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Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant Desperately Want To Help You Do Your Routine -- But it Takes Too Much Programming and There Are Still Too Many Holes (wsj.com)
Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa are rapidly increasing their reach, and Apple's Siri is supposedly getting smarter. But all of these AI assistants are still too clumsy in day to day. David Pierce, writing for WSJ: My virtual assistant desperately wants to help me. Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri -- even Samsung's Bixby and others -- have begun allowing users to set up "routines" that combine many actions into a single command. Shout "OK Google, good morning!" at your smart speaker and it can (in theory) open the blinds, turn on the lights, show you traffic and your calendar and turn on NPR. Tell Alexa to start a dance party, and watch it turn on the disco ball and fire up the "Glitter and Glowsticks" playlist. These routines embody what virtual assistants are meant to do, connecting all our gadgets and services and making everything work together. All you have to do is ask. And maybe not even that -- these tools aim to get to know you so well, they'll anticipate your needs. But these multistep systems are complicated to create, and they often require buying "smart" accessories and memorizing specific phrases.
In most cases, voice-controlled assistants have hit a wall where they perform a specific set of tasks well and not much else. They may be crazy ambitious, but they aren't ready to take on real work. If you are willing to do some finagling, there are already ways to make your devices and services work together better. Tools like IFTTT and Zapier let you connect web services, so you can automatically save every photo you share on Instagram into a Dropbox folder, or file your sales contacts into a spreadsheet. [...] All these tools offer sample routines, and I recommend trying a few. If you want to create a specific routine from scratch, just know: It's hard. It feels like putting together Ikea furniture without the instructions -- most of the pieces are there, but good luck building something that stands up. [...] A sufficiently smart home should observe and adapt to your needs. That kind of proactive, thoughtful help is a long way off. It will require computers that understand far more about us than they do now.
In most cases, voice-controlled assistants have hit a wall where they perform a specific set of tasks well and not much else. They may be crazy ambitious, but they aren't ready to take on real work. If you are willing to do some finagling, there are already ways to make your devices and services work together better. Tools like IFTTT and Zapier let you connect web services, so you can automatically save every photo you share on Instagram into a Dropbox folder, or file your sales contacts into a spreadsheet. [...] All these tools offer sample routines, and I recommend trying a few. If you want to create a specific routine from scratch, just know: It's hard. It feels like putting together Ikea furniture without the instructions -- most of the pieces are there, but good luck building something that stands up. [...] A sufficiently smart home should observe and adapt to your needs. That kind of proactive, thoughtful help is a long way off. It will require computers that understand far more about us than they do now.
...because the AI we have now are parlor tricks and there is no strong AI yet.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
open the pod bay doors
Ever met an assistant that didn't need a year of training? Any assistant anywhere?
Assistant coach, executive assistant, teacher's assistant, lab assistant?
How about a protege? Oh wait, that's actually an assistant-in-training. . .for years.
Sorry friend, but you won't get anyone/anything/anybody to do what you want without telling them, showing them, and correcting them. And that takes time, by you.
Tough.
"Desperately Want To Help You Do Your Routine"
all they want, all they care about, is the money they make off your data, and the commissions/sales generated.
they don't give a shit about your life or your routine.
NO!! Get the f*** out of my life! My phone will not babysit me like my f***ing socialism gouvernment do (I'm from Canada)!
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Don't forget about me. A little sign in here, a touch of WiFi there, and I can spy on you while don't absolutely nothing of value.
If you install lots of me, I still won't be of any use, but at least it'll be mildly amusing.
Do you want some toast?
How about a muffin?
Reminds me of Dragon Naturally Speaking that my boss in a law firm had me install on his computer -- complete with a legal vocabulary.
Comes time to train the goddam thing and he tries to get ME to do it.
After some discussion that failed to inform, I just did what he said. I told him to get up so I could do it for him. He said he had work to do, so install it on my computer; train it, and get back to him when it was ready.
I explained, slowly, how that doesn't work but he insisted.
I did as he said and when he was ready, I told him to go into my office. He said he wanted it on his computer. I reminded him of how that went down.
He huffed off to my computer room, sat down and started dictating into Word. Of course, the translation was stupid. He asked how in hell it would ever work and I said, it's trained to my voice.
"I'll sit in here and you tell me what you want and I'll inform my computer."
He didn't even ask me to uninstall it from his computer.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
There are already better answers for these things. This is what your smart home hub is for. You are always going to have a poor experience on these things if you are connecting your voice assistant to things like hue, lifx, nest, harmony hub, etc directly. The answer is to integrate all those devices into a flexible and open smart controller like Home assist, Vera, etc and then integrate that and only that with your voice assistant(s).
That way you get a clean and modular system. You'll still have to learn the commands to some extent but because everything is presented to the voice assistant via one plugin/skill/service/whatever the syntax across devices will be uniform and consistent. Have an Alexa and GA or Sirii? Np, those things just talk to the same smart controller, state remains consistent and uniform, Everything and it's dog is including smart features but if you set up multiple things to control the same devices directly you are just asking for trouble.
Besides, if you are ever going to be serious about a smart home you can't use wifi for all your devices, wifi doesn't scale well to high client counts.
Because it is just a voice recognition system hooked up to a database with a speech synthesizer. None of these systems "learn" at all. They are just databases with some semi-clever programming around it.
...and which you won't do if you don't happen to be near said fridge when you remember that you need to buy milk.
I own several different assistent devices (actually buying only one of them) and would agree that each of them is stupid in a different way...
(none of them can control ALL my smart lightbulbs - despite being connected to a single Hue bridge! To stream the same station from the same streaming service (tunein) one requires me to spell out the name of the station the other only works when I use the abbreviated station name! using the listing fron the same service!!! That's artificial dumbness!!!! to top it all of, the set of working features completly switches when I switch language settings!) ... I'm afraid I disgress... ... but I like to set kitchen timers and shopping items hands free while cooking.
bickerdyke