Hacker News Reader

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

I discovered over Christmas that Siri’s and my idea of “next” Monday is different. I blogged about it yesterday:

http://h4labs.org/siri-next-monday-isnt-christmas/

If you ask Siri now, it thinks next Monday is the 15th.

Tonight’s bug occurred on the Watch. It told me to close my Activity rings like yesterday, even though I closed them several hours earlier.

—-

Update

I wanted to add that Alexa and Google define “next Monday” as I do. I didn’t add that to my blog because the point wasn’t to try and criticize Siri. Ambiguity will always be a problem.

View on HN

> If you ask Siri now, it thinks next Monday is the 15th.

Not sure about this in English, but in French you could have the same problem with humans. Most people would think of "lundi prochain" as the first Monday that follows today, but some (including me, at least before I moved to a place with a different usage) would think of it as the Monday after that. Some regions have an alternative unambiguous way of saying it, some don't.

So while the situation might not be the same in English (I don't know enough about English regionalisms to say), there are cases where usage is just ambiguous and neither Siri nor anyone can really be sure what you mean, unless they have spent enough time talking with you and paying enough attention to learn about these particularities. I guess it might happen with Siri, but I think it's not there yet (for now it's not going to understand that if you say "no Siri, the 18th of December" then it has to change its conception of "next Monday", but it could be done).

Its generally pretty unambiguous in American English. I've only ever run into people claiming to have an odd way of using this and next differently online.

For everyone else, there is an understood "week's" inserted into the phrase "this Monday" or "next Monday" (that is, they mean this week's Monday, even if it was in the past, and next week's Monday, respectively).

Context cues help as well. The question "what did we talk about this Monday?" is obviously past tense and couldn't be interpreted to be referring to the following Monday. But if someone asked me today "lets plan to meet this Monday", its a nonsensical statement that would require clarification, because Monday was 3 days ago.

I always add a "coming" or "past" after "this" to remove ambiguity.

I'd say it remains pretty ambiguous. I often have trouble with people saying "next Monday" and I have to ask for clarification every time. My default for "next Monday" is "the next Monday we get to." Sometimes people mean the "NEXT" Monday, not "this coming Monday." Awful.

And I never have considered or heard of the "this week's Monday" "next week's Monday" interpretation, although I guess I've heard people speak this way occasionally.

I was always taught growing up that "next" Monday is the one after "this" Monday which is the first Monday you will encounter moving into the future.

I was surprised as an adult to discover that this is not universally held. Since it's pretty obviously ambiguous, I would expect my voice assistant to ask for clarification on which one I meant, and maybe learn from that if it's the kind of assistant which keeps user profile data (which is probably all of them).

I was taught that there are two interpretations, and therefore it's always a good idea to ask for clarification. At least when interacting with humans.

So, what you said is exactly right: Siri should get clarification. And also when stating things in the form of "next Monday" Siri should clarify what is meant, or just avoid the form altogether by instead saying things similar to "this coming Monday" or "the Monday following this one."

In an ideal world Siri would ask you once then learn your style. I would also like to offer a correction. I don’t want Siri to always ask “Did you mean...”

You were very clearly brought up by Siri.

where I live, "this" Monday was 3 days ago :).

I've always thought of that as "last Monday" ("i mandags" in Danish).

Just "Monday" is the upcoming Monday ("på mandag") and "next Monday" is the one after that ("næste mandag").

Everything else just seems needlessly confusing.

In German* it depends on the tense of the verb. “On Monday I went to…” refers to the most recent Monday in the past. “On Monday I go to…” refers to the closest Monday in the future. Same for “This Monday…”. “Next Monday” refers to the second closest Monday in the future.

*At least in the region where I live.

Crumbs, thats happening for me too.

It’s intersting that “This Monday” and “Next Monday” are different.

Well there's this attempt at solving the ambiguity

http://oxtweekend.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com