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers#Named_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers#Named_numbers
- pinewurst 6y agoNo, we're their numbers...
- medium_burrito 6y agoLike that makes it any better. "I am not a number I am a free man!"
- tclancy 6y agoYou are Number Six.
- crtasm 6y agoNot that I want any part in increasing use of always-listening devices, but can't you change the trigger word on these things? I've been meaning to have a play with https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ but only out of interest, I don't see myself leaving it running.
- hrktb 6y agoFor Google devices you can’t change the trigger. Now you can mispronounce it, that’s the only leeway we get.
- naravara 6y ago> Now you can mispronounce it, that’s the only leeway we get. Not a bad option. I would much prefer asking 19th century Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, to turn on the lights.
- spoonjim 6y agoWe have kids too. We use "Computer" which is one of the wake words offered by Amazon because we don't want our kids to get used to the idea of bossing around a person. Also, I've mapped all of the functions we use to "recipes" that include the word "please" so that they don't work unless you use the word "please." i.e. the upstairs lights are named as for example "the Chicago lights" and there is a recipe that says "turn on the Chicago lights" when someone utters "Computer, please turn on the upstairs lights." So if you say "Computer, turn on the upstairs lights" it says "I don't know what upstairs lights are." The disadvantage of this approach is that you need to get the string exactly as stored.
- hanoz 6y ago"OK Computer, play some cheery music please" "#Karma.. Police.. Arrest this man, he talks in maths...#"
- WalterBright 6y ago"That is something I cannot allow to happen."
- skaber 6y agoI think you can trigger Google assistant by using "OK Boo Boo". It works on the Google Home and on my Android phone, and is actually easier for toddlers.
- enobrev 6y agoThis is what has led us to stop using our assistants around the house. I have 4 of those little google pucks around the house that we used for various tasks and automations. Now that we have a 1-year-old we almost never use them because I don't want him learning the phrase "ok google". It sounded dumb enough for two adults to say it all day, but the convenience was worth it. Having my little one start using the phrase to talk to things is definitely where I draw the line. Besides, now that it tries to make suggestions after every other command all you really hear in my house in regards to them is "hey google shut the fuck up and do what you're told". Unfortunately the stupid puck doesn't allow you to interrupt the unsolicited FAQ any longer. Come to think of it, I think I'm getting rid of most of these things this weekend.
- tyingq 6y agoThat's interesting. The Amazon devices can be configured with a wake word of "Alexa", "Amazon", "Echo" or "Computer". I see Google offers no way to not say "Google".
- Talanes 6y agoMy Alexa really needs a way to whitelist commands. I bought it to be a wireless clapper and fancy alarm clock. If it thinks I'm asking it anything outside of those two domains, I am not. Of course Amazon isn't likely to ever do such a thing, because god forbid we don't have the ability to suddenly order something from Amazon on every device at all times.
- curryst 6y ago> Of course Amazon isn't likely to ever do such a thing, because god forbid we don't have the ability to suddenly order something from Amazon on every device at all times. Comically, that's actually one of the things its the worst at. I tried to do it exactly once and swore I would never do it again. In the time it takes to read the first search result, I could have found and ordered what I want from my phone. If that's what they were going for, I can't believe they didn't scrap the project. Supposedly they're fairly good at re-ordering, but given how often Alexa mis-hears me, I'm not a fan of doing anything involving money on it.
- dimitrios1 6y agoMost likely, everyone you know, especially outside of tech, when referencing a search engine, says to "google it". There are, unfortunately, millions of ways we form relationships with brands. A brand's reason for existing is to live somewhere in our psyche either subconsciously or consciously. We say "Q-tip" instead of cotton swab, "band-aid" instead of bandage, "Advil" when we need ibuprofen, or "Tylenol" when we want acetaminophen. When we see white polar bears around Christmas time, we think of Coca-Cola, and so on and so forth. All that to say, kudos for you for taking a principled approach, but I am not sure it's going to achieve much.
- JacobSuperslav 6y agoi got a toddler and i found out thay saying "ahh-goo-goo" activates Google assistant :D
- npongratz 6y agoJust wait (a few years, perhaps) until you buy or rent that sweet new self-driving car and try to get out of town for some rest and relaxation... you turned off the radio, but that doesn't matter, because Big G uses the windshield as a billboard looming into your personal space, beaming ads to the most captive audience that exists.
- idrios 6y agoThe future is now. Already my local gas station has a screen that starts playing ads the moment you start pumping gas. The mute button on it is broken from being pushed too many times, too hard. Last year my parents rented a room at a 5 star hotel. The hotel had a smart mirror and I only ever saw that mirror play ads. It's insane.
- kwijibob 6y ago"Ok, Google" makes everyone hate saying the word "Google". It is now linked to the emotions of frustration and anger forever.
- TAForObvReasons 6y agoConsidering Amazon uses "Alexa" and Apple uses "Siri" and Microsoft uses "Cortana", it is strange that Google opted not to pick an alternative name
- ViViDboarder 6y agoIs out? Since when has Google been good at branding? Look at Google/Android TV’s history. Or even Google Play.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago> Since when has Google been good at branding? Google's Mid-2000s marketing and product-nomenclature was on-point though: * Google Mail * Google Maps * Google Image Search
- arwineap 6y agoIt'll all answer to "heyyy goo goo" - I like pretending I'm yogi bear
- thekyle 6y agoAlso "heyyy boo boo" works for me
- nullsense 6y agoFuck, I never thought of it that way. Man. Seems kinda relentless. Submit a PR that responds to "Ok Google, enough!" by degoogling your life including automatically submitting your resignation.
- pradn 6y agoHah! Nothing I ever do will ever remove the "ex-Googler" appellation from me, and it's kinda existential man.
- WalterBright 6y agoThis conversation can serve no purpose any more.
- tlrobinson 6y ago“Ok Google” also feels very cold compared to “Hey Siri” or “Alexa”
- razster 6y agoAlso being spied on, according to the latest bit of news. Escape while you can I say.
- powersnail 6y agoThere is a certain awkwardness I feel whenever I visit a friend who had smartified the house. "Oh, let me demonstrate this. Ok Google, turn off the lights." "Ok Google, turn on the lights now." "Ok Google, mute." "Ok Google, turn on the lights." "Ok Google, turn on the lights, damn it." "Ok Google, turn, on, the, lights---there you go. I swear it works better yesterday." Might as well just flip the switch myself, if I have to debate the assistant half of the time in total darkness.
- piyh 6y agoSmart assistants need to be able to bind predefined activity to clapping. The clapper had the UX nailed. "Alexa, ask phillips hue to turn on the living room light" vs clap clap
- SilasX 6y agoYeah, then they’ll have caught up to the 80s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- naravara 6y agoThe insistence on making the spoken interaction feel as "human" and "natural" as possible honestly introduces way more confusion than it needs to and makes the whole thing feel uncomfortable for its parasociability and stiltedness. In Star Trek they were perfectly comfortable saying "Computer! Do the thing" in a more specific, 'computer' intonation. It was all fairly natural language, but there is no attempt to pretend the computer is a person. This made the thing feel more futuristic than what they're trying to do now.
- professoretc 6y agoIt's not even that natural; with a new baby in the house I've really grown to dislike Alexa just for how much I have to yell at it. We're not a loud household, but talking to Alexa is like talking to my grandfather without his hearing aids. Everything has to be said at least three times, in increasing volume levels.
- ehsankia 6y agoThe new Android 11 power menu screen has been a life changer for me. I now control my lights with my phone 90% of the time since it's literally one power button click away, and I always have my phone on me.
- aembleton 6y agoI use the light switch on the wall.
- ehsankia 6y ago90% of the time when I want to turn lights off, I'm either on the couch or in bed. In neither case do I want to get up to turn off a light.
- addandsubtract 6y agoIt doesn't work with hue lights, so it's worthless to me. Besides, I just have a on/off widget on my home screen which is faster and more reliable than holding the power button.
- sagarm 6y agoIt does work with Hue lights. You need to connect your Hue lights to your Google home app first, though.
- addandsubtract 6y agoOh, good to know. But then it wants me to create a Hue account and link that with Google... which I don't really want / care for. So I'll be sticking with my widgets.
- crazygringo 6y agoI'm genuinely curious if you have any idea -- -- is Google misinterpreting your voice? E.g. does it hear a sound it thinks is "play" in the middle of your phrase? -- or is it some weird statistical model that because of invisible and irrelevant correlations, sometimes concludes it's more likely you're asking for music? Like the song with that title is currently in the top 40, or was played by you in the past, or something?
- bigiain 6y ago-- is it because you don't speak with a 20-30 year old white male techbro bay area accented voice, so Google never even bothered testing whether it'd work for you? (My brother in law is Australian living in the US, and has to use his "sarcastically fake American accent" to be understood on the phone. He, more politely than I, calls it his "phone voice". It's the same voice all my friends here use when parodying American stereotypes... I bet it works on Ok Google too.)
- crazygringo 6y agoYou really don't think Google doesn't test in other huge markets? A study a couple years ago found that Google did awfully well with English speakers from the US, India, and China. [1] From a quick search, it looks like national accents are less of a problem, and the real difficulties like in dialects and foreign accents (e.g. a Spanish person speaking English). But the idea that the training corpus used for speech recognition models is all "20-30 year old white male techbro bay area" guys is ludicrous. Where are you even getting this? Speech corpuses used for testing are put together by people who take demographic diversity seriously. On the other hand, they are sometimes biased towards a single mainstream national dialect. (E.g. "standard" American English, as opposed to a thick Boston accent.) [1] https://voicebot.ai/2018/09/13/google-assistant-takes-lead-in-understanding-speakers-with-accents/ https://voicebot.ai/2018/09/13/google-assistant-takes-lead-i...
- bigiain 6y ago> You really don't think Google doesn't test in other huge markets? I'm not entirely convinced Google test _anything_. Certainly not convinced enough to not play it up in the context of a snarky dis on Google and Googler culture.
- davidwparker 6y agoAnecdotally, I'm at 100% turning on the lights with the same phrase (though I do say "hey google" instead of "ok google").
- core-questions 6y agoIt's experiences like this that make me question why anyone would spend this much effort and money setting up a system that isn't as good as what it replaces. I have a convenient, quiet, perfectly reliable single-bit computer on the wall in every room in my house. It costs $1, can be operated by a 2 year old, is perfectly intuitive, and the only downside I can think of is that occasionally it necessitates I be very slightly less lazy than I might otherwise be able to aspire to, i.e. when I need to go downstairs and turn off a forgotten light. Considering my house is all using LED lights on hydro power, it's probably better for me to just leave a 5w light on all night than it is to install a Google Home setup here, in terms of my carbon footprint.
- dspillett 6y ago> be very slightly less lazy That is the key point, for me anyway. "Computer, all lights off" instead of getting out of bed when I've left something on is one of my lazy wins from voice control. Setting multiple timers without touching things with messy hands while faffing in the kitchen is another.
- core-questions 6y agoWe can all use the extra exercise of going up and down the stairs one more time, friend!
- dspillett 6y agoI run long distances. After that and not properly stretching off, going down stairs is more work than it sounds!
- core-questions 6y agoFair deal, you've earned your slack time.
- dboreham 6y agoIt should be regionalized: Hey Pal! for Edinburgh Hey Jimmy! for Glasgow Yo! for LA Oi! for NY Doode for SF etc
- WalterBright 6y agoThis mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it, acid.
- whitepirate20 6y agoLOL