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Comment by BorgHunter | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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?

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

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.

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.

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