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My experience has been that Google Assistant has always been better than Siri because Siri does all NLP on-device and Google Assistant offloads this to the clou

My experience has been that Google Assistant has always been better than Siri because Siri does all NLP on-device and Google Assistant offloads this to the cloud, where it can improve over time due to ML. Nonetheless, both are horrible in their own ways, and neither is very good from a societal perspective. I've taken the stance that voice assistances are fundamentally bad because they teach people that it's acceptable to carry on conversation with a computer that is likely being used to spy on them, either directly or indirectly. I don't allow voice assistant products in my house, and on devices where it's non-optional (mobile phones), they are turned off on all devices in my house. I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. Everyone always talks about using maps or something in your car... you shouldn't be changing destination while you're driving anyway, you should have a destination in mind (or not) and be focused entirely on driving with both hands on the wheel. If you need to futz with your GPS, pull over, whether you're talking to it or using your hands.

criddell 5y ago
What's the difference from a surveillance perspective if you say "hey google, what's the weather today" vs typing "today's weather" into Google? If the assistant is processing the language on device, is there any difference at all? > I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. I think people often choose a voice assistance because the opposite is true - the tasks they send to their voice assistant are very unimportant. They are playing a song, starting a timer, or finding out what time a baseball game starts.
salamandersauce 5y ago
Smart lights. Music. Timers. Changing the brightness level using an app sucks. You have to dig out your phone, unlock it, open the app or go the widget, find the light you want to dim, click on it and then slide the brightness to where you want it. With a voice assistant like Alexa I can just tell it what light or room to dim and what level to dim. It's WAY WAY faster to say "Alexa, dim the kitchen to 50%" than to go through the app. Similarly with music or timers. It's just way easier to tell Alexa to play that radio station or album or song or to set a 10 minute timer than dig through smartphone apps and deal with hooking up speakers somehow. Of course it COULD spy on me, but so could any of my electronics with microphones and a net connection which is most of them these days. What's stopping your smartphone from spying on you or your laptop even with the voice assistant disabled?
mrexroad 5y ago
Taking a slightly broader perspective of Siri as a simply a voice interface to the device, it has been incredible tool for two of my kids who are not neurotypical. For some who are differently abled, it’s not really about the convenience of saving a few seconds, it’s about being able to do something otherwise not easily done.

criddell 5y ago

What's the difference from a surveillance perspective if you say "hey google, what's the weather today" vs typing "today's weather" into Google? If the assistant is processing the language on device, is there any difference at all? > I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. I think people often choose a voice assistance because the opposite is true - the tasks they send to their voice assistant are very unimportant. They are playing a song, starting a timer, or finding out what time a baseball game starts.

salamandersauce 5y ago

Smart lights. Music. Timers. Changing the brightness level using an app sucks. You have to dig out your phone, unlock it, open the app or go the widget, find the light you want to dim, click on it and then slide the brightness to where you want it. With a voice assistant like Alexa I can just tell it what light or room to dim and what level to dim. It's WAY WAY faster to say "Alexa, dim the kitchen to 50%" than to go through the app. Similarly with music or timers. It's just way easier to tell Alexa to play that radio station or album or song or to set a 10 minute timer than dig through smartphone apps and deal with hooking up speakers somehow. Of course it COULD spy on me, but so could any of my electronics with microphones and a net connection which is most of them these days. What's stopping your smartphone from spying on you or your laptop even with the voice assistant disabled?

mrexroad 5y ago

Taking a slightly broader perspective of Siri as a simply a voice interface to the device, it has been incredible tool for two of my kids who are not neurotypical. For some who are differently abled, it’s not really about the convenience of saving a few seconds, it’s about being able to do something otherwise not easily done.