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Yes, not being able to filter out background noise is the one thing that makes voice assistants useless. Whenever I am on the go and tried to get Google Assist

by m000 4y ago

Yes, not being able to filter out background noise is the one thing that makes voice assistants useless. Whenever I am on the go and tried to get Google Assistant to play me a tune on Spotify, it got it right perhaps 1/20. Worse, around 15/20, it will play me something completely unrelated, that I have no interest in listening to. In the end, I have up on GA, and just stop for a minute, pull the phone out of my pocket and manually pick what I want.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
Alexa is the best voice interface for filtering out background noise by a considerable margin, in my experience. It's very flexible in what it accepts. Google is very rigid. Try asking Google Assistant to shut the fuck up. Siri isn't bad but it's too device focused.
- ghaff 4y ago
  In my experience, voice recognition isn't really the issue. It's comprehending what you want it to do beyond a formulaic wizard's incantation.
- shagie 4y ago
  Alexa devices have had some of the most iteration on improving the hardware and some impressive back end systems. The integration with Audible, amazon music, and many other streaming systems is impressive. Part of that is because the architecture is very much the "brains" hosted in the cloud allowing AWS to other service to be better made. Google is very much a "search google" and interact with Google's tools... which don't seem to be as well integrated. The "I want to add X to my calendar" is fine, but things like setting up Sirius XM to stream to Google or the Hue lighting setup was awkward (at the time) and didn't work as well when I was comparing the systems. At one time (it no longer appears to be the case - which is disappointing), Alexa appeared to have a knowledge engine behind it. You could do things like "what color is a light red flower" and then get back "a pink flower is pink". Incidentally asking what color a blue bird was came back with "a blue bird is blue, brown, and red" giving a hint at that knowledge engine worked from some system behind it rather than tautological responses for other silly questions that I asked. Now that comes back with "According to an Alexa Answers contributor..." Asking "Who invented the C programming language" used to respond back "Denis Ritchie" and "what did Denis Ritchie invent" returned back "Denis Ritchie invited the C programming language." This Alexa knowledge engine appears to have reverted to "search Wikipedia." Siri doesn't appear to be trying to be a general assistant and is instead focusing on HomeKit automation and special "this is what you can do with it." Compare writing a skill for Alexa is "write a program and host it on AWS" - but the skills can do, pretty much anything. If you look at Siri "Intents" ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit and https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/technologies/siri/system-intents/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... ) you'll see that the standard intents are very limited and in those domains, Siri is pretty accurate on what is done. For general queries, Siri used to partner with Wolfram - but this doesn't appear to be the case anymore. It was a meh integration when it was in place. These differences in how the device behaves comes from some fairly fundamental architectural decisions. Siri is fairly self supporting, even if limited. Alexa has its brains in AWS and as things become less profitable, Alexa becomes less useful for those things. Google has (to me) always been an also ran because I'm not invested in the google ecosystem for stuff and getting responses where it just reads the first page in google searches is boring.
D13Fd 4y ago
I’m surprised by that. Pretty much the only thing I use Siri for is voice control of music in the car, and it nails it most times. I’d say there is a transcription error maybe 10% if the time, or less.
- m000 4y ago
  Reading more comments, I think in the end the problem is not so much in background noise filtering or voice recognition, but in the lack of context. Primary access to contextual information may explain why Siri gives better results. E.g. for "play X on Spotify", GA first interprets X independently, and then asks Spotify to play it. On the other hand, when you ask Siri to "play X" (presumably on Apple Music), Siri can take into account your listening profile when interpreting X. This may in fact be at the bottom of Apple trying to restrict integration of Spotify with Siri: The experience will be worse because of the contextual gap, and it will make Siri appear dumb.

by m000 4y ago

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

Alexa is the best voice interface for filtering out background noise by a considerable margin, in my experience. It's very flexible in what it accepts. Google is very rigid. Try asking Google Assistant to shut the fuck up. Siri isn't bad but it's too device focused.

ghaff 4y ago
In my experience, voice recognition isn't really the issue. It's comprehending what you want it to do beyond a formulaic wizard's incantation.
shagie 4y ago
Alexa devices have had some of the most iteration on improving the hardware and some impressive back end systems. The integration with Audible, amazon music, and many other streaming systems is impressive. Part of that is because the architecture is very much the "brains" hosted in the cloud allowing AWS to other service to be better made. Google is very much a "search google" and interact with Google's tools... which don't seem to be as well integrated. The "I want to add X to my calendar" is fine, but things like setting up Sirius XM to stream to Google or the Hue lighting setup was awkward (at the time) and didn't work as well when I was comparing the systems. At one time (it no longer appears to be the case - which is disappointing), Alexa appeared to have a knowledge engine behind it. You could do things like "what color is a light red flower" and then get back "a pink flower is pink". Incidentally asking what color a blue bird was came back with "a blue bird is blue, brown, and red" giving a hint at that knowledge engine worked from some system behind it rather than tautological responses for other silly questions that I asked. Now that comes back with "According to an Alexa Answers contributor..." Asking "Who invented the C programming language" used to respond back "Denis Ritchie" and "what did Denis Ritchie invent" returned back "Denis Ritchie invited the C programming language." This Alexa knowledge engine appears to have reverted to "search Wikipedia." Siri doesn't appear to be trying to be a general assistant and is instead focusing on HomeKit automation and special "this is what you can do with it." Compare writing a skill for Alexa is "write a program and host it on AWS" - but the skills can do, pretty much anything. If you look at Siri "Intents" ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit and https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/technologies/siri/system-intents/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... ) you'll see that the standard intents are very limited and in those domains, Siri is pretty accurate on what is done. For general queries, Siri used to partner with Wolfram - but this doesn't appear to be the case anymore. It was a meh integration when it was in place. These differences in how the device behaves comes from some fairly fundamental architectural decisions. Siri is fairly self supporting, even if limited. Alexa has its brains in AWS and as things become less profitable, Alexa becomes less useful for those things. Google has (to me) always been an also ran because I'm not invested in the google ecosystem for stuff and getting responses where it just reads the first page in google searches is boring.

D13Fd 4y ago

I’m surprised by that. Pretty much the only thing I use Siri for is voice control of music in the car, and it nails it most times. I’d say there is a transcription error maybe 10% if the time, or less.

m000 4y ago
Reading more comments, I think in the end the problem is not so much in background noise filtering or voice recognition, but in the lack of context. Primary access to contextual information may explain why Siri gives better results. E.g. for "play X on Spotify", GA first interprets X independently, and then asks Spotify to play it. On the other hand, when you ask Siri to "play X" (presumably on Apple Music), Siri can take into account your listening profile when interpreting X. This may in fact be at the bottom of Apple trying to restrict integration of Spotify with Siri: The experience will be worse because of the contextual gap, and it will make Siri appear dumb.