“AI as a chat bot” has always been cool and fun in sci-fi movies, but it’s the least imaginative real world use for it. We need to move past it.
> $ Siri 'List the files in this folder'
Why in the world would I ever use this instead of just ‘ls’?
I've never understood this obsession with trying to invent the talking ship computer from Star Trek TNG. The purpose of the talking computer in the series was not to be a "cool 24th century technology advancement". It was a plot device to keep the story going and explain things to the audience. Having a voice conversation with a computer is terrible, imprecise, plodding UX. It's not a good interface, it's not a good invention, it's not good technology. Yet $billions are being spent to try to invent it.
But it does that quite well.
The best example I can think of in favor of what you are saying, where the computer does kind of serve the story and helps the audience, is the episode where Doctor Crusher gets stuck in the warp bubble and she has a lot of conversations with the computer about what is happening. But even then, she is out of her element, needs a lot of help from the computer, and it seems more convenient to do so via voice than anything else. She still travels to different areas of the ship to carry out actions, even though she probably doesn’t have to in case. The computer is clearly at its best for simple actions and answering questions, even if it can do more. The characters understand that and use the technology accordingly.
Personally, I think Majel Barrett is my favorite computer voice of all time.
Instead of quickly iterating to find how to take voice to the next level, both projects quickly locked in on whatever that was and became too costly to pivot.
Most consumers don't understand the possibilities of this technology. They have been trained their whole lives, starting with K-12 government school that they work within the boxes they are given, that they do what they are told to at work and stay within the box, that Windows computer is a box they work within and cannot really change, that the iPhone they have has limits that they cannot go outside of, the apps they use, etc, etc.
The concept of "I use this app daily and I love it but these things bother me, so I'm going to ask Claude to find the source code, and build in the features and then push the new app to my phone" is something that doesn't even cross people's minds of 95% of the population. It's currently a niche thing that's being taken advantage of by tech nerds that live in the space, but it will slowly trickle down to more of the population over the next decade.
I never needed it to add stuff to my Amazon shopping cart or interpret things I said as voice shopping asks, which was a terrible UX.
There were so many other daily frustrations and Alexa skills that were half baked and random frequently resetting or going offline. Another frustration was Alexa failing to recognize the magic incantation to activate a simple action in the day to day when skills had overlapping utterances.
I actually wished Siri had better HomeKit IoT products so I could switch over, but I just gave up out of death by a thousand cuts wearing me down over the years and do everything manually now. Privacy and surveillance was also a huge tipping point to make me bin all my Alexa devices. I digress…
The thing that nobody really realized is that setup is a big factor that isn't worth to a lot of people. For example, to turn off lights with Alexa, you have to do a whole bunch of setup that involves installing special lights, installing app, connecting the app to Alexa. Even though relatively this is simple, its just not worth the effort to a lot of people.
Amazon or Apple could easily overcome this by offering Alexa or Siri connected devices as incentive to builders building houses or apartments. That way, when you plug in Alexa in your new apartment, it can auto detect everything it can control including lights, thermostat appliances, e.t.c.
and more often than not isn't reliable unless you have a midwestern US accent.
Siri wasn't good. It still isn't good. Apple hasn't delivered on its promises with it and that's why it's being replaced with Gemini.
cobolcomesback: "ls, granny"
Granny: "it said No such file or directory"
cobolcomesback: "no, that's... just write ls, granny.
Granny: "I wrote ls granny it said no such file or directory."
cobolcomesback: "just.. from now on... just write Siri 'list all files in this directory', granny"
Granny: "I wrote siri list all files in this directory granny and it told me all the files and then it also asked me who's granny and I told it and it said nice to meet you"
cobolcomesback: "SIGH"