The iPhone is catching up fast too...my wife's taken to sending emails via Siri (to avoid strain on her hands), and most of the time it gets things perfectly.
The biggest problem is privacy. One of the nice things about touchscreens is that you have a personal dialog with the device that can't be overheard by anyone nearby. That doesn't apply to voice recognition systems, and it can be pretty awkward to dictate an e-mail to a phone in a crowded place.
It would be nice for voice recognition platforms to start being built in. I know there's training data that's needed, but there's some convenience afforded.
The privacy concern _isn't_ necessarily about having something to hide. It's about the consistent hacking of major systems, and exposure of personal data.
Real easy to say: "Okay Google... navigate to California Academy of Sciences."
What's missing for me is spotify/app specific integration.
For that to really happen in a robust way, I think Google needs to open up Custom Voice Actions.
[0] https://developers.google.com/voice-actions/custom-actions
I agree discovery of these magic phrases needs work.
Okay Google... Play music will start Music app Okay Google... Start Radio will start NPR app
Perhaps if I used Google Music the integration would be built out.
Historically probably wasn't much of an issue but given that most people will spend hours at a desk on a keyboard, it's likely to become more of a problem. Think of it akin to paying attention to your posture
I've done a fair bit of interface engineering for the web. Between that and using so much software over the course of my life, I'd say that this applies to GUIs just as much as voice interfaces.
(I'd suggest this is actually a combination of the still-non-trivial nature of NLP, combined with a lack of feedback, combined with the fact that giving instructions is quite hard. Humans overestimate human language's ability to communicate clear directions, as anyone who has done tech support over a phone understands.)
I wonder if NLP research should have started as our ancestors did, with grunts and hoots and cries. Instead it's focused on recognizing full words and sentences while almost completely ignoring inflection.
Another dimension to add with vocal input is directional. If you have mics in all corners of a room, which direction you speak in can affect whether "turn off" operates your TV, your lights or your oven.
There is a lot of improvement for voice processing in several dimensions of voice.
Taking sections of the last response, or hell, even having every response essentially be wrapped up in some sort of object you can reference in your next query to the interface is what all of these lack.
Even Androids "Search this artist" doesn't quite get there. The lack of context between queries is what murders Siri for me. That and her seemingly random selection of what goes to Google and what goes to Wolphram Alpha. Sometimes even the "wolfram" verb prepended to a query just doesn't go to wolfram no matter what.
A text field in contrast doesn't need any intelligence, nor do buttons. This is in particular important for instance for people living in non english speaking countries but using english in specific contexts (work, gaming, minor hobbies etc.). Switching language in audio applications are generally a PITA. Then even when you do the switch between languages every time, the engines are still have huge performance gaps between the languages.
Sofware has become way extremely tolerant for multiple languages IMO. Voice recognition interfaces are not so mature yet in my experience.
Now, granted, this is a specific use case, but, you know... "explore the space" and all that. (more cowbell!)
A VUI breakdown would be inability to understand accents, or non-responsiveness to commands. As a user input, Alexa is pretty well buttoned up.
It still feels a lot like the old text-based RPGs, in that you spend most of your time trying to figure out how to phrase something to accomplish a basic need, while angrily thinking "it would have just been easier/faster to pick up my phone."
It's 2016. How are we still OK with the unreasonable constraints of technology that make us jump through a hoop like a trained poodle to get the treat?
We don't have audio search engine equivalent yet but that day is also not far.
Geordi: Computer, subdued lighting.
(computer turns the lights off)
Geordi No, that's... that's too much. I don't want it dark. I want it cozy.
Computer: Please state your request in precise candlepower.
(The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZnR3Ue1n4)
Computers train users on how to use the computer all the time. It's less ideal than having the computer know everything, but once you know what you can expect from a computer, it's easier to get a good result.
Which would you rather do? Be forced to state your lighting preferences in candlepower, or have the computer learn that when you say "subdued lighting", you mean "12"?
But if I type in "how fast do I need to go to travel 100 miles in 6000 seconds", now it has no idea what I'm talking about and instead gives me a comparison of time from 6000 seconds to the half life of uranium-241.
Now, when I get that result, I don't usually just give up on trying to figure out the answer. Instead I try to figure out what the computer expects me to say. Through some trial and error, I can shorten the query to "100 miles in 6000 seconds" and boom, I get the answer of 60 miles per hour. Instead of natural language, I'm using the search engine like a calculator.
The computer has just taught me how to use it. Ideal? No, but we work within the reality we're given. 12 candlepower is dim for you but for someone with decreased vision, that might be completely dark. The computer doesn't know unless it's taught, and we know from looking at history that users would rather the computer train the user than the user having to train the computer.
Some phrases exist as a "wow, 1 million people phrase this problem this way, let's throw that in." The fact it can take an easily dictated, albeit strictly phrased problem, and get you your answer is really what I love about it. Now if Siri would just stop sending stuff to Google. -_-
What you should have asked is: "100 miles per 6000 second to miles per hour", which it will happily convert the rate you gave, for the one you really wanted.
I guess what your saying is it should be able to figure that out, but at some point, the old phrase "garbage in garbage out" surfaces.. You never told it to convert the unit.
Example format: "Computer, define X as Y"
"Computer, define subdued lighting as set lighting to candle power twelve"
Then the VUI just adds a new entry to the voice commands where saying X results in Y.
Devil's advocate though: this seems more like a case of the guy being good enough at the game to win in spite of the voice controls rather than because of them. Compared to a regular controller/keyboard+mouse/whatever there's just no contest in terms of input speed and precision. Not all genres are a good fit for this either. I'd be really interested to see if anyone could make it work with, say, a competitive FPS game.
After 111 failed attempts :)
Still, it's a hell of an achievement.
EDIT: to be fair, Ornstein & Smough is a very tough fight even with normal controls.
Also notice the voice recognition fails to recognise some words like "item" even though they are spoken clearly. Almost gets the guy killed at one point.
I can recall the first time I ever saw a computer and how primitive they now look.
Now we have little bots that listen to you and reply with info.
When my two-year-old is forty - we will have ghost in the shell.
It's crazy beautiful and scary to me that we all grew up reading cyberpunk fiction and watching anime and not all of us did, but pretty much all of us are actually building that future.
There is a balance between dystopia and utopia though.
We are all working at the Great Game - and the future is going to be interesting, but we can never turn back. So hopefully we keep the balance and get it right.
My worry is that at this literal nascent stage of technology, that we don't fuck it up as we don't fight hard enough for privacy policy.
We need privacy policy that is thinking at least 50 years in advance.
The control of government apparatus is thinking in advance - I personally feel that the tech sector's vision is myopically focused on today's profits and not in the future where it should be viewing, with the exception of this most recent case between apple and the FBI. At least Cook's comments were salient and forward thinking and truly for the greater good... Let's hope that invigorates the tech industry as a whole to think about where we are headed.
However, we seem to still be pretty far from natural language interfaces that make sensible inferences about actions you're requesting and perhaps join multiple data sources to answer your query. There have been a lot of advances--don't get me wrong. But it's a very hard problem that's been being worked on for a very long time.