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This is another major point about these AI products. Not only do they barely work as far as accuracy and consistency, but even if they did, they aren’t being b

by dangus 2y ago

This is another major point about these AI products. Not only do they barely work as far as accuracy and consistency, but even if they did, they aren’t being built to perform functions that are in demand. They are solutions without pain points. Why is someone going to use a hands-free assistant? Who would want to talk to a computer, which is an awkward thing to do? Outside of accessibility reasons, the only reason to use something hands free is when…your hands aren’t free! Cooking, driving, etc…that’s why timers and driving directions and putting on playlists is all anyone wants out of their voice assistant. Apple might spend millions of dollars fixing the Super Bowl question only to find out that nobody actually wants to ask Siri that question, because I can just type that into Google or Wikipedia or something like that. Using my voice doesn’t save time or effort and it’s not discreet.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
I do it because setting a timer via the app is too much friction. On this current iPhone if I type “clock” into spotlight it actually takes a few seconds to return clock. Never happened on my 6s that phone was instant with spotlight.
scarface_74 2y ago
Even accessibility reasons are important by themselves. Almost everyone if they live long enough will lose some ability with their hands. My dad used Google’s voice search exclusively on his Android to look up YouTube videos. The first thing I installed on his iPhone 16 Plus was the Google app. He uses voice for everything that would require typing. Google and search is a shit show. I’ve completely stopped using search for anything moderately complicated and have been using the paid version of ChatGPT since it integrated web search almost two years ago. There is a lot of trivia that people want to use their voice for. Siri use to be good at that and gave you reliable answers by going directly to bespoke data sources for it. It’s much easier to tell Siri “remind me to get the milk out of the back seat when I get out of the car” (or get in the car, get home, etc) than configure that manually. That works as long as usually pair your phone with the car over Bluetooth.
- dangus 2y ago
  Accessibility reasons are absolutely important, but the AI industry woudln't be worth the amount of moeny it is if the best application of the technology was accessibility.
fragmede 2y ago
> Cooking, driving, etc… I mean if that's not a pain point you encounter regularly because you have a wife or staff that takes care of it, good for you, but there's huge swaths of people for whom they don't have someone else to take care of that so it's a huge pain point that solving for hits. The problem is that there's not a lot of money in it because of the plethora of already existing content aka podcasts that are being give away for free so charging money for something that takes more effort is gonna be an uphill battle.
- dangus 2y ago
  I am literally saying that cooking and driving is a pain point people encounter and solve through voice assistants, and that only a limited set of specific functions of the computing devices are needed during those times. Voice activated features that are used in scenarios where your hands are available aren't very useful, especially if accuracy or level of control is poor. So what I was saying specifically is that when people are cooking, they want to do things like set timers. When people are driving, they want to do things like get directions and play music/podcasts. But they don't really want to do all that much more than those things when they are already preoccupied with something else. Other more complex functions that use AI aren't functions that people demand because they already have the option of interacting with their device in the first place. For example, users of the Apple notification summary AI feature don't seem particularly impressed because if your eyes are already on your device you can just read the notifications instead of a bad summary of the notifications. IMO when tech companies design new features like this they operate in something of a bubble where they just assume that people will welcome more technology entering into very non-technical parts of their life. Solutions to problems that don't exist, more technology in places where it's not wanted, etc.

by dangus 2y ago

kjkjadksj 2y ago

I do it because setting a timer via the app is too much friction. On this current iPhone if I type “clock” into spotlight it actually takes a few seconds to return clock. Never happened on my 6s that phone was instant with spotlight.

scarface_74 2y ago

Even accessibility reasons are important by themselves. Almost everyone if they live long enough will lose some ability with their hands. My dad used Google’s voice search exclusively on his Android to look up YouTube videos. The first thing I installed on his iPhone 16 Plus was the Google app. He uses voice for everything that would require typing. Google and search is a shit show. I’ve completely stopped using search for anything moderately complicated and have been using the paid version of ChatGPT since it integrated web search almost two years ago. There is a lot of trivia that people want to use their voice for. Siri use to be good at that and gave you reliable answers by going directly to bespoke data sources for it. It’s much easier to tell Siri “remind me to get the milk out of the back seat when I get out of the car” (or get in the car, get home, etc) than configure that manually. That works as long as usually pair your phone with the car over Bluetooth.

dangus 2y ago
Accessibility reasons are absolutely important, but the AI industry woudln't be worth the amount of moeny it is if the best application of the technology was accessibility.

fragmede 2y ago

> Cooking, driving, etc… I mean if that's not a pain point you encounter regularly because you have a wife or staff that takes care of it, good for you, but there's huge swaths of people for whom they don't have someone else to take care of that so it's a huge pain point that solving for hits. The problem is that there's not a lot of money in it because of the plethora of already existing content aka podcasts that are being give away for free so charging money for something that takes more effort is gonna be an uphill battle.

dangus 2y ago
I am literally saying that cooking and driving is a pain point people encounter and solve through voice assistants, and that only a limited set of specific functions of the computing devices are needed during those times. Voice activated features that are used in scenarios where your hands are available aren't very useful, especially if accuracy or level of control is poor. So what I was saying specifically is that when people are cooking, they want to do things like set timers. When people are driving, they want to do things like get directions and play music/podcasts. But they don't really want to do all that much more than those things when they are already preoccupied with something else. Other more complex functions that use AI aren't functions that people demand because they already have the option of interacting with their device in the first place. For example, users of the Apple notification summary AI feature don't seem particularly impressed because if your eyes are already on your device you can just read the notifications instead of a bad summary of the notifications. IMO when tech companies design new features like this they operate in something of a bubble where they just assume that people will welcome more technology entering into very non-technical parts of their life. Solutions to problems that don't exist, more technology in places where it's not wanted, etc.