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Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who doesn't want a phone that arbitrarily changes behavior in opaque and uncontrollable ways? Machine learning is fine for hard tasks like voice recognition, but it really shouldn't be used for things that would otherwise be a few checkboxes. I know the trend nowadays is to assume that users are irredeemably stupid, but this? Seriously?

You can keep this update. I don't want it.

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You say that but the reality is its really convenient. I go to a taco place every Thursday and pre-order the tacos for pick up from their app. The app icon is only ever in the suggested list around lunch time on Thursdays. How awesome is that?

Its pointless borrowing trouble. Complain when they screw up, not when you think they can't pull it off.

It's awesome but I prefer muscle memory: after a while I already know when an icon is before it appears so I can open it without searching for it.

And the changes actually impact productivity for those who have muscle memory; it now takes two swipes up from the home screen to get to your list of all apps. They already had one line on the all apps page dedicated to a list of apps they're predicting you'll want. Now they have a second line on that screen dedicated to actions they think you'll want to take.

I hate this change. Of course you can shove more icons on your home screen, but now we're back to iOS where you just puke everything on home with no automatic organization on the first screens you see when you unlock. Its not productive. I already disliked Android's method of searching apps; on iOS, you can pull down, type the first few letters of an app, and its there. On Android, you click the search button, start typing, and it feels like you get lucky if an app appears there, or if it gives you google search results. Its infuriating.

Oh, and the kicker: If your main google account is on G-Suite, its a complete shot in the dark which features are available and which aren't. On my Pixel 2, the default clock+upcoming events widget simply didn't work for the longest time, then one day it just started working with no G-Suite configuration changes.

I really dislike Google's push toward making hardware and services that aren't designed to be tools. I like tools. A tool is simple, having easy to predict input and output, with the ultimate goal of empowering humanity. There are applications of AI that are so powerful and self-contained that it makes sense to deploy it, but then you get the (admittedly really cool) Duplex stuff and its like they aren't even considering the ramifications on both the user and the business if it doesn't work.

>it now takes two swipes up from the home screen to get to your list of all apps.

You can get to the library by continuing to swipe up. You don't need to lift your finger.

But one Thursday I don't pre-order, and I'm actively doing other stuff, maybe outside, phone slippery, need to check something and damn it... clicked on that suggestion, now have to wait to get to what I actually intended.

Just my experience with android.

It took the place of the top row in the full library list. In this scenario you'd just be opening some random app instead of a chance it was the app you probably want to use.

First you condition the phone, then the phone conditions you. The more predictable you become the better the phone works.

Future kids will be totally ok with technology dictating their behavior. "What do you mean I can travel on a weekday? My booking app only shows up on saturdays..."

Or, you know, scroll past the first 4 icons.

You are not alone.

I keep thinking of that famous quote about debugging but in the context of AI: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

I think the writing is on the wall for the way Google has been going on about AI first solutions, but Google has failed to acknowledge it. There was a lot of backlash from Youtube monetization, Youtube kids, censored search results of certain topics. All Google can do is claim they will try to improve "The Algorithm", but at the end of the day they are distancing themselves from having control of their own outputs.

AI allows nice to have features we couldn't have otherwise, but is it ok for all stake holders to have such a feature with the condition that it won't work around 1% of the time, or for 1% of users?

I dislike the idea of an electronic device to change its interaction patterns in non-deterministic ways.

Can you give an example of this behavior, I'm having trouble understanding how to classify this. Thanks.

Simple common example:

I frequently share content to my spouse.

One day, I share content to my parent.

Next day, the order of users in the sharebox has changed, so my parent is in the spot my spouse used to be, so my muscle memory sends my parent a message meant for my spouse.

Plus, this gets a lot worse when that sharing to your parent was a mistake. Now you've got the 'wrong' order of elements in the UI, and every further mis-tap just reinforces the wrongness.

Does that actually happen though? That seems to be a bad algorithm if the one exception becomes the norm after reinforcing the correct action many times.

I use Siri's suggested apps all the time (pulling down spotlight search and they show up there.) Those are based on time/weekdate/location/usage data and are pretty accurate for me.

That sounds deterministic (last used first shown) but also unpleasantly surprising given your particular use patterns.

Everything in this universe, short of quantum nuclear decay and atmospheric noise, is deterministic. AI is deterministic; we just often don't understand why the outputs it gives arise from the inputs.

Similarly, a FIFO system for a share sheet is definitely deterministic, but that is immaterial to the question of whether it is predictable by its users. And that's what matters.

Sure. And I'd say that for some other use patterns FIFO quickly becomes acceptably predictable, though not maximally. The tradeoff is that pressure to manually edit the list is greatly reduced. Which is also something that matters.

My personal preference is for rock-solid spatial consistency plus manual fiddling, but I doubt that'd be best for the greatest number of people.

Which one of this do you have a problem with? Everything shown here is optional. Adaptive brightness can be opted out. Adaptive battery, wind down and App Timer are all opt-in. So what's the problem? There's no need to have a tantrum just because they are giving features that other people need. No one is forcing you to use any of them.

I think Google's goal here is to make your phone a personal assistant, similar to a human personal assistant. And humans arbitrarily change their behaviour in opaque and uncontrollable ways. Hopefully your phone won't change it's behaviour because it had a rough night last night, but it looks like it's going to take a guess at what you want, and learn if it gets it wrong.

If you don't want this, maybe you'll get the option to switch off that feature, or you can use one of the community builds of Android, and make sure you buy phones that are supported by them.

Android is focusing more and more on this mode of operation, with Google essentially taking over your life. (Even if you think I’m expressing it too strongly, you can’t deny that Google and the likes are deliberately encroaching on personal life more and more.)

With most phones, it gets harder and harder to turn these features off. The Google app, for example, typically can’t be disabled, and to get as close as possible to that you’ll need to install a different launcher, which preference may not even persist across reboots; and even if you succeed, it may have latched onto things like long press on the home button. And good luck on pulling all of Google’s tentacles out of everything.

Community builds of Android are not in the slightest bit user-friendly (e.g. hard to install, and probably don’t get you access to the Play Store where all the apps are). Unless you’re technically very competent, they’re basically not a feasible option.

This is why I’m sad at the failure of Firefox OS and a few other similar efforts—even Windows Phone, for all that Microsoft is heading the same general direction.

The problem is: Your phone will not get security updates if you don't accept the latest Android release. So your choice, really, is to either accept the update or get a phone running a different OS.

Android phones don’t tend to get security updates anyway.

If you have the option to update to Android P and choose not to, you definitely miss out on the security updates in Android P, and possible updates to Android P afterwards.

The fact that many Android phones don't receive security updates is not relevant here.

Yes, thank you! I absolutely despise when computer systems acts like it knows better.

It's the reason why I choose LaTex over Word, Unix over Windows AND Android over iOS

They've pretty much reached the point where they need to bang their heads to figure out something exciting sounding to add with each OS update. Because of how smart phone OSes developed people now expect a yearly update with some big change or new feature when they should just focus on security and stability at this point.

No, you're not the only one. It's so easy to search for the answer to almost any question about your phone (how do I keep the screen from blanking? How do I set a timer? How do I install a widget (and what's a widget)? Etc. My wife tends to ask me these types of questions and I keep telling her that probably 20 million other people have asked the exact same question so google it. She's finally getting it. I think people can learn over time, and it's probably better to let them have a learning curve and become mini-experts in using their phones, without adding some kind of behind-the-scenes shifting of behavior that will perversely make things even more complex and confusing.

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