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When I type "pizza" I am given a filter that allows me to choose between "$, $$, $$$". That's a little vague but generally I would MUCH rather interact with sof

by mvdtnz 3y ago

When I type "pizza" I am given a filter that allows me to choose between "$, $$, $$$". That's a little vague but generally I would MUCH rather interact with software with good filtering, grouping and sorting controls than any of this natural language bullshit.

Symbiote 3y ago
I recently searched "vegan brunch" in an unfamiliar city. Several results looked reasonable — the kind of decor and branding I'd expect from a vegan restaurant. After the long walk to the third restaurant, I looked closely through the results to see why Google was giving me useless results. It was reviews! It had matched variations on "Great food but no vegan options." I'm sure Google Maps used to have a "Cuisine" filter, which isn't really correct in this case but is a lot closer than what they're doing now.
- alisonatwork 3y ago
  You probably already know about this, but if you're looking for vegan stuff specifically, Happy Cow is a pretty good site to point you in the direction of decent options.
crazygringo 3y ago
For price, sure. But a lot of the time you're looking for things like "cute date spot", "trendy", "chill atmopshere", "cozy", "good for a large birthday group", and so forth. There aren't filters for these. That's my whole point. There's a ton of information that can be gleaned from people's reviews and photos, but that simply aren't exposed in anything filterable. And keyword search often isn't available but also doesn't often work -- e.g. searching for "budget" gives you lots of reviews that say "definitely not budget". But AI is perfect for this.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > There's a ton of information that can be gleaned from people's reviews Extremely unreliable information. Isn't that made worse if what you're looking for is subjective descriptors like "cozy", "chill", "cute", etc? Those are the kinds of things that there won't be a lot of agreement on.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Not my experience at all. An individual review isn't much, but when you see the same ideas getting repeated across reviews, it's always accurate in my experience. There's enough common agreement on what cozy or chill mean. There's plenty of signal in the noise of reviews.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Interesting. Our experiences about the reviews are very different. > There's enough common agreement on what cozy or chill mean. Maybe? I don't know. I do know that I often see people using the same subjective descriptors in ways that are contradictory to each other. What one person thinks is "cozy", another person thinks it "claustrophobic", for instance. Unless you know the mindset of the person using those sorts of words, it's hard to know how to interpret them.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        > What one person thinks is "cozy", another person thinks it "claustrophobic", for instance. you can't glean good information from that, not about the people but about the restaurant?

by mvdtnz 3y ago

Symbiote 3y ago

I recently searched "vegan brunch" in an unfamiliar city. Several results looked reasonable — the kind of decor and branding I'd expect from a vegan restaurant. After the long walk to the third restaurant, I looked closely through the results to see why Google was giving me useless results. It was reviews! It had matched variations on "Great food but no vegan options." I'm sure Google Maps used to have a "Cuisine" filter, which isn't really correct in this case but is a lot closer than what they're doing now.

alisonatwork 3y ago
You probably already know about this, but if you're looking for vegan stuff specifically, Happy Cow is a pretty good site to point you in the direction of decent options.

crazygringo 3y ago

For price, sure. But a lot of the time you're looking for things like "cute date spot", "trendy", "chill atmopshere", "cozy", "good for a large birthday group", and so forth. There aren't filters for these. That's my whole point. There's a ton of information that can be gleaned from people's reviews and photos, but that simply aren't exposed in anything filterable. And keyword search often isn't available but also doesn't often work -- e.g. searching for "budget" gives you lots of reviews that say "definitely not budget". But AI is perfect for this.

JohnFen 3y ago
> There's a ton of information that can be gleaned from people's reviews Extremely unreliable information. Isn't that made worse if what you're looking for is subjective descriptors like "cozy", "chill", "cute", etc? Those are the kinds of things that there won't be a lot of agreement on.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Not my experience at all. An individual review isn't much, but when you see the same ideas getting repeated across reviews, it's always accurate in my experience. There's enough common agreement on what cozy or chill mean. There's plenty of signal in the noise of reviews.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Interesting. Our experiences about the reviews are very different. > There's enough common agreement on what cozy or chill mean. Maybe? I don't know. I do know that I often see people using the same subjective descriptors in ways that are contradictory to each other. What one person thinks is "cozy", another person thinks it "claustrophobic", for instance. Unless you know the mindset of the person using those sorts of words, it's hard to know how to interpret them.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      > What one person thinks is "cozy", another person thinks it "claustrophobic", for instance. you can't glean good information from that, not about the people but about the restaurant?