I mean just think back to the voice assistant craze 10-15 years ago (SOMEHOW!) Apple had Siri, which actually solved a problem. Smart phone-sized touch screens are the genital cancer of computer UI, so what if we add the ability to do common tasks such as web searches, media control, clock and calendar operations etc. by voice command? Google followed suit.
Then came Alexa. Amazon wanted in, but they didn’t want to help you use the device you owned, they wanted to facilitate using their services. Meaning you had to either install the software on some other device, or they had to make and distribute new devices. Commercials featuring Alexa, often starring a pre-homicide Alec Baldwin, usually demonstrated making product and media purchases on a speakerphone-like device. I wonder if anyone has ever actually done that? Because almost all the time I want to examine the listing to make sure I’m getting the thing I want. Like, “Alexa, buy a copy of Army of Darkness.” Okay, did I just “buy” it on Prime Video? Am I about to get a copy of a DVD or Blu-Ray in the mail in two days? Did it just install the 2011 tower defense game on my Kindle Fire?
Then came Bixby, because Samsung are under the impression they need to make software for the phones they make. It does mean I can ask my cousin’s refrigerator to beatbox, and it will.
Then came Cortana. Microsoft, as usual, arrived late to the game doing a mediocre job of what everyone else was already doing for no reason other than to do what everyone else was doing. Naming their voice assistant after the video game character made it more difficult to google, most of what it did was yap during the Windows install and onboarding process, and then nobody used it because the entire reason for a voice assistant to exist - making up for the shit UI that is a tiny touch screen - doesn’t exist on PC with a large screen, mouse and full keyboard.
Windows 10 was kind of fascinating for that; Cortana was one of several technologies they tried to go all in on, releasing a big update that added apps and frameworks right into Windows, only for them to unceremoniously rip it all back out later.
And now we get to the AI era and it’s happening again. I imagine Copilot will be the first to go because nobody likes Microsoft’s built-in shit.
A big part of the problem with AI is that for your every day use cases, voice assistants already filled that niche
Most people just need some very simple language parsing that can automate some tasks like, “set a timer for 5 minutes”. We had that years ago and how exactly modern AI differentiates itself from that is largely unclear to most people. And when it is clear, it’s apparent that it’s a lying machine that lies because that’s fundamentally just how the tech works. And it boils the oceans
I do have to wonder how much especially Google is gimping ordinary search in order to make their LLMs seem more useful. Just using the internet has gotten so much worse in the last few years.
I mean just think back to the voice assistant craze 10-15 years ago (SOMEHOW!) Apple had Siri, which actually solved a problem. Smart phone-sized touch screens are the genital cancer of computer UI, so what if we add the ability to do common tasks such as web searches, media control, clock and calendar operations etc. by voice command? Google followed suit.
Then came Alexa. Amazon wanted in, but they didn’t want to help you use the device you owned, they wanted to facilitate using their services. Meaning you had to either install the software on some other device, or they had to make and distribute new devices. Commercials featuring Alexa, often starring a pre-homicide Alec Baldwin, usually demonstrated making product and media purchases on a speakerphone-like device. I wonder if anyone has ever actually done that? Because almost all the time I want to examine the listing to make sure I’m getting the thing I want. Like, “Alexa, buy a copy of Army of Darkness.” Okay, did I just “buy” it on Prime Video? Am I about to get a copy of a DVD or Blu-Ray in the mail in two days? Did it just install the 2011 tower defense game on my Kindle Fire?
Then came Bixby, because Samsung are under the impression they need to make software for the phones they make. It does mean I can ask my cousin’s refrigerator to beatbox, and it will.
Then came Cortana. Microsoft, as usual, arrived late to the game doing a mediocre job of what everyone else was already doing for no reason other than to do what everyone else was doing. Naming their voice assistant after the video game character made it more difficult to google, most of what it did was yap during the Windows install and onboarding process, and then nobody used it because the entire reason for a voice assistant to exist - making up for the shit UI that is a tiny touch screen - doesn’t exist on PC with a large screen, mouse and full keyboard.
Windows 10 was kind of fascinating for that; Cortana was one of several technologies they tried to go all in on, releasing a big update that added apps and frameworks right into Windows, only for them to unceremoniously rip it all back out later.
And now we get to the AI era and it’s happening again. I imagine Copilot will be the first to go because nobody likes Microsoft’s built-in shit.
A big part of the problem with AI is that for your every day use cases, voice assistants already filled that niche
Most people just need some very simple language parsing that can automate some tasks like, “set a timer for 5 minutes”. We had that years ago and how exactly modern AI differentiates itself from that is largely unclear to most people. And when it is clear, it’s apparent that it’s a lying machine that lies because that’s fundamentally just how the tech works. And it boils the oceans
I do have to wonder how much especially Google is gimping ordinary search in order to make their LLMs seem more useful. Just using the internet has gotten so much worse in the last few years.
And yet, with Android Auto, Google stuck the dumbest version of assistant to handle voice queries.
(While driving to hardware store) “Hey Google, what size screws does a standard VESA mount require?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand”
It’s the ONE place i need a working assistant/AI the most. Yet it’s useless with natural language queries 99% of the time.