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I can answer to this, having worked on an assistant that is always on, from your phone. The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting. It is hard to hav

I can answer to this, having worked on an assistant that is always on, from your phone. The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting. It is hard to have something always on and listening. Especially apple is aggressive with apps running in the background. You need constant permissioning and special privileges. The exposed APIs themselves are not enough to build deep and stable integrations to the level of Siri/Google Assistant.

echoangle 2y ago
Oh, I didn't get that it's supposed to always be listening. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I wouldn't want that anyways. If that's important, that might be a good reason. I think this needs to change in the future though if AI agents are supposed to become popular, I can't imagine buying separate hardware every time. Either the integration in the OS needs to become better or Google/Apple will monopolize the market and be the only options.
- jsheard 2y ago
  > Oh, I didn't get that it's supposed to always be listening. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I wouldn't want that anyways. I don't know about this project, but generally when a voice assistant is "always listening" they mean it's sitting in a low power state listening for a very specific trigger like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" and literally nothing else. As much as they would probably like to have it really listening all the time, the technology to have a portable device run actual speech recognition and parsing at all times with useful battery life doesn't really exist yet.
  - joeyxiong 2y ago
    You are right, “always listening" they mean it's sitting in a low power state listening for a very specific trigger like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" and literally nothing else.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    Yes, I thought it was button-triggered.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Yes it does. A Nvidia Jetson Nano with a microphone running Whisper with a banana sized battery will give you 8 hours of transcription.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
xnx 2y ago
If you have a separate -dedicated- Android smartphone for this task, why wouldn't the app run in the foreground?
- suriya-ganesh 2y ago
  In some sense this is what, Rabbit R1 tried to do. they just shipped a low end custom android skin in a new formfactor so that they own the platform. Didn't go well for them
fsflover 2y ago
> The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting. I'm not sure what that "etc" is supposed to mean, but GNU/Linux phones run desktop OS and impose no artificial limits on you.

echoangle 2y ago

Oh, I didn't get that it's supposed to always be listening. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I wouldn't want that anyways. If that's important, that might be a good reason. I think this needs to change in the future though if AI agents are supposed to become popular, I can't imagine buying separate hardware every time. Either the integration in the OS needs to become better or Google/Apple will monopolize the market and be the only options.

jsheard 2y ago
> Oh, I didn't get that it's supposed to always be listening. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I wouldn't want that anyways. I don't know about this project, but generally when a voice assistant is "always listening" they mean it's sitting in a low power state listening for a very specific trigger like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" and literally nothing else. As much as they would probably like to have it really listening all the time, the technology to have a portable device run actual speech recognition and parsing at all times with useful battery life doesn't really exist yet.
- joeyxiong 2y ago
  You are right, “always listening" they mean it's sitting in a low power state listening for a very specific trigger like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google" and literally nothing else.
- echoangle 2y ago
  Yes, I thought it was button-triggered.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Yes it does. A Nvidia Jetson Nano with a microphone running Whisper with a banana sized battery will give you 8 hours of transcription.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

xnx 2y ago

If you have a separate -dedicated- Android smartphone for this task, why wouldn't the app run in the foreground?

suriya-ganesh 2y ago
In some sense this is what, Rabbit R1 tried to do. they just shipped a low end custom android skin in a new formfactor so that they own the platform. Didn't go well for them

fsflover 2y ago

> The platforms (ios, Android, etc.) are very limiting. I'm not sure what that "etc" is supposed to mean, but GNU/Linux phones run desktop OS and impose no artificial limits on you.