Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by groestl on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @07:09AM (#33718175)

Thanks for that. A lot of energy is currently sunk because of natural language, and I'd argue gains from employing software (instead of human processes) for various tasks is in part due to scaling up the results of many confusing discussions in natural language about what a specific process actually comprises.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by bbarnett on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @07:36AM (#33718405)

This is part of the reason Google search sucks more and more.

Around when Android appeared, and the first voice searches began, Google suddenly started to alias everything.

Search for 'Andy', 'Andrew' appears. Search for 'there', and 'they're' appears.

This has been taken further, now silly aliases such as debian .. ubuntu exist, and as google happily drops words in your search, to find a match, this makes precision impossible.

But, that's the only way to make voice search remotely work, so...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by jefftk on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @08:34AM (#33718894)

I don't think this is to support voice search: Google generally knows whether a query was initiated by voice or typing. Instead, I think it's because most users find what they're looking for faster with it.

If you have terms you don't want interpreted broadly you can put them in quotes.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by bluGill on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @09:03AM (#33719171)

Most people are not precise enough in their terminology.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by Zach_the_Lizard on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @09:29AM (#33719515)

Google "helpfully" ignores the quotes sometimes too. They're not the hard and fast rule they used to be.

I preached the Gospel of Google when the competition was composed of web rings and Altavista, but Google in its infinite wisdom has abandoned the advanced user with changes of this nature.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by thfuran on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @09:51AM (#33719788)

So what is the gospel de jour, or are we forsaken in these benighted times?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by jvolkman on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @02:42PM (#33723623)

Pretty sure quote support has improved recently.

https://blog.google/products/search/how-were-improving-searc...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by bbarnett on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @11:49PM (#33727910)

Considering the article lies, and tries to claim quotes always are respected, I wouldn't put much faith in it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by galaxyLogic on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @01:26PM (#33722775)

I find voice-assistant often useful for using the phone such as opening a given setting, say make the display brighter. Trying to navigate the settings pages is very error-prone. There seems to be no universal standard as to where each setting should be found.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by bbarnett on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @11:51PM (#33727915)

The real problem is people keep reorganizing where the settings are found.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it ... by numpad0 on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @03:41PM (#33724264)

There is a widely accepted and straightforward thinking that humans has ideas, which are expressed in languages, and that languages being ambiguous is problematic: this I'm starting to have doubts on.

Maybe we don't have clear intentions in the first place, maybe languages are not just ambiguous, but only meant to narrow realms of valid interpretations down to a desired precision, rather than intended to form a logically fully constrained statements. Maybe this is why intelligent entities are needed to "correctly" interpret natural language statements, because an act of interpretation itself is a decision making and an action.

Just my thoughts but I do think there are more to be said than "natural languages are ambiguous".

[ Parent | on HN ]