Agreed. I’d like to have full voice control in the car but it’s just not sophisticated enough to do anything other than a few simple rote commands without taking my eyes off the road and/or hands off the wheel.
I can’t just ask it what the last couple episodes of a podcast are, have it tell me, and say OK play the second one. Or transparently even handle nav without fiddling.
Voice recognition has gotten decent—though it’s better with Alexa’s directional microphones. NLP and taking associated actions is still pretty bad.
I think we're of a similar mind.
Voice recognition and very simple NLP have gotten good pretty fast, and is still improving fast. That's necessary but not sufficient for a good UI.
The interaction model just isn't good enough yet. We probably need a podcatcher app to be built for voice-first, in order to discover the right UI.
I suspect you’re right. More conversational NLP would help. But, as a practical matter, we probably also need applications that are explicitly designed to work in concert with voice UIs rather than simply using voice as an alternative for filling in a search box or whatever. For example, you need apps that expect a certain back and forth to resolve an action.
IDK what the eventual VUIs look like, but I have a feeling were still at the discovery phase. Even operating GPS/calls/music via voice while driving is still awkward. In a car you have privacy, quite and a need to keep hands and eyes free. It should be the ideal environment for VUI.
Personally, I'm curious to see more voice used as an additional input to existing UIs, the way mouse, keyboard & touch are currently used simultaneously.