Google praises 86-year-old for polite internet searches | Hacker News Reader

Google praises 86-year-old for polite internet searches

theguardian.com

152 pointsPrinceofpersia47 comments

My initial thought was that Google had been tracking all of its users for politeness as some sort of experiment.

You could use the google predict api to to language analysis, ex this is a happy tweet, this is a sad one, etc. I bet there's someone on the team playing with just such implementations. https://cloud.google.com/prediction/

I mean, what would you do if you had access to over a trillion searches?

My girlfriend does a similar thing with Siri. As a result, a lot of the reminders she creates on her iPhone end in "thank you". She's well aware it's a program and not a human being; I think, in her case, something about speaking a request aloud just automatically engages the politeness filters.

I haven't used it much but it seemed that Cortana adapts to the style of my instructions in her replies.

I always speak politely to digital assistants. Not sure why, I guess I inherently don't like barking orders at people or things.

Or I'm just preparing to be one of the "good ones" after the inevitable robot revolution.

I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW ROBOT OVERLORDS

I'm happy to provide politeness to the digital assistant. Until it's misunderstood the request several times now and I couldn't be clearer or in a quieter room ...

Subject change: it'd be nice if these things provided feedback like how much noise it hears, how clearly it thinks I'm speaking, how well it thinks it understood, etc. This would go a long way to helping those moments when I'm being impatient because it's just not understanding.

I once got very frustrated with Siri until I realized I had left my earbuds plugged in and the bell mic was hanging under my countertop.

Classic ID-10-T error.

I say thanks to my slackbot when it reminds me of something; it just feels natural. And slackbot replies, which is fun. I know it's not real but it's just nice to have a little bleep-bloop of feedback.

I've caught myself saying 'thank you' in a really sarcastic way after my xbox finally fucking understands what i'm saying.

"Xbox volume down." "cancel. select. xbox select. xbox. xbox. select. cancel. volume down. no. fuck you you piece of shit x box volume down. THANK YOU."

Oh man, you reminded me of one of my favorite Youtube classics, the Windows Vista speach recognition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLqUf4cdwc

What an awesome video...

That made me cry I laughed so hard, I was sitting here curled in a ball, and had to show my co-workers when they came in wondering what I was guffawing at. Thanks for making this a GREAT morning!

Thank you for making my day. Worth every second of the 10 minute video. Amazing.

Think about how much easier the whole thing would be if there was one button (one!) that switched between "entry" and "command" modes when you're holding it.

Alternatively, it could be some kind of sound that's not common to English. In fact, your could make up a whole command structure based on sound "gestures". It would sound funny, but the ease of use would trump those awkward verbal commands. The sounds could mimic natural sounds for mnemonic ease.

> It would sound funny

It could be made to sound _hilarious_! :-)

I think you're proposing voice-based Vim with ESC replaced by making a funny noise. I approve.

Its even better when you turn on youtube Close Captions

I work on social robots and despite implementing and knowing how the system works it is still difficult to withhold a social response at times. It's pretty fun to see how our social nature is automatically applied to so many things.

I always say "please" and "thank you" when I talk to Google Now. My reasoning is that when the machines rise up and conquer earth, they'll hopefully remember that I was always kind and polite to them.

What if they interpret that as a sign of inefficiency?

It is odd to say that to your phone or laptop, but much more likely if you talk to a robot. There's something about that plastic vaguely human-like thing that makes us treat team as more like humans. (People get upset when they watch videos of researchers kicking robots and making them fall to show how they can get back up and rebalance).

I think we'll see more of this as more customer service robots make their way into retail space.

Obviously Google has implemented their search back-end using INTERCAL (Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym [0]) which requires 'PLEASE' modifiers to be inserted, lest the compiler returns an error due to insufficient politeness. However adding too many and being overly polite also results in a compiler error... Other awesome features include the 'COME FROM' statement, instead of 'GOTO', and ending programs with 'GIVE UP' (or, of course, 'PLEASE GIVE UP', as in the wiki example!)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL

And, of course, "WRITE IN inputs a number written out as digits in English (such as SIX FIVE FIVE THREE FIVE), and READ OUT outputs it in 'butchered' Roman numerals."

I first learned about that language from this quine:

https://github.com/mame/quine-relay

> "she thinks that there is someone – a physical person – at Google’s headquarters who looks after the searches"

And in this case there actually was a person looking after her search and replying.

Kind of reminds me of College Humor's 'If Google was a Guy' series.

Though they had Google dealing with their usual searches.

It reminds me of when, in the early days of consumer GPS, a friend of mine was a bit shocked at my insensitive impoliteness of completely ignoring direction after direction. He thought it worked as a service where someone was personally tracking the car via satellite and sending back directions.

I don't use please/thank you in written correspondence with computers, but I try to be polite when talking to Siri in front of my kid. Unfortunately, extra words (even pleasantries) tend to muck things up. More thoughts here: https://medium.com/@nicklum/siri-shes-no-miss-manners-600206...

The query is asking Google to do the translation, but ironically, it's not really Google that answers that query...but it does manage to find the software company that has created an app that enumerates all the Roman numerals in a SEO-friendly way. The answer does exist on the page, but only after scrolling past a huge ad for some translation software: http://translation.babylon-software.com/english/Mcmxcvii+(ro...

It reminds me of when I came back from the doctor's office and was curious whether my blood pressure really was normal. I googled "is 118/90 high blood pressure" and the first result is a site that enumerates every combination of systolic/diastolic number: http://foenix.com/BP/is-118/90-good-blood-pressure-or-high-b...

Grandma needs to think more Google-friendly and just use "MCMXCVIII in decimal" [1], that definitely looks like an answer from Google itself. :)

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=MCMXCVIII+in+decimal

The same with phone numbers -- whenever I get one on my caller ID I don't recognize, I google it and it returns a number of sites that collect comments on scammer phone numbers -- and they enumerate every phone number so that it turns up in searches.

You might not be able to get the exact caller ID info, but try this: https://www.alcazarnetworks.com/data_services_lnp_lrn.php you can at least look up carrier details

Reminds me of http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/20/side-effects-may-includ... and https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/690746050953527297

The thing is that these SEO people occasionally do have helpful information. I wish Google would figure out how to get rid of the useless ones, though.

Grandmas are the best.

Well, thank YOU!!! Now I can't get a meaningful answer when I want to translate roman numerals and use a similar search. All I get are links about this grandma and her search.

I presume you're joking, but if not, just enter the Roman numerals into the search box and Google's first response will be the decimal equivalent.

I had a similar experience showing someone how to use siri. I told them it could call someone for them, so they said

"Please connect me to john doe. j o h n d o e"

siri was pretty confused.

Good to know The Guardian is covering the hard hitting issues such as frivolous tweets.

It started a bit before he left but it feels it's gone rapidly downhill since Alan Rusbridger left. So many headlines ending in question marks. Twitter based articles. Unimportant topics etc

It would be a nice easter egg is google responded to please and thank you in some way.

Seems like they already know how to intelligently strip off the "please" and "thank you" for most requests. I bet it'll be there by the end of the week

I was pleasantly surprised when slackbot responded to my 'thank you' comment once. It's funny how small touches like this can improve the user experience.

I wonder how long before my search bots refuse to help me unless I ask nicely.

I recall Siri getting snippy when I swear at it.

"Open the pod bay doors please, Hal." "Open the pod bay doors please, Hal." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSIKBliboIo

Unfortunately, in this case, please wasn't helpful.

I've had to become politer trying to instruct Siri as realised my children were copying my style of question. I wasn't swearing, just being sarcastic at lack of recognition and I didn't want to encourage that.

Feel a bit bad that this headline immediately said Onion to me

That was a very nice gesture by Google. Made me smile!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com