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Someday real soon, kids being shown episodes of 'Knight Rider' by their grandparents won't understand why a talking car was so futuristic.
by Mountain_Skies 1y ago
Someday real soon, kids being shown episodes of 'Knight Rider' by their grandparents won't understand why a talking car was so futuristic.
- sublinear 1y agoWas that point not almost a decade ago?
- Mountain_Skies 1y agoNot really. My 1983 Datsun would talk, but it couldn't converse. Alexa and Siri couldn't hold a conversation anywhere near the level KITT did. There's a big difference. With LLMs, we're getting close.
- bsoles 1y agoCommodore 64 had text to speech in late 80s. Also, my friend's father in the 80s was the driver of a French Consulate's member in Turkey. His car (a Renault) had speech functionality.
- nereye 1y agoEarly 80s (1982), according to Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth
- dahart 1y agoThat brings back some memories. My friend and I messed around with S.A.M. on his Atari 800 a lot when we were kids. We would crank call the parents of other kids we knew and have SAM tell them their kids had skipped school and might get suspended. It was funny to some twelve year olds anyway. SAM had a basic mode where you just type English, but it also had an advanced phonetic input mode where you could control the sound and stress on every syllable. My favorite thing to do was try to give SAM a British accent.
- hulitu 1y ago> Commodore 64 had text to speech in late 80s. Yes, and Windows had Narrator. And that's all. Since 20 years.
- anthk 1y agoTest to speech it's trivial with Dr. Sbaitso or Flite in ARMv5/Pentium 90 machines.
- mgerdts 1y agoYour car had a tiny record player. https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/but-wait-theres-more/a1875076/when-cars-talked-using-tiny-phonograph-records-nissans-voice-warning-system/ https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/but-wait-theres-more/a1875...
- KineticLensman 1y agoLike James Bond's Aston Martin with a satnav/tracking device in 1964's Goldfinger. Kids would know what that was but they might not understand why Bond had to continually shift some sort of stick to change the car's gear.
- anthk 1y agoGear shifting it's still a thing in Europe, and mandatory if you want to get your driver's license.
- prmoustache 1y agoyou can get a driver license with an automatic. But it just means you can only drive automatics. It would have been a huge deal not being able to drive manuals 20y ago but hybrid and ev all being automatic it is not that much of a downside nowadays unless you want to buy old cars or borrow friend's car. Most renting fleets have autos available nowadays.
- pjmlp 1y agoOur family owns a Ford Focus hybrid in Europe, I can tell you they are not all automatic.
- inkyoto 1y agoAt this point, it is a historical artefact that will cease to exist soon enough. Electric vehicles do not have gearboxes as there are no converters, so there is nothing to shift up or down. A few performance EV's that have been announced (and maybe even have released) with a gear stick, do so for nostalgic reasons and the gear shift + the accompanying experience is simulated entirely in the software.
- zelos 1y agoThe Porsche Taycan has two forward gears, but it's apparently the only EV that does: https://www.wired.com/story/electric-car-two-speed-transmission-gearbox/ https://www.wired.com/story/electric-car-two-speed-transmiss...
- heelix 1y agoThe self driving aspect, amazingly, is already here and considered mundane.
- DrillShopper 1y agoOh really? What vehicle can I buy today, drive home, get twice the legal limit drunk, flop in the back alone to take a nap while my car drives me two hours away to a relative's house? I'd really like to buy that car so I await your response.
- tekla 1y agoA Tesla is pretty close. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZfkU1QgTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZfkU1QgTI
- more_corn 1y agoTesla is in no way close.
- 4ndrewl 1y agoThey're "cold-fusion" close. Which means a perpetual "few years".
- bigfatkitten 1y agoThey’ve been “close” for over a decade now.
- ptero 1y agoThat's a jurisdiction problem, not a technology problem. No tech is foolproof, but even with the current technology someone would be much safer (for others, too) in the back seat than trying to drive tired, borderline DUI at night in unfamiliar town. Which many folks regularly do, for example on business travel. The reason I cannot do this today is laws, not technology. My 2c.
- dizhn 1y agoKitt was funny though. (For its time)
- BizarroLand 1y agoFor the time yes, but if I bought a car tomorrow and it had Kitt's sass I would cut his speakers in a week. I don't need my car to constantly whine, needle, harass, demean, and insult me.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jjkaczor 1y agoHad the same thing happen when standalone GPS units were introduced to the mass market, I got one - and one of my tech friends suggested replacing the stock voice with a sarcastic/whiny one (maybe ... C3PO)... My response was: "you obviously haven't used one yet"... They were already bossy enough... 'MAKE A LEGAL U-TURN NOW!'"
- Havoc 1y agoTried explaining what a Tamagotchi was to someone recently. Looks of utter bewilderment
- tsoukase 1y agoI grew up watching Kitt and when I watched it again a few days ago, I didn't feel anything. Much less my kids.
- hulitu 1y ago> Someday real soon, kids being shown episodes of 'Knight Rider' by their grandparents won't understand why a talking car was so futuristic. Maybe in 100 years. The talking car was more intelligent than Siri, Alexa or Hey Google. It is not that we are not able to "talk" to computers, it is that we "talk" with computers only so that they can collect more data about us. Their "intelligence" is limited to simple text underestanding.
- olddustytrail 1y agoI think maybe you missed the last three years. We're not talking about Alexa or Hey Google level. We're talking about Google Gemini or ChatGPT.
- qgin 1y agoIt’s impossible to explain to kids now why it was funny on Seinfeld when Kramer pretended to be MoviePhone and says “why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you selected!”