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Comment by Slartie | Hacker News Reader

> If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH).

I would seriously doubt this assumption. Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state?

On the contrary, this context information would make it much more likely that the person actually meant "London, England". Except if there is a timezone border going through the state, of course.

However, I obviously agree with your general point regarding the severe limitations of what we currently call "AI" and how little "intelligence" there actually is.

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> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state?

True, and that's another contextual layer to deal with: that e.g. the state of Ohio is in a single timezone and that - why on Earth should someone ask the time within the same timezone? - like you said. And then there may be contextual exceptions even from this rule...

you might not know where the timezone boundary is - they move, or you're new to the area. alternatively, there could be a daylight savings boundary in between, so it is only in the same timezone for half the year.

the fact that americans are inclined to say the state name as part of the name of a place could also help - since they might say london ohio, london might be more likely to mean the real london.

Flipping this around a bit: if someone in England asked "what's the time in London?" should Siri assume that they're talking about London in Ohio or Ontario? Everyone in England is on GMT, so they don't need to do timezone conversions to London time.

I'd expect it to ask the first time around, and then remember the answer afterwards.

Pedantic: London is currently in British Summer Time, not GMT (which it is in the winter)

There's an extremely long-standing convention of referring to timezones by the major or capital city within that timezone, so Siri should of course assume that they're talking about London in England. In fact, this is probably more or less the correct, canonical way to ask this - asking about GMT would not give you the correct answer, since England is currently on BST which is GMT+1. Needless to say, this argument would not apply to asking about anything else about London. Context is complicated.

For similar reasons, anyone who asks for the time in Boston probably means Eastern Time regardless of how far they are from Lincolnshire, though I think the more usual and canonical way of referring to that is New York time.

There are many European countries that have the same timezone, but I don't remember all of them always, despite living in Europe.

In this case it is totally normal for someone living in Netherlands to ask the time for a polish city.

> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state?

Who said they were in that state when asking? People travel.

True. So substitute "living" with "currently located in". Makes the problem of correctly considering the context of that question just even more complicated ;-)

I find it unlikely that someone in that scenario would ask "What time is it in London?" rather than "What time is it in Ohio?"

I ask for the time in SF or LA all the time, rather than the time in California. Regardless, it's not hard to find cases in the same state that cross timezone boundaries. Cottonwood, AZ vs Cottonwood, AZ 86503 (on Navajo time) is an example.

SF and LA are major cities. London, OH is not.

I assume it triggers just on location, not in context of a time zone. I think Siri just hears tell me something about "location" and then just defaults to nearest.

> Why on earth

Just use your imagination a bit.

Maybe I live in state X at location Y while my parents live at location Z in the same state, about 250 miles away from me, maybe there’s a serious storm where I live and I wonder if I need to check on my elderly parents?

But you'd still be in the same time zone, no? For different queries, like the one you mentioned, that might be reasonable, but asking for the time in London means the assistant should infer England's time zone, if you're in Ohio.

Unless you live in a state like Nebraska that spans across multiple time zones…

True, there are definitely edge cases to account for. Maybe the problem is these AI assistants are trying to make everything location-aware when that may not always be the desired behavior. If there are ambiguities the assistant could ask you to clarify, but that might make for a worse UX.

Or answer both, like a human would do: "It's 3pm in London/England and 9am in London/Ohio"

> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state?

Because they want to know what time it is in a different location.

14 states have more than one time zone. Do you know which ones?

That's a harder question. The important question here is "does your state have more than one time zone?"

No, it isn't important. What's important is how to answer the question that was asked. The number of time zones in a state has nothing to do with the time in a location. You just need to disambiguate what location is the subject of the question.

Well, it's no less important than this.

"14 states have more than one time zone. Do you know which ones? "

The point I was making there is not all states have one time zone so it is reasonable to think someone could ask for the time somewhere else because they don’t know what time it is there. Even if that somewhere else is in the same state.

I had hoped that would also demonstrate that the solution here is to just answer what was asked instead of saying “that’s not something people would ask.”

They would ask that and if you are designing a system based on what you think users won’t do then you’re gonna have a bad time.

> Do you know which ones?

No and that’s irrelevant trivia. What I know is if the state I live in is on that list. Oregon and it is. Don’t care what the other 13 are if I’m asking for a time in the state I live in.

The point is that just because you know the state doesn’t mean you know the time. They’re unrelated. It is reasonable for a person in Portland to ask what time it is in Ontario. They may know there are two time zones around eastern Oregon but where is the line?

Idaho is the same way. What time is it in Riggins? I’m from Idaho and I don’t even know the answer to that question. It’s a reasonable thing to ask siri.

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