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On my Google phone, if I try to edit a reminder through the GUI, it refuses to show me a screen to edit the reminder. Instead, it spends several seconds loading

On my Google phone, if I try to edit a reminder through the GUI, it refuses to show me a screen to edit the reminder. Instead, it spends several seconds loading the voice assistant, which then eventually asks aloud what I would like to change. It's been like that ever since they started pushing the assistant stuff harder, whenever that was. If they've fixed that, then I'll be happy. I never did like my phone suddenly yelling at me in otherwise quiet places.

oblio 3y ago
Google Maps has an auto mode on Android. Well, if you set a destination and start the trip, it shows a big X button at the bottom, to stop the trip. Guess what loads slowly and goes in the location of the big X button? You guessed right, the Google voice assistant, which I don't use. They're really pushing the voice assistant.
- Already__Taken 3y ago
  the voice assistant keeps thinking my podcast is talking to it
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  The problem is the voice assistant doesn't work the way you want it to work which is like star trek. But the reason the computer works in star trek is because it's either a) a hyper intelligent ai that automates the ship so people can go about more interesting activities such as exploring the Galaxy or b) it's a storytelling tool that enters the script whenever a boring thing for the characters to do comes up so they can get back to pushing the story along. Neither of those are really accessible to us today. But that doesn't stop people from wishing they were.
  - csydas 3y ago
    I'm not sure we're actually that far off technically from getting the _kind_ of automation that Star Trek computer can do, we're just trying to get our voice assistants to do a ton of other crap that the Star Trek computer doesn't have to worry about on the business level. Star Trek computer has no idea about advertisements/search optimization, etc, it's more like a helpful shell/magic talking box in most cases. If the Star Trek doesn't understand the request or can't complete it as requested, it prompts the user for more details or parameters and lets you know what you didn't give it. Similarly, the way we see interactions with the computer in TNG is that you define a task for the computer and the computer further defines business rules until it can start a workflow. It's not trying to push you towards a specific source of information or a specific outcome, it's just trying to define the rules to take your input and get the desired output. AI-based control systems like this need to be established like we'd have a library or framework or protocol first, something that is just built for accomplishing tasks and refining that to a point that it is a workhorse. When it comes to subjective matters, it needs to not try to build a profile on what you want and predict it, it needs to be painfully obtuse in its objectivity. Even on Star Trek, the computer struggled with matters of personal taste/entertainment even though it could ingest complex technical requirements and write equally or more complex workflows/code on the fly for specific tasks. It was pretty often with things like the holodeck or even just playing music/games to pass the time the computer didn't understand what the requestor meant and even though it produced an output, the output had to be refined a lot in fairly specific terms. Even something like shopping was still pretty manual, just piecing through a catalog of items to replicate was seen many times. The point is that the Star Trek computer was optimized for specific workloads and shined there, and stayed out of the way for absolutely everything else. I'm don't have hope that modern tech companies have the discipline to design something like this. AI and smart homes I think lack a lot of focus and polish, trying to be way too much at once and also return further revenue for the businesses with ad-tech; I don't have any hope that modern tech companies are going to be the smart-home revolution as much as FOSS will, but that of course has the chicken and egg problem of finding hardware that will actually work with FOSS smart-homes; I'll gladly side with Stallman on this one and position that if the entire stack was truly free, then we would see innovation and closer to Star Trek style smart homes since you could buy any smart-object and just run free software on it that meets your needs. But I don't have hope that any tech company has a desire or interest in this, and personally I cannot get invested in anything from the major tech companies as it's just going to be obsolete in a few years and the services will stop working; Google has demonstrated this with far too many projects, and even Apple struggles to get its smart-object integrations to stick (I think one of the major car manufacturers dropped CarPlay for their new vehicles going forward?) It's hard for me to be excited or interested in smart-anything as I don't have the confidence I can rely on it for more than a year or two.
- indymike 3y ago
  > pushing the voice assistant By doing so, they are putting lots of things at risk. Up until the last year Android Auto has been so good that I think most people would rather use it than the in-built system in their car. The last UI update made it kind of frustrating. So frustrating that car companies will get the misguided notion they can do it better.
kyrra 3y ago
Googler opinions are my own. The same thing was happening to me for a really long time. I migrated to Tasks and it's been working fine since then (mainly because it's a different app). There are some minor quirks with the new app, nothing that bothers me, it's just different. But overall I'd say it's an improvement. Hopefully the rollout a d migration works out well.
Y_Y 3y ago
I just never enable the voice assistant from the start and I don't have problems like this. I don't know if it's possible to disable after the fact. All I want voice for is occasional text input and that works fine.

oblio 3y ago

Google Maps has an auto mode on Android. Well, if you set a destination and start the trip, it shows a big X button at the bottom, to stop the trip. Guess what loads slowly and goes in the location of the big X button? You guessed right, the Google voice assistant, which I don't use. They're really pushing the voice assistant.

Already__Taken 3y ago
the voice assistant keeps thinking my podcast is talking to it
mnky9800n 3y ago
The problem is the voice assistant doesn't work the way you want it to work which is like star trek. But the reason the computer works in star trek is because it's either a) a hyper intelligent ai that automates the ship so people can go about more interesting activities such as exploring the Galaxy or b) it's a storytelling tool that enters the script whenever a boring thing for the characters to do comes up so they can get back to pushing the story along. Neither of those are really accessible to us today. But that doesn't stop people from wishing they were.
- csydas 3y ago
  I'm not sure we're actually that far off technically from getting the _kind_ of automation that Star Trek computer can do, we're just trying to get our voice assistants to do a ton of other crap that the Star Trek computer doesn't have to worry about on the business level. Star Trek computer has no idea about advertisements/search optimization, etc, it's more like a helpful shell/magic talking box in most cases. If the Star Trek doesn't understand the request or can't complete it as requested, it prompts the user for more details or parameters and lets you know what you didn't give it. Similarly, the way we see interactions with the computer in TNG is that you define a task for the computer and the computer further defines business rules until it can start a workflow. It's not trying to push you towards a specific source of information or a specific outcome, it's just trying to define the rules to take your input and get the desired output. AI-based control systems like this need to be established like we'd have a library or framework or protocol first, something that is just built for accomplishing tasks and refining that to a point that it is a workhorse. When it comes to subjective matters, it needs to not try to build a profile on what you want and predict it, it needs to be painfully obtuse in its objectivity. Even on Star Trek, the computer struggled with matters of personal taste/entertainment even though it could ingest complex technical requirements and write equally or more complex workflows/code on the fly for specific tasks. It was pretty often with things like the holodeck or even just playing music/games to pass the time the computer didn't understand what the requestor meant and even though it produced an output, the output had to be refined a lot in fairly specific terms. Even something like shopping was still pretty manual, just piecing through a catalog of items to replicate was seen many times. The point is that the Star Trek computer was optimized for specific workloads and shined there, and stayed out of the way for absolutely everything else. I'm don't have hope that modern tech companies have the discipline to design something like this. AI and smart homes I think lack a lot of focus and polish, trying to be way too much at once and also return further revenue for the businesses with ad-tech; I don't have any hope that modern tech companies are going to be the smart-home revolution as much as FOSS will, but that of course has the chicken and egg problem of finding hardware that will actually work with FOSS smart-homes; I'll gladly side with Stallman on this one and position that if the entire stack was truly free, then we would see innovation and closer to Star Trek style smart homes since you could buy any smart-object and just run free software on it that meets your needs. But I don't have hope that any tech company has a desire or interest in this, and personally I cannot get invested in anything from the major tech companies as it's just going to be obsolete in a few years and the services will stop working; Google has demonstrated this with far too many projects, and even Apple struggles to get its smart-object integrations to stick (I think one of the major car manufacturers dropped CarPlay for their new vehicles going forward?) It's hard for me to be excited or interested in smart-anything as I don't have the confidence I can rely on it for more than a year or two.
indymike 3y ago
> pushing the voice assistant By doing so, they are putting lots of things at risk. Up until the last year Android Auto has been so good that I think most people would rather use it than the in-built system in their car. The last UI update made it kind of frustrating. So frustrating that car companies will get the misguided notion they can do it better.

kyrra 3y ago

Googler opinions are my own. The same thing was happening to me for a really long time. I migrated to Tasks and it's been working fine since then (mainly because it's a different app). There are some minor quirks with the new app, nothing that bothers me, it's just different. But overall I'd say it's an improvement. Hopefully the rollout a d migration works out well.

Y_Y 3y ago

I just never enable the voice assistant from the start and I don't have problems like this. I don't know if it's possible to disable after the fact. All I want voice for is occasional text input and that works fine.