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I use Siri fairly frequently for setting timers, controlling my smart home and the like, but for me where it falls down is really understanding natural language

by Dennip 3y ago

I use Siri fairly frequently for setting timers, controlling my smart home and the like, but for me where it falls down is really understanding natural language. Personally I found that google assistant was way way ahead of siri in this regard. I could ask it to do something and it would just understand what I want. One issue I frequently have with siri is that commands that work one day suddenly don't the next. If I ask siri to "lock screen" it tries to find smart home door locks (which i dont have) instead of locking the device screen, eventually I figure out some combination of lock device/screen/phone screen/off etc that works, so siri does know how to do this but isn't smart enough to figure out my intent. The other issue is that siri unlike google assistant can't maintain a train of thought, You can't say "hey siri dim the bedroom lights" and follow that up with "hey siri..a bit more" unlike with google where it seems to be aware of the context of what it did prior.

RandomWorker 3y ago
The lock screen issue is really funny. Because I have the same experience where I will come home and say hey, Siri lock screen to close the navigation. However, now it doesn’t seem to work anymore and I have tried some of your prompts and some combination does work.
sorum 3y ago
> where it falls down is really understanding natural language. I would settle for Siri understanding simple commands. Natural language is something for Apple customers in the 2040s. I want to not have to use creative language skills to decipher things in Reminders. "Who is this Paul Cage I'm supposed to call? Oh, repairing the pool cage." Forget LLM or natural language processing; Siri needs to catch up to 2018's Google Assistant
- nanidin 3y ago
  Amazon mitigated bad speech transcription by providing a link to listen to the underlying audio. Apple has never offered this and it has led to lots of head scratching at the grocery store as I work through my shopping list. It still beats trying to use the Alexa app while shopping, though.
  - dpkirchner 3y ago
    Amazon is hilariously bad at understanding voices. The number of times it has played "Pure" instead of "NPR" is astounding, despite me going in to the Alexa app to report the error every time. I'm convinced those error reports are round-filed.
    - sethaurus 3y ago
      What does "round-filed" mean?
      - adamkochanowicz 3y ago
        I've also never heard this term before.
      - dpkirchner 3y ago
        Thrown in the (round) trash can. At least that's what I meant. Based on my googling it looks like it's an uncommon term -- way way less common than I thought. Not sure where I first heard/read it.
        geoffpado 3y ago
        I think the more common version is “circular file”: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/circular_file https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/circular_file
- transcriptase 3y ago
  2023 Google Assistant needs to catch up to 2018 Google Assistant. It has become progressively worse since I invested a great deal into setting it up with smart-home devices in that very year.
sleepybrett 3y ago
I also use it in a limited way and it's fairly successful. Just homekit turn on turn off and set scenes. However I have one frustrating bug with shortcuts that sends me over the moon. I have a little shortcut that just sends a simple text message when i say 'Hey siri, Sweetie' about 20% of the time siri comes back telling me about musical artist sweetie... it's braindead.
lbotos 3y ago
Does anyone know why I have this problem with Siri on my Apple Watch? “Set a timer for 15 minutes” Siri: “timer app is not installed” Excuse me? It most certainly is. Try again later and it works.
- zackkatz 3y ago
  You can just say “15 minutes” and it has a higher success rate for me.
- sgerenser 3y ago
  I’ve had that happen a few times (not recently, probably not since the latest watchOS). It’s just a bug.
- sgt 3y ago
  Siri likes to be helpful. While you were wondering about the timer app, she went ahead and installed it for you! /s
princevegeta89 3y ago
The biggest problem I see with Google is that saying "ok Google" feels like a mouth exercise, especially when i have to repeat it so many times in a day.
- bestnameever 3y ago
  you can say 'hey google' instead.
- mikelward 3y ago
  Have you tried "Hey Google"? One less syllable.
  - princevegeta89 3y ago
    Interesting. But saying "Alexa" or even "Bixby" feels a lot quicker actually.

by Dennip 3y ago

RandomWorker 3y ago

The lock screen issue is really funny. Because I have the same experience where I will come home and say hey, Siri lock screen to close the navigation. However, now it doesn’t seem to work anymore and I have tried some of your prompts and some combination does work.

sorum 3y ago

> where it falls down is really understanding natural language. I would settle for Siri understanding simple commands. Natural language is something for Apple customers in the 2040s. I want to not have to use creative language skills to decipher things in Reminders. "Who is this Paul Cage I'm supposed to call? Oh, repairing the pool cage." Forget LLM or natural language processing; Siri needs to catch up to 2018's Google Assistant

nanidin 3y ago
Amazon mitigated bad speech transcription by providing a link to listen to the underlying audio. Apple has never offered this and it has led to lots of head scratching at the grocery store as I work through my shopping list. It still beats trying to use the Alexa app while shopping, though.
- dpkirchner 3y ago
  Amazon is hilariously bad at understanding voices. The number of times it has played "Pure" instead of "NPR" is astounding, despite me going in to the Alexa app to report the error every time. I'm convinced those error reports are round-filed.
  - sethaurus 3y ago
    What does "round-filed" mean?
    - adamkochanowicz 3y ago
      I've also never heard this term before.
    - dpkirchner 3y ago
      Thrown in the (round) trash can. At least that's what I meant. Based on my googling it looks like it's an uncommon term -- way way less common than I thought. Not sure where I first heard/read it.
      - geoffpado 3y ago
        I think the more common version is “circular file”: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/circular_file https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/circular_file
transcriptase 3y ago
2023 Google Assistant needs to catch up to 2018 Google Assistant. It has become progressively worse since I invested a great deal into setting it up with smart-home devices in that very year.

sleepybrett 3y ago

I also use it in a limited way and it's fairly successful. Just homekit turn on turn off and set scenes. However I have one frustrating bug with shortcuts that sends me over the moon. I have a little shortcut that just sends a simple text message when i say 'Hey siri, Sweetie' about 20% of the time siri comes back telling me about musical artist sweetie... it's braindead.

lbotos 3y ago

Does anyone know why I have this problem with Siri on my Apple Watch? “Set a timer for 15 minutes” Siri: “timer app is not installed” Excuse me? It most certainly is. Try again later and it works.

zackkatz 3y ago
You can just say “15 minutes” and it has a higher success rate for me.
sgerenser 3y ago
I’ve had that happen a few times (not recently, probably not since the latest watchOS). It’s just a bug.
sgt 3y ago
Siri likes to be helpful. While you were wondering about the timer app, she went ahead and installed it for you! /s

princevegeta89 3y ago

The biggest problem I see with Google is that saying "ok Google" feels like a mouth exercise, especially when i have to repeat it so many times in a day.

bestnameever 3y ago
you can say 'hey google' instead.
mikelward 3y ago
Have you tried "Hey Google"? One less syllable.
- princevegeta89 3y ago
  Interesting. But saying "Alexa" or even "Bixby" feels a lot quicker actually.