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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure I want / need an LLM for the handful of basic commands I want Siri to do in the car with no complication. Siri is good at some straightforward command patterns. And that’s how users have been trained.

Adding an LLM feels like a solution looking for a problem

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I have a pretty good grasp on Siri commands and it's still _terrible_. Here are a few from the past few weeks:

“Siri, drive to <regional grocery chain 20 minutes away>” → “Now driving to <regional grocery chain 2 hours away>.”

“Siri, send <name> a message on <popular messaging app>.” → One of _two_ responses (seems random): “Sorry, I can't do that while you're in the car” OR “What would you like to say to <name>?”

“Siri, play '<song in my Apple Music library by an artist I play every week>'.” → “Now playing <some song I've never heard of by an artist I've never played>.”

“Siri, remind me when I get home to <task>.” → “Sorry, I don't have your address.” (My contact information, with complete address, is in my Apple Contacts, and set as my card.)

The list goes on. It's actually become somewhat of a game for my wife whether Siri will actually complete a given request.

That's pretty much my experience as well. Even something as dumb and simple as setting timers is getting messed up some times. To the point where I'm just considering buying a hardware multi-timer.

I'm not sure how good Google is at this but it seems this sort of technology has hard limits anyway. It's already hard for humans to understand each other so I wonder if all of this isn't just a giant distraction and a big waste of time.

One feature I love on my android phone is how reliably it sets timers based on a voice command:

"Ok google, set a timer for 8 minutes" has kept me from burning my food on the stove for at least a year now!

As another mentioned, many of us haven't been trained. Every time I've reached for Siri I've been let down and just did it myself or didn't do it at all.

When I bought the new iphone (coming from Android most recently and iphone before that) I figured that Siri would actually become good because of this translation layer, and then them just not doing that has been a huge let down for me on the phone.

> how users have been trained

Palm's Graffiti handwriting system, for people who took the time to learn it, was strictly better and less frustrating than natural handwriting systems at the time. It lost to keyboard-based systems, which honestly are worse.

In my experience, "good enough" systems that need far less training will win *

I also only use Google Assistant to choose music and make calls in the car, but that's also because it kinda sucks at anything else and I haven't learned all the commands.

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* except for hr systems, for some reason

LLMs are probably better at "understanding" what the user wants, e.g. "Hey Siri, I have to take my kids to the doctor tomorrow" would reply "Do you want me to make a calendar event?".

Asking ChatGPT, it even has suggestions like "Do you want me to check traffic, do you want me to make a checklist for what to bring?".

If I continue with "but I can't make it", one of the suggestions ChatGPT imagine possible is: "Would you like me to send a message to your partner, babysitter, or anyone else involved?"

if they used something like Whisper for transcription, the quality of understanding what I'm saying would already massively improve.

Yes, for users that have been conditioned on how to talk to Siri, there is no point adding an LLM layer. But for everyone else an LLM might add a more natural and forgiving interface. Also an interface that might be more open to exploration, if you can describe a goal and the LLM picks whatever command it feels fits that intent.

I can absolutely see an argument that it should be a feature power users can turn off to keep the "original" Siri experience

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