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Comment by geodel | Hacker News Reader

I think it is just me but I find this 'book me a concert and fancy dinner' schtick rather boring. May be well off people are so busy and book these things so often that these virtual assistant really save time if price is of no concern to them.

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I use Siri for 3 things:

* Quick conversions "How many Tablespoons are in a Cup"

* Setting Reminders "Remind me at 9:30am today to pay my rent"

* Setting Timers "Set a time for 10 minutes"

Anything else and I can normally do it faster. That's not to say Siri couldn't beat me at doing something but that I have to repeat myself or I get the dreaded "I search the web and found this..." Not only are the results normally shit but it's Bing.... Need I say more? Timers, conversions, and reminders are the only thing she can consistently beat me on. Also I RARELY use her in public as it's distracting/annoying to the people around me. Reminders in the only thing I will use in public and only if I need to enter it in fast. If I have the time I'll manually enter it.

That is quite honestly the exact three reasons I use Siri. I do, however, open Google fairly often to search for complicated answers. The Google voice dictation engine is so incredibly accurate.

See, 9 times out of 10 when I try this I end up getting a generic Google search result page back. It's gotten to the point where I rarely even use Google Now beyond the items parent mentioned above. Google Now is awful at conversing (unlike Siri, Echo or Cortana) by which I mean if I don't use exact syntax the other services seem more forgiving whereas Google gives me a search result page. What the hell am I ever going to do with that? Has anyone ever used voice dictation then actually wanted to see a search results page? At least anecdotally everyone I have asked about this said if they get search results back they just immediately close it sometimes even to open up a web browser and re-search for it!

Hmm my comment is getting downvoted but I don't understand why. Do people have a difference experience with Google Now than I do? Seemed fairly common to people I knew. I'd love to hear some feedback. For instance I've even had it open up a search page when I asked for the weather for a certain area; if the syntax isn't really really close you just get search and that's it.

"Pause playback."

"I paused the playback."

Even when price is no concern to me, I am pretty picky about the exact arrangements. Which seats at the concert? Which restaurant, what reservation time? Which airline and seat on the plane (for the also common travel example)? Etc. Yeah, I'm busy, and I book this kind of stuff all the time. But I don't trust an automated system to arrange things the way I like them. With a human assistant, they quickly learn my preferences and style, and can make informed guesses (or ping me for a preference if they need to). Automating this isn't attractive to me.

I totally agree. I guess once details you mentioned are added, these assistants would look more like dreadful nag than clever companion.

I think Google would love to learn, then serve, your preferences in all these areas. I would find that creepy though.

I'm less worried about the creepy factor, and more about the nuance that I think would be hard to encapsulate in a user profile. There are a lot of complex factors that go into a decision. It can't be boiled down to "I always want to fly United, and I must have an aisle seat." Or "Italian is my favorite kind of food." There are a ton of other factors that go into the decisions, and those factors may change day to day. One day I might choose a different airline than usual because they have a nonstop flight. The next day, I might decide to stick with my primary airline despite two connections because I need the miles. When I choose restaurants, I often like to skim the yelp reviews -- not choosing solely on star rating or cuisine, but on the comments. I don't know how a virtual assistant could navigate this kind of stuff, even with tons of data about me.

Google has no negative feedback though. You can't tell them, "no, I meant THIS"

This is why I still see it as a novelty. In time this will most likely change. Currently, my issues with it all boil down to trust and efficiency. Let's use two simple examples. Uber and movie ticket booking.

Let's say I wish to book an Uber. Usually, I open pop open the app and hit the request button. Doesn't take long at all. I get visual confirmation through the map and the little lollipop Uber driver photo. It's fast and I have the feedback to know that what I set out to do has been done. What if I had used the assistant? Well, now I have to waste a lot of time chatting to it. Sometimes it reads my address wrong or it doesn't understand Australian. So after a few mishaps, I finally get told that it's on the way. Okay. Then the twitching starts. The need to check that it was actually entered properly kicks in. So I open up the app to check the lollipop heating-seeking Uber driver is on target. I end up at the same place I attempted to avoid. Yet this avoidance was less efficient. I didn't receive enough feedback so I was unable to trust.

The second example is ordering a movie ticket to go see Batman 27 with my wife. I ask the assistant awkwardly to book for me and give it a time. It tells me that it's all good and dandy. The trust issues then kick in. So I go head off to my e-mail to triple check my confirmation. I wasn't active during the booking process, so the feedback is all I have to work with. It's date night too, so I can't waste it or I'll be sleeping on the couch. I've just wasted time.

Then it occurs to you that by bypassing their system, you may have possibly missed some little announcement or some benefit that is only visible to you during the booking process. For example, doing it manually may show me that there's a time slot that has more ticket availability than the one we were originally headed to. This means an emptier cinema so that I don't get weird looks when she starts telling me about her day mid-movie. The assistant wouldn't have told me that. The assistant also can't toggle around the tick boxes and drop boxes that would have told me I would have been able to do a 2-for-1 deal if we had gone an hour later.

Being there during the actual process isn't always a bad thing. Abstracting away these manual processes would be fine if all processes were identical. They're not though. You're losing too much control and being provided with too little feedback. Now, I can very much see the benefit of the assistant while driving. It makes sense there. You're usually unable to hold the device and that form of interaction is a best fit.

I don't think it's ready yet. I can do everything faster manually. It doesn't add anything at the moment, it just subtracts. It's the same reason I have no use for Cortana on Windows 10 or Siri. Why would I talk to the computer when it's considerably more efficient to just start typing.

Does anybody actually use these virtual assistants? They seem like the bluetooth dongle of the mid-2000s - friends wouldn't let friends use them. Is it just for people who drive? Or will there be a tipping point when it won't seem so arrogant barking commands on the subway or in a quiet office?

Every alarm, timer, and reminder I set (on my phone), are set by voice.

I chose it because "Set an alarm for 8am" really is the best interface to interact with that subsystem.

I think parent is talking more about:

"Please buy tickets to concert"

"Front row tickets to concert purchased for $500"

"Wait no, buy the cheapest tickets!"

"Cancelling order! Purchased last row tickets for $10"

"Only $10? Well maybe I can spend a little more an not be in the last row"

etc

Agreed, i don't want it to do any of that. With that said, there are plenty of things i'd love to be able to use it for. Texting _(via Telegram.. app support, not just SMS!)_, remind/alarm, and information are my main ones.

Currently, i only use it for alarms. I'd love if Assistants became good enough to conversationally text someone.

This is exactly the kind of exasperating dialogue I've had with underwhelming organic assistants too. It is not a problem confined to machines. Ergo, the next step in virtual personal assistants is learning your preferences and being able to apply them. It's not hard to imagine the following exchange:

"Alexa, book me a flight to Sydney for Wednesday"

Alexa knows that I'm in Melbourne, that I always fly economy class on flights under three hours, have a strong preference for Oneworld airlines, fly direct whenever possible, and like to fly in the mornings except between 8am or 10am on weekdays.

"I found three flights on Wednesday that match your preferences. On your kitchen screen now. Which one shall I book?"

The next development after that would be intermodal transport scheduling and calendar awareness: "Alexa, book me travel for the Sydney board meeting". "Here's an itinerary that matches your diary and preferences."

That would be lovely, but there's no way that's the next step. The next step is "I booked a flight with our GreatDeal™ Partner [and you're paying more than if you had used a discount booking site]"

I'm not so cynical, in large part because I think you could develop an Alexa skill right now that does most of what I described.

However, that is besides the point. This was just an illustration of what is possible if your VPA is a preference-aware negotiation agent.

Of course you are free to choose a closed platform, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Ditto, the Echo is worth it alone for this. "Echo, what time is it" "Echo, set an alarm for [+8 hours]". And when I'm about to sleep and I realize I've forgotten the alarm, I don't have to turn on a glaring blue screen.

I had a similar use for my 5X the other night. I was laid in bed and remembered a task I needed to do the next day but would likely forget by morning (terrible memory). An "OK Google" followed by "Remind me to do x tomorrow" and a reminder was set without me so much as opening my eyes. Battery capacity sucks after a year though (perhaps due to the way I charge it)

The only thing I ever use them for is to set an alarm to wake me up the next morning. Even then, the semantics of the built in alarms make it needlessly painful. They stick around in an inactive state after going off and there's a maximum number, and the virtual assistants all just give up when they hit the maximum.

That, and seeing what in says in response to personal questions, insults, jokes, etc.

The usual sporadic usage of Google now with voice controls, for me, comes from playing music and setting up alarms/reminders. I like waking up in the morning and going "Ok Google, play some music". If I had a more integrated system (right now I just have a Pixel C tablet that I use to listen to music, not the best) with Google Home and the appropriate stuff then I would probably use it more. I also get especially frustrated when I have to repeat my "Ok Google" trigger like 5-6 times before it catches on but I think that might be due to the poor reception + distance of my tablet which is a bit sloppy.

I like it when driving.

"Text my wife <message>", "Call my wife", "Play <band> on Spotify", "Open Waze" (after playing music on Spotify, Waze is no longer on the screen so I can switch back to it).

The reservations stuff? No way, I want to choose my seats and price point.

Eh, it's boilerplate.

Supposedly it's open for integration with mobile apps, so you could say 'Order ahead my usual at Philz', and it would ask you back, 'Order a large tesora for pickup at Philz Coffee in Santa Clara in 15 minutes?', to which you say 'yes'. Theoretically, anyways.

I think so too, but it's still "sloppy writing". They can at least try and be a bit creative with that. It's really not exciting at all.

The way I see Google assistant is that it's a combination of many apps (or maybe interface to many). Now I can have Google Assistant Icon on my homescreen and use it to do many things like:

* Set up an alarm

* See the Distance

* Search nearby places/restaurants/gas stations

* Play some song

* Look up facts

* Look up news

* See my agenda for the day

* Search for my personal photos and maybe much more....

I rarely use the voice input. The thing I liked about allo is that I can chat with it. Even when i'm in a crowded bus, I can use my assistant instead of saying "OK Google".

Google Now search box could already do that right ?

"Google EnnUI: The UI for Existential Boredom."

I think they do it to leave a nice image in the customers head. Saying "remind me to buy cat litter" does not.

I ironically only ever use the amazon ordering feature on the Echo to buy catfood.

I use the Echo/Alexa for calling an uber (because my last step for getting ready to leave is usually 'find my phone').

Also, reservations are pretty easy to do over voice. "Book me a table for 2 at Hakkasan this Friday at 7" is enough for an app to get right, clocking in at only 11 words.

I thought it was odd they used SMS when they had a few other communication apps to chose from.

They'd have to pick one of their dozen offerings for that. Can you really say that one child is your favorite out of your whole brood?

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