Why voice computers always fail

Check out iFixit for Black Friday & holiday discounts (sponsored): eustore.ifixit...
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
►►► This video ◄◄◄
The Humane AI Pin, the Meta RayBan smart glasses & many other new products claim that voice assistants & voice-controlled computers are the future, potentially even replacing your smartphone. I think this is false. Voice is fundamentally not a great computer interface.
The Story Behind
This video on Nebula: nebula.tv/vide...
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
►►► TechAltar links ◄◄◄
Merch:
enthusiast.store
Social media:
mas.to/@techaltar
bsky.app/profi...
/ techaltar
/ discord
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
►►► Attributions & Sources ◄◄◄
Channel Music by Edemski: / edemski
Other music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.c...
Other image and video assets by AP Archive & Getty

[@FriedEgg101]

As a nurse I frequently have contaminated hands, and I find Siri can be helpful to do certain things without needing to touch my phone screen; "hey Siri, what's 235 + 473", "hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour", "hey Siri, turn on torch" etc. But Siri could do so much more for me. She's too verbose for night shift use, where I don't want her to be silent, but one-word answers would be perfect, and I can see that the torch has come on, so I don't need her to confirm it. And I don't know why she can't control apps. I have the tp-link tapo app for the lights in my bedroom, and it would be great if Siri could access that and control my lights for me, just on and off would be fine.

[@jovana9415]

Imagine saying HEY Siri in 2023 :D

[@divine6104]

708

[@tagg8233]

App intergration is really the thing that lets everything down. Most of what I do in my phone is inside apps and even Google stuggles so much to do anything with them, it's actually very disapointing. It should be possible to train them, to tell them when I say do x perform y actions. I don't mind spending a bit of time setting up so that every morning when I'm getting the kids ready I can just ask it to turn on climate in the car. Should be such a simple thing, like setting up a hotkey, but it just seems incapable

[@sultanul69]

who are you?!

[@x0b34rd4]

​@@tagg8233, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what phone and operating system do you use (i.e., what version of iOS or Android)? There are third-party applications out there that you can download that can perform all the things you'd like your voice assistant to do if you are using an Android device, that is.

[@roberthoople]

My Mom recently had to get a wheelchair and is losing her eyesight, which made turning lights on/off harder than it already was, so I finally broke down and replaced all her light bulbs with smart bulbs, put smart plugs on her lamps and set up her smart TV with Google Home... It was a real game changer for her and now she's started using her Google Assistant to really augment and assist her day to day. AI Pin has it completely wrong, to think their product and voice is going to replace our handheld computers and screens (cat videos aren't going away folks), when the future of assistants is actually going to be more in the background of our day to day, **assisting** us with the small things that add up to bigger things, like easily shutting off all the lights with a phrase and saving on that power bill (and eventually automatically shutting off the lights as we leave rooms). With that said, they could all take a hell of a leap forward by making the activation phrase optional and allowing us to name our assistant and to better personalize it.

[@davidharraway8131]

Great points. I work with people with disabilities and voice assistants can be very useful for many purposes. I'm skeptical about HumaneAI - the company has been extremely cagey on Accessibility.

[@markmywords3817]

I find it taxing to actually use voice commands all the time, but it is plenty for someone who may have a hard time doing things like walking up to a switch. There are home automation setups that make use of motion/contact sensors to turn lights on/off without any voice prompts. E.g. open lights when a door is opened

[@pacmonster066]

... Would it blow your mind to know that you can already change the activation word with most of the existing voice assistants. Just a few clicks in the settings app of your phone away.

[@roberthoople]

@@pacmonster066 I'm entirely an Android user, so I don't know about the rest, but it wouldn't blow my mind if others have it, because it kind of just makes sense that it should... To my knowledge, however, Google still doesn't have this option.

[@roberthoople]

@@markmywords3817 I do agree that the voice commands are a bit annoying at times, and I would definitely prefer voiceless automation for many things. But, the reason I still use it, even though I can walk to a switch pretty easy, is because of the routines that can affect everything house wide. For example, "Hey Google, Lights" or "Hey Google, let there be light" will turn on all the main lights in the house. "Hey Google, calm down" shuts off hallways and outlying rooms and then dims all the remaining lights and changes the temperature to incandescent. Although, Google Home is supposed to have big updates and changes coming, and I'm hoping to see more features for non-voice controls. Like, they're supposed to be adding support for smart buttons/switches, which would allow a person to activate routines at the tap of a button. With that interface alone, I'm sure I could build a Machine Vision system capable of detecting room entry or movement and adjust lights automatically, but currently I don't think it's possible to plug that into Google Home even if I did build it.

[@jazilzaim]

This voice computing trend reminds me of the metaverse hype. These products are mainly solutions in search of problems

[@ecogreen123]

a solution in search of a problem isn't inherently bad but i won't say it doesn't take away from the quality of the product.

[@wile123456]

It is inherently bad because they are wasting near infinite amount of resources, time, money and talent making garbage that no one wants to use, instead of actually improving society or solving actual problems. All this voice stuff needs to drop the bullshit and focus on helping hard of seeing and blind people, people with motor issues in their hands/fingers etc. That group of the population is what benefits most for it yet 100% of the marketing focuses on able-bodied people that can do everything faster using their eyes and fingers. The priorities of the tech companies are inherently imoral.

[@KevinJDildonik]

​@@ecogreen123 Double negative. You just said it isn't inherently bad, but it does inherently take away from the product... That's like saying the sky isn't blue but it isn't not blue.

[@ecogreen123]

@@KevinJDildonik i was saying it's not bad, but it doesn't tend to make a good product. make sense now?

[@NoName-ik2du]

There's an old saying that applies really well here: "A picture's worth a thousand words."

[@oppenz3723]

Humane is like someone trying to make a new kind of pocket camera in a world where everyone already have one in their hands.

[@porvoonosho]

No.

[@malikfaisal416]

Cicret Bracelet where they want to replace screens with tiny projectors stuffed into a bracelet. But this time Humane added a voice assistant and made the "screen" even less functional.

[@D4vidPgc]

The only difference is, it is a lot dumber and has a really bad camera

[@tonda01]

@@porvoonosho yes

[@cc0767]

​@@D4vidPgcof course it has a bad camera, nobody is supposed to even view pictures anymore!

[@annekedebruyn7797]

The issue with voice assistants is that 90% of the time, telling something to do something just isn't faster or convenient and sometimes even straight up annoying. I only ask the voice assistant to turn on the lights when I am not near my phone or lightswitch which is almost never.

[@TheBestNameEverMade]

The lights option in Alexa is like the only feature I use on a daily basis. It's to fiddly to wait for the light app to load on my phone to turn on the lights in a room.

[@aweirdwombat]

Yeah. I only use voice if my hands aren't free, which is almost never. It all feels like reinventing the wheel. They should have scaled down these concepts and turned them into more niche devices for people who need a hands free device.

[@KS-tz9sg]

@@TheBestNameEverMade How about switch to a conventional switch, it's instant and you don't need to shout at it.

[@TheBestNameEverMade]

@KS-tz9sg it's not instant because you have to walk over there. If you are in bed and have a couple of lights to turn off or you want to dim all the lights in the living room while sitting on the couch it is much quicker than walking around the house. Also if you want to turn off all the lights in the house. Loading an app to do it, takes longer than voice in my opinion and you might not even have your phone at the time.

[@KS-tz9sg]

@@TheBestNameEverMade I turn on the light when I enter the room, once

[@magalengo]

The sales person that secured the funding for this dead on arrival product is a genius. The slightest amount of critical thinking would lead to the conclusion that this is an idiotic idea.

[@RafidW9]

He's the SBF of smart devices.

[@LuisSierra42]

They are ex apple employees. They only have to say that and money will flow

[@knight_lautrec_of_carim]

Hindsight is 20/20

[@predaalex3210]

It's VC money. You just have to mention AI and they'll drown you in the stuff. It will be interesting to see what will happen when most of these start ups will implode.

[@ahabkapitany]

The same applies for the other laughable startups: juicero, theranos, anyone that even mentions crypto, nfts or blockchain. Also, anything that wants to use any kind of pods for transportation.

[@JeredtheShy]

The only time I found myself really wanting a voice assistant was when I realized how much I wanted to say, "Hey Google, find me a gas station" to my phone while I was already driving on the highway with Google Maps running. Of course it didn't just work, and when I looked it up I found out that it would be a kludge and a half-working hassle to get it working at all. That was the last time I bothered about voice assist.

[@arandomstreetcat]

bro try out google gemini. i just tried the command you said and it opened up a prompt with 5 gas stations nearby

[@fakech]

Voice assistants are a privacy nightmare

[@roberthoople]

I'd say it's the poor state of government and the unchecked power of corporations that are the actual privacy nightmare. Until we fix those problems, every great new innovation we make that *should* improve life for regular people, will instead be used to spy on us and manipulate us.

[@TheDoc7]

True, but this tech altar dude is a marxist, he loves these cancerous traps.

[@KOTYAR0]

Russians have Yandex Alice voice assistant in maps and Yandex smart speakers I'm Russian and I just know I will live till someone will get jailed bc of them

[@ubermind-tim]

These devices probably ultrasonically communicate with all rhe nearby cellphones - further loss of privacy.

[@taukakao]

I think it's getting worse with AI. most AI companies even tell you that they are actively listening in to your conversations with the AI.

[@padonker]

What is consistently overlooked is the question of language. Until now, all speech-to-text (STT) efforts are led from the US where the people working on this (well, most of the US to be more precise) somehow imagine a world where we all speak the same language (English). STT fails spectacularly outside the confines of Silicon Valley. The other day I was trying to tell my Tesla to call my mother-in-law. She has a French name. There was no way the STT could find her as the sentence "Can you call X?" switched from English to French. Similarly with navigation. I ask it to go to the "faubourg de l'hopital" and again, the assistant cannot understand this. Even when I try to pronounce it with an English accent.

[@hughmnyks]

Some people call it Californicentric!

[@xispasponde]

Completely agree. I end setting everything to english, as all voice recognition is either very poor for Portuguese or uses the Brazilian portuguese. The devices we tried at home respond very poorly to my wife's requests. They are now a glorified speaker and timer.

[@sohigh10]

@@hughmnyks even in California, you'd think they'd encounter the occasional bilingual. Spanish, Indian or Chinese, combined with English shouldn't be too exotic to find in droves around those campuses.

[@bikesarebest]

The maps on Blackberry 10 was the only app I've ever seen that would read out french street names in French but say everything else in English. As an Anglo Quebecer, it was a gamechanger

[@CMDRSweeper]

Language and dialects. Watching Microsoft voice powered games of ATC and a Canadian (NOT a French Canadian) state a classic ATC query and how the game translates it to text via Microsoft's feature is garbled and useless at best. Often he had to really tweak his voice to make it register, and this was after training it as well. So even for raw pure and straight up English, it just doesn't work perfectly, if voice operation is to have any chance at all, it needs to work PERFECTLY and not have any hiccups. And that is before we get to different languages, where it even now falls completely apart.

[@stevenclark2188]

Yeah, that shopping thing was what always astonished me about Amazon with Alexa and Buttons. People don't just buy things sight unseen, especially on the Internet where they could be scammed, and *never* on a marketplace like Amazon is now where crap is the dominant product.

[@wile123456]

Product made by billionaires assumes everyone acts like billionaires randomly impulse buying bullshit because money doesn't mean anything to them

[@rintintin_]

It just never stopped feeling a bit weird interacting with a voice assistant in public

[@0xbenedikt]

The world isn't even ready for AirPod phone calls yet. You still get the occasional strange look talking to the air around you.

[@DoubleMonoLR]

It would often be inconsiderate anyway, let alone crowds of people talking to their phones which would be infuriating - beyond their original intention to talk to a human that is, which seems increasingly rare.

[@ThizOne]

That’s because it IS weird 😁

[@High-Tech-Geek]

Just say "Siri, what time is it?" in a crowd and listen to all the devices that start answering, lol.

[@AlucardNoir]

Right, you don't just do the Friday thing... I forgot you used to upload videos that weren't just tech news. Good to have you back man.

[@sopek1427]

I like Fri Checkout. My weekly goto tech news weekly

[@theMightyOne2]

I think the voice assistant should be treated as a feature rather than a product. Google assistant is the main factor for me to not switch to the apple ecosystem because I use it a lot and it is far superior to siri.

[@mudged]

Google assistant is still ass.

[@MalleeMate]

Honestly, all this development is kinda funky. Either these companies keep polishing their dedicated operating systems, or they branch out into untraditional formats like complete voice assistance. But it’s strange, I mostly just use my phone for messaging and sometimes consuming media (like this). I think we’ve reached a point where we’ve got everything we need, and now they’re spinning their wheels trying to branch out. Be it Voice Assistants, VR, AR, they’re trying to find that new immersive thing, and people aren’t really feeling it. At least everybody I’ve talked to 🤔

[@nathonso_edits]

​@@MalleeMateyeah I started to see that when they were all releasing smart watches, I literally see no point in them, they're like using a smaller worse version of your phone

[@joshuahillerup4290]

​@@nathonso_editsI use a smart watch to track my resting pulse rate, and because a vibrating notification is less annoying on my wrist than anything my phone could do. But that's about it

[@rockysage7760]

Me too

[@electrified0]

One thing to keep in mind with science fiction, especially for movies and TV, is that a voice assistant shoots better than a character using a smartphone-style device. You can continue shooting the main character from any angle you want and simply have them speak, rather than needing to show their screen or provide contextual queues to make it clear what the text input and output are. They also typically don't show people killing time on their electronic devices, which is a core feature lacked by a voice interface.

[@MoneyGist]

THIS! Some things feature a lot more in fiction than irl because they work better in fiction than irl.

[@bondthefifth]

the speech coherency limitation is actually not an insignificant issue. I’m at least bilingual and constantly switching languages when talking, I don’t trust the speech model enough to pick up context whenever I blurt out a non-english word in the middle of an English sentence.

[@bashaaaaaaa]

Yeah, same problem here.

[@TwiztedHarlequin]

I concur. I'm German, and as you can see I'm pretty fluent in English as well. But there are definitely times when my brain decides to glitch out and I start swearing in German in the middle of an English sentence and vice versa, among other things. That stuff already raised a few eyebrows among fellow humans, I'm not confident a speech recognition software has the capability to "get what I'm on about".

[@HunterTracks]

It's not even necessary to speak multiple languages to run into complications. I sometimes stutter heavily when speaking, especially if I haven't fully formed the sentence in my head beforehand. Voice assistants don't really have delete buttons, so this very frequently messes up whatever query I make.

[@Felix-nz7lq]

Yeah, nearly all applications completely fail at this when it comes to spelling correction, they're simply incapable of understanding that sometimes I want to combine different languages and both parts are indeed gramatically correct on their own. I have no confidence speech recognition will ever get to that level.

[@SeidenFisk]

I think the most general limitation to voice interaction, as you mentioned, is how slow it is. Provided that I have my hands available, I can do just about anything in less time than it would take for a voice assistant to be activated, hear and understand my prompt, then process it and take the corresponding action. Wonderful for when my hands are not free, or for things that I don’t care to get up and use my hands for (e.g. turning on the lights), but everything else I could just pull out the computer that’s always within arm’s reach anyway.

[@wile123456]

Yep and new ai models will be even slower, having to use the cloud and tons of computing time to run the model, and they are also extremely verbose and terrible at getting to the point because they aren't intelligent, they are just sentence generators

[@UcheOgbiti]

I think speech input is more of an accessibility feature than a primary function

[@wile123456]

Yet zero of the tech companies market it as such because they want all the marketshare and only care about money, and not about helping society or humanity.

[@KevinJDildonik]

1) Accessibility means federal requirements for access to things like banking. Imagine if blind people start asking hey why can't I check my bank account from voice. Companies are terrified. 2) Yes voice should be accessibility, which means things like Google needs to always have a "shut up" override. There was a time when if you cursed at Google it would go on a long rant about how you shouldn't hurt a robot's feelings. Cut to footage of someone screaming at Google to stfu as they're getting into a traffic accident from the distraction.

[@swedneck]

i honestly feel The Expanse does computer interaction in a way that would actually be the most convenient IRL provided we can get it to work: voice commands are used primarily when your hands are occupied, otherwise it's largely just vague gestures much like how we use touch screens and touchpads. What i want to see is things like being able to point at a lamp and turn an imaginary dimmer knob, THAT is the ideal user interface.

[@krisselissan6539]

Digital voice assistants can be incredibly helpful for disabled people, who may have limited vision or can’t move much, so that someone who’s unable to physically control a phone can still use it. I’m doing my master’s degree in linguistics and there’s multiple projects at my university that are developing language technology applications for people with disabilities, and I love that. It’d be great to see more big companies invest in the space, but it’s probably just not profitable enough.

[@wile123456]

Yet none of the companies market their devices as such, because they are all evil and disabled people are second class citizens to them because they can't make infinite money of them compared to getting everyone to buy in.

[@olgafatica3445]

Short sighted people are on the rise, when we'll all be almost blind, then it will be done for the majority and it will be cost effective and profitable

[@MohamedSalahYouTube]

I thought that Microsoft Copilot (Bing Chat) was the perfect candidate to be the new Cortana. i think Ai Chatbots with few tweaks could be the perfect digital assistant and Cortana is such a perfect name and lore that it's such a shame that microsoft has wasted it.

[@123moe]

Microsoft isn't ashamed to rename things multiple time, I think Copilot will end up being called Cortana eventually.

[@yoyok__]

​@@123moei don't think that would happen. They lost the Bing Chat name completely are really integrating the Copilot name across the board. Copilot is now available on Edge, all Microsoft 365 apps, Teams, Outlook and most importantly on Windows itself.

[@REOsama]

And they used the much worse name, Bing

[@mk_rexx]

​@@123moeThey've already phased out the Cortana app in favor of integrating Copilot into products such as a sidebar for Windows and Edge. I would still prefer a seperate app like Cortana though. They could've just updated Cortana app to be Copilot.

[@wiadroman]

@@123moeThey might merge it into Cortilot or Whatever(tm).

[@awakenedcrowl]

Also, I would be so tired of voice-only control, simply because I hate talking a lot. Like, not in a "terribly social akward" kind of way, but more of a "Yeah I can have conversations and read you a little article, but I'd appreciate not having to talk every few seconds just to do literally anything"

[@MoneyGist]

Would be an absolute nightmare for me. Or for anyone else that prefers to text than call.

[@Kevynmorgan]

You just demolished that start up

[@TheGoukaruma]

They do it themself. I can't believe that they don't see it as a cash grab.

[@Kevynmorgan]

@@TheGoukaruma that may have worked In 2014 not today

[@TheGoukaruma]

​@@Kevynmorgan There as still many start ups with products that don't have an audience. (Like that streaming service for phones.) This company either doesn't know this is flop or they sell it to people who know nothing about tech.

[@wile123456]

All tech-startups are scams. Even if they gain marketshare they just hoard investor money while making zero profit

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

I really hope that If voice assistant would become big thing, that it will be open source, so people can create custom integrations with their devices. Then if you want to control something new, using voice - you just download extension created by some other people. At the same time, I don't know if we should make everything "natural talking experience". Maybe we should make it more command like. Or both: if we don't know voice commands then we speak naturally, but when we want to be effective, we use short and precise commands.

[@Adrian-jn9ov]

Look up Home Assistant. This is pretty much already reality

[@Poorgeniu5]

Oh, you mean MyCroft? Heard its in rough water atm.

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

@@Poorgeniu5 maybe. I never personlly used it so idk. But it seems that more could be done to improve user friendliness. For example there is no ready to install android app. Also open source STT engines in languahes other than english are still not great (if I am not wrong mycroft defaults to google STT ?). But it is great that it is modular so you can swap out things. I am not sure what "atm" means? "at the moment"?

[@Roxor128]

When it comes to computers, natural language is unnatural. If I'm prompting Stable Diffusion, I'll give it a comma-separated list of tags, not several sentences. That just doesn't feel right and takes longer to type.

[@DoubleMonoLR]

Many things would be vastly better if they used the same standard, even if it wasn't open, but companies routinely do the opposite presumably to shut off competition. Not to mention how routinely they drop support for their "old" devices/services. Likewise I think it's beyond backwards that streaming services all require their own site/app/etc, instead of all using a single standard, where you can use any device/app and just receive whichever services you pay for. I wish governments etc would mandate this, but about my only (faint)hope is the EU who have indirectly forced some smaller things to become basically universal by proxy - such as effectively forcing Apple to support usb-c.

[@TheMemeRepository]

Humane's device comes off as something that could be neat as an accessory, but is basically dead on arrival as a dedicated device. Even on Star Trek, voice was consistently presented as being part of a larger interface. The characters still used screens, laptops & handheld devices for different tasks. The voice commands were just one of many ways the characters would interact with their devices, much like it should be in real life.

[@DatingDilemmaBreakdown]

One of the classic principles of interaction design / user experience design is an "affordance". Affordances show/signal what is possible, e. g. a red pylon on the street shows that you cannot go there. Affordances don't exist with voice, therefore, you cannot figure out the constraints. Voice can't work without an immediate feedback of what we can or cannot do.

[@OROO111]

Also, imagine troubleshooting the a.i pin with just your voice, it's sound like a nightmare

[@memetech-]

1:18 Apple doesn't seem as much into layoffs as much sort of redirection: don't fire good employees, put them to work elsewhere in the company - whoever worked in Siri is clearly working on Vision Pro now

[@faraga1]

I think I would start using voice assistants a lot more if they would become as good as the experience you would get if you were to give your phone to a friend and ask them to do something on it (like when you're driving or whatever). This would include being able to interpret vague commands from some available context and being able to naturally interface with every app on your phone. Voice-based navigation would become pretty good as well, like being able to see outside and say things like 'yeah you have to take that turn right there, where the black car is coming from' and being able to ask it for some extra clarification. Or asking it to do something on your phone while your hands are full, like opening a guitar tuning app or reading out some specific information from some other app. With natural language processing on the level that ChatGPT does, I can see this stuff becoming reliable. Especially when you don't really have to thing about perfectly phrasing your commands.

[@AsteriosChardalias]

Phew... for a tech video this had some deep sociology insights about how much computing has changed human communication and general lanaguage needs. As a linguist and a language teacher, some of the points made hit pretty hard. I see why I have problems motivating my students to even attempt any routine language exercise.

[@korvinsilver]

Imagining voice controlled computers made sense in a time when controlling computers meant typing up machine code in a typewriter, having somebody else turn that into punch cards, having somebody else feed that into a computer, then getting back the result in the same way in reverse; it sounds really efficient compared to that, and I think that's the time the sci-fi trope comes from. But since then PCs, monitors, GUIs and touchscreens happened, people claiming they can beat that sound like snake oil salespeople.

[@Roxor128]

I think you may be right. The bar for a better interface is incredibly low. Literally any kind of interactive command prompt is better than the batch-processing workflow, even if it is via a teletype and costs a small fortune in paper. Add a monitor and you've beaten voice, too. Your output now hangs around long enough to be useful without costing a fortune in running costs. This is something we figured out before we landed on the moon.

[@spoddie]

I have to turn Google Home off when I have meetings because I keep triggering talking about work, plus my colleagues keep trying to trigger my home automation, such as "hey google, lights off"

[@Alfadrottning86]

voice to computer never works for me. When i speak my language (Icelandic) i have yet to meet a computer that understands me (google assistant comes up with nonsense, Siri does not get anything neither) ... and when i talk to the computer normally in English, my rather thick accent makes the AI fail most of the cases .. unless i ask for the most mundane things like "what time is it?". I can communicate with the AI when i talk very, very slowly and clearly in English .. like talking to a baby. But then, i really do not want to walk around talking to thin air as if i am talking to a baby. Also .. Siri is just rude. When i say "hey, siri" - it replies with a rather annoyed sounding "ehh?!". When i asked it if that can be changed it just replied "no, i can´t" (change the greeting) .. also the Apple phone is not mine, its my sisters .. so maybe she set it on being a di** to me when i use it .. i dont know.

[@MaticTheProto]

Nah siri is just bad

[@wile123456]

Talking to a baby is accurate because the assistants have an IQ lower than a baby.

[@wile123456]

Siri is just the worst of the bad. There is no good assistant so far.

[@korakys]

11:35 People so busy trying to invent the future they forget how to make the present work better. Half the webpage here is empty space and forces lots of scrolling; this contrasts massively with the spreadsheet app that follows.

[@aronseptianto8142]

you know what would be cool, an easily programmable/tuneable voice assistant where you can program it the way you can program autohotkey cause that's really what i see voice assistant to be good at, do simple task while you're distracted. Problem is those "simple task" is very specific to the work you're doing and being able to pick and choose how and what it response with would be so cool

[@wile123456]

You can create "macros" on goole assistant but it just seems useless. Like GPS to work or playing a playlist. Even if I plan it it's jsut faster to use my thumbs and press the buttons myself

[@MrGreaterGargadon]

As someone who has worked behind the counter at both a book store and a board game store, I can attest shoppers trying to force an online price match. That use case is more likely than you think, and while this would be a great tool to find the cheapest price, it would ironically be very annoying to any small brick and mortar store that doesn't operate at the volume of Amazon.

[@adilator]

The only voice assistant I use is google and it's only to tell it to shut up when it activates by accident.

[@luipaardprint]

Even in the movie ‘her’, which is the best case scenario for an ai voice assistant, the role of the voice assistant is pretty minimal, doing mostly administrative tasks, on a device with a screen.

[@kolle128]

I have basically never used a voice assistant. I think it is not really a thing in non-native english countries, but GPT can actually do different languages well, so I wounder if it will help on this.

[@katrinabryce]

GPT doesn't solve voice recognition, which can be a problem even in English-native countries like Scotland and the North of England.

[@bennyjensen1]

the failure is basically boiled down to us humans being visual creatures.

[@jenreiss3107]

I think the issue with voice assistants is that they lack conversational skill. They have a kind of "raisin bread" of ability, where the raisins are actual things they can do like turning on your lights or preheating your car, while the bread is the conversational rapport that gets you from raisin to raisin. The voice assistants of today have ignored the bread for the raisins, and, when you can't even ask Siri how her day was and expect a reasonable answer that segues into what you actually want, using a voice assistant is just a chore. I hope GenAI will help! I would love to be able to have small talk with siri one day

[@Zoulstorm]

Why would you want to waste time roleplaying with an ai and ask how its day was? You already know it’s never had a day because its software.

[@galaxyanimal]

I will say that if voice assistents get good enough that you can talk to them under your breath, you might be able to use them in public. Still I can't imagine Tom Scott's "Privacy is Dead, What's Next?" version of the future actually happening with near-future technology nor could I imagine many people being happy with that version of the future either.

[@MartijnterHaar]

Even for playing music these voice assistants are terrible. They often trip up over the language change Dutch to English (with a Dutch accent), let alone that they succeed if I want to play a song that has a non-English title in a language I don't speak at all.

[@junzhengca]

It can only be used as a complimentary tool. Voice cannot be used as the primary input. You don’t want an office space with 100 employees simultaneously yelling to their voice computer. You also sometimes can’t use your voice, for example when your baby is asleep and you have to get shit done.

[@merbudd]

I think AI-integrated voice assistants (that are still on our phones) will be useful, at least, more useful than the current ones. I am looking forward to Google Assistant with Bard, which seems useful and most likely will be, given how much I already use Bard to do stuff. So, that just being integrated with Assistant (which I also sort of semi-regularly use) would be great.

[@allotment3275]

The bugle podcast always joked they were "an audio newspaper for a visual world" . Voice assistants are the form factor equivalent

[@MikeReynolds-y6l]

Unfortunately, voice assistants are still pretty limited. I asked Alexa yesterday if Menards (local store) was open, she assured me that they were. It was Thanksgiving, so they were not. Fortunately it was a trick question on my part.

[@mrcool7140]

Surly you realise that's not a shortcoming of VAs in general but a specific case of a false database entry. It would probably have been the answer google gave you.

[@JoelVanboening]

This reminds me to be thankful for the sense of vision & how difficult it must be for those who don't have it.

[@onemorechris]

4:23 tech support questions from the elderly i don’t think gpt could answer ‘it just beeps now, everything is broken’, ‘how do i get back to the beginning’

[@allenqueen]

Voice is good only when you are doing something else you can't look away from, like driving, painting, cooking

[@onemorechris]

many of the problems voice control is meant to solve seem to assume the phones visual interface is some how bad or broken, which as a UX designer feels pretty hurtful

[@robertk4493]

When you were talking about voice coding, I will note that it does exist. I particularly have heard of Talon voice as a voice control for desktops, with meaningful amount of terminal type capability, but most people don't want to deal with terminals. If you are, voice control as input is potentially useful, especially if you don't want to use you hands. Voice output is less than useful as a sole method, however.

[@PhthaloJohnson]

Part of it is that the assistant cannot understand what you're saying half the time. I speak with a "neutral" American English accent and the assistant just can't understand me, even when I try my best to speak not too fast and annunciate. I also speak another language natively, and a third with a thick accent; the assistant is basically unusable then. Another thing as you said is the non interactivity of the assistants. In real life, people correct each other all the time so that the conversation stays coherent. You can't do that with a voice assistant. Even for simple things this makes doing a task purely with voice so annoying.

[@TrangNguyen-cs6wv]

your video is soooo good. how can it be so engaging, informative, fun, and reasonable. reasonable is the key here, like it's so clearly a personal pov and articulation of yours, still i find it objective and logical. soooo nice. i cant wait for this week Friday check out. but i would wait even more for a tech alta video on the openai saga 2 years from now!

[@shantanukulkarni007]

Memory and context is a very big requirement for audio assistant. If I had a techaltar audio assistant at my home then i would talk to him for days and have debate about tech industry. But that is only possible if he remembers past conversation and have a perfect context knowledge. We humans like to have talks and debates. Imagine having all these great personality at your home to debate anytime you want. Your own personal podcast hehe

[@Mikey-vd6op]

The problem with voice assistants is that you very quickly realise that they don’t actually understand you. Once the initial impressed feeling of this sci fi tech wears off you stop using it for anything complex because it’s not worth it. A true voice assistant won’t work until there is actually AGI.

[@EdLrandom]

Preached king, I'm so annoyed by all of these out of touch tech CEOs trying to make something they saw in a movie and didn't think twice about.

[@wile123456]

99% of tech CEO's are nerds that should have kept being bullied even after high school ended

[@porvoonosho]

You have completely misunderstood the whole point of AI Pin. It is meant to regain your real life. Spend it in the real world. It is for people who do not want to take care of their banking, reply to long corporate emails or be productive on the go. Or constantly look at the world through a lens of a huge smartphone taking dozens of pictures which they're never going to look at. I've switched my smartphone (I've been a smartphone user since Nokia Communicator and Ericsson R380] to a feature phone a year ago. Yes, I've been more present, calm and I've been able to do more of things that really matter. Emails, Wikipedia and KZbin CAN WAIT till you get home or in the office, believe it or not! For me, AI Pin is a perfect device (on paper for now). It can do everything I need a mobile device to do, and more. A tablet will take care of the rest when I'm traveling etc. In fact a tablet is a perfect companion for the AI Pin. Most of the time it will stay in my bag, shut down.

[@kindofanmol]

I disagree actually. ChatGPT's new voice-chat mode is already RIDICULOUSLY GOOD, to the point that I regularly end up just speaking with it for getting work done or for study purposes. Its extremely quick, gives long in-depth answers and sounds pretty much exactly like a real human. Its everything GoogleAssistant, Siri, Bixby etc should've been.

[@micahjohnson9184]

Exactly! Same for me! I guess it's just a few of us for now. It can do a lot of what he already mentioned in the video. Chat GPT 4 turbo and it's chat mode is amazing and to think once GPT 5 comes out it's going to be even better. The conversations are so fluid, and it tells me everything I want to know. Plus the assistant never cuts out until you're finished and you manually turn it off. Just pop an ear bud in and your work flow is set. Actually, update as of now every one can use it but I believe it's only 3.5. Although, people will be able to experience it so that's a plus.

[@astanoli]

Out of top 5 most populated countries in the world, only one (USA) is English speaking nation and all others are non-English regions. In these countries, there are further hundreds of languages & dialects. This is precisely why google & apple couldn’t penetrate voice assistant markets here. I speak fairly good English but i struggle to use voice assistant even for the simplest of tasks.

[@TheGoukaruma]

I don't use voice systems. Not for privacy reason(we give away our data every second that we are on the internet) but there is little benefit compared to just using an phone app. It looks like a gimmick to me.

[@lunarna]

Minimizing how much data you give away is still good

[@rangjungyeshe]

Thanks!

[@hooby_9066]

I think *the interface of the future* is going to be direct thought control. That's probably still wayyyys off - but it will become reality one day. I don't think voice is a good choice, for many reasons. One being, that language is inherently ambiguous and imprecise - the other being, that you'll never be able to use voice in an office setting, out on the street, or for anything that requires any level of privacy. While you can have a room full of people all typing simultaneously - a room full of people all talking simultaneously can only end in chaos. Especially in terms of UI and feedback given to the user, voice does a lot worse than a screen - and once you have that screen in place, and all the UI representations you need on the screen anyway - using touch to interact with those representations works better than voice as well. Voice control only has strong benefits, in any hands-free & screen-free scenarios. And there just aren't really a lot of those.

[@el_fucko]

Can't wait for tech companies to become able to directly monetize my thoughts, that'll be awesome!

[@hooby_9066]

@@el_fucko as with everything, you don't want corporations to control it. you want an OS that you can control, and that doesn't sent telemetry and change your settings, and show you ads... you want a phone that's not a complete walled garden, tightly controlled by the manufacturer who scans your private pictures you want open technology, that you can control. and if corporations take over control of everything, and you loose agency over your own devices - it really won't matter much whether that includes thought-based keyboards or not.

[@Tata-ps4gy]

What if we add voice interface to PC and phone, kind of like the new sister of the mouse and the keyboard. Imagine being in Photoshop, you forgot the shortcut of lazo tool. You say "Hey Hal 9000, what's the shortcut of lazo tool?" "The shortcut is currently configured to be Ctrl + L".

[@MegaLokopo]

Voice is just an awful way to interact with computers. It is way too slow.

[@Lohkat]

They needed to reinvent how people interact with devices to justify using only voice. That's a very very very hard thing to do, and the chances of it working are so low... We're so used to screens because our eyes are really great at seeing stuff, generally, and everything is around them. If the device was a headphone, maybe, just maybe, it'd have a chance. As a thing like it is right now, no way.

[@eingoluq]

It's weird. I've used all Voice assistants. And Cortana was the best. Now with this new AI push, Copilot is basically having Cortana back. I honestly see the future for it being very bright. For the past month, I've been using my Computer, just like the computer from star trek. It's dope and very useful. I'm also currently integrating it into my business. With copilot in Office 365 and sharepoint, I'm building my business from the ground up to include AI in my work flow. I do see AI being the "next OS". That AI pin is just using the wrong input and output method. Voice should be an augmented input method not a replacement. What I suspect is an OS that can potentially create apps that you need on the fly. And fully adapt to you. You can then interchange the device's screen with what ever type of screen you need.

[@Kevynmorgan]

Very this.. I use it when I use my edge browser.. I use it on my keyboard... I like co pilot

[@siamkia35]

DUDE....watching this 7 months later proofed that you were so damn on the money!!!!! you were able the sniff the bullshit 10 miles away. Great job!!

[@Beryesa.]

The only possible success is fully local and open source voice assistants that you can own yourself.

[@TheFoxholeLife]

I tried voice assistants to aid my work on a desktop. Somehow, after a few days, the lag in getting things done, the constant monotone voice, and the interruption to music that I listen too, irritated the hell out of me.

[@dredzik]

The real shame is that when Amazon bought Ivona Software to do the fancy spy speaker, they destroyed the voice synthesis for the blind department. I am really happy that at least it meant that Jeff has slightly less money.

[@itagane7288]

As an accessibility feature, voice I/O is great to have but I can't imagine the mainstream user willingly making it their default way to interact with computers any time soon

[@Myektaie]

That was the first time seeing you brutally KO a product 😂😂 very accurate and thoughtful analysis ❤

[@LouixIskander]

Our grandkids are gonna think we’re so old fashioned for having computers that have hearing problems

[@jaceg810]

I do think that the idea of a voice assistant, at least in my opinion is, that it compensates with generative AI for all its shortcomings. For example, instead of reading out long e-mails, finding lists of google maps, or browsing sites for shopping, it could simply condense the information, and notify possible responses. For example, If I wanted a new drill, instead of going to amazon, typing in drill, and looking, I tell it "Can you buy me a new drill" whereupon it will verify things like charging cable, and probably ask 1 or 2 questions about preferred price range, battery life and what drill bits I need, whereupon it can order it. This would even be preferred, as to me the main barrier to online shopping is finding the thing I am looking for in a sea of garbage.

[@d3vilman69]

I can imagine when tech advances and these gadgets become really useful and common, you will start seeing people talking to themselves on the streets. When you think they are talking to you and you ask "Sorry are you talking to me?", the person just shake his head and move on, communicating to the device.

[@cern1999sb]

Not just the privacy concern, but also just self-consciousness is a big reason why people wouldn't use that

[@TonyP_Yes-its-Me]

"Hey Google, phone John". "OK, phoning home". Oh, for flip's sake. "Hey Google phone home". "OK, is that Mary home, Jean home or home?" Oh for flip's sake. "Alexa, play music by Dire Straits." "Here is music by Whitesnake". Oh for flips, sake.

[@thescfiles1273]

Waiting for the eventual $99 firesale on this one

[@DragongeekAndCo]

Most people don't realize just how inexact voice is--so much of verbal communication just devolves into nonsense if you were to transcribe it. It takes dedicated practice and skill to be able to dictate actual coherent text.

[@ninjanerdstudent6937]

Amazon spent billions of dollars on a timer and circuit switches. 😂

[@adamredwine774]

I think you are right on most of this but I fully admit that one of the coolest experiences I had with Alexa was shopping. I needed dog food and I knew that I had ordered the last bag from Amazon. I asked Alexa if she could order dog food and she just asked if I wanted the same thing I bought last time. I said "Yes" and the next day there was a bag of dog food at my front door. I literally didn't even get out of bed or grab anything, I just mumbled a few words from under the covers and it did exactly what I needed. Super cool.

[@AlekSeparated]

This paints a clear picture… phones won for a reason.

[@robinwersich3424]

basically: voice is 1D, screens are 2D and in addition humans are much better at visual than auditive perception

[@merkinert3773]

Fundamentally our sight is our most valuable sense, and foregoing that completely for speech and sound is a bad idea.

[@tubester358]

The inferiority of consuming informational content through audio over text/visuals is what I tried to explain to a friend who refused to pick up reading and believed watching videos (especially with speed controls) was just the same. We've always known most of our input is through our eyes, and we can very quickly scan an image/paragraph to get the gist of it, figure out what to click, or flip through a book compared to speech where you have to listen to a lot of unnecessary words and skipping through is completely a guessing game (you won't just jump between the beginnings of paragraphs). Having said that, it's not dair to judge an audio-only device with its lack of visual output lol. The main difference between the two paradigms IMO is that on screens you search for things with your eyes while with voice assistants you ask it questions. Reviewing a document? You might just ask about specific details that you know are important and check whatever else you need later. Social media? You might ask if some specific people posted anything today and what the posts were about (if it can scan the content somehow). Recorded some content? Tell it where to save/send diff moments. It's a way to keep updated without being too engaged. Admittedly, you can use your phone that way with just some ear buds, with the ease if pulling it out when needed.

[@rintintin_]

I think that what surprises me most about this device is that it is such an obvious miss - like it will never be a drop in replacement for a phone, so why position it that way? Also - these are presumably smart people, did they not come across these challenges in earlier phases of product development? How can a whole company be so far out of touch?

[@Alex-fl2yh]

These outdoor shots are sick. Berlin will be a crazy cyberpunk environment with all the rugged buildings and graffiti and all of these high tech tools

[@SaveMeAzathoth]

The people who want to talk to computers because they saw it on Star Trek should consider that it works that way on Star Trek because it's a TV show. Not only do television computers function on the principle of "it works because the writers say so", but they operate with the intention of benefiting eavesdroppers - the audience. A number of outright disadvantages of voice controls (lack of privacy, the computer speaking back slower than you can read) often make for better television and film because it keeps the audience in the loop. But in real life? Nope nope nope.

[@MrCrrispy]

Haha, reminds me of the "connected fridge" concept that appeared in the 80's (yes, not a typo). They want to decide what you need. Doesn't always work.

[@AvinashTavares]

This is a well articulated video of what we know. The question is how come their investors didn't see it was a garbage product

[@TomLisankie]

It's not that voice assistants are not useful, it's that they're not useful by themselves. They need to be part of some other interface.

[@anubhavkumarc]

voice/sound is just part of the experience of how we perceive reality. Phones are the best rn because they engage multiple of the senses and include sounds along with touch and a visual response.

[@bunnybunnyloaf]

All of the challenges being pointed out about the difficulty of using apps non-visually are already being dealt with by blind users every single day. I get why visual users don’t want to use apps in that way but it’s definitely possible with the right training and properly designed apps.

[@SamuelGfeller]

I dont understand why google assistant is not powered by bard. I keep being taken aback how dumb it is somtimes.

[@joshuahillerup4290]

Even the vast majority of scifi shows this sort of thing as a supplementary interface, not something that is the main interface

[@CaptainFSU]

I found voice assistants terrifying a decade ago, with generative AI I want to build an underground bunker on the Faroe Islands. I like having agency, thank you very much, and if that means moving my mouse a millimeter to the right to select a site, rather then giving a voice command, I'm gonna choose that. You hear that Microsoft? Altman!? Fuck your wizardry!

[@teodorkristensen6403]

Fair point👍 Man we live in an exciting time! We forget people used to get born and die on the same farm in the same city, never even reading a single book.😅

[@garrykanter5773]

I'm at that age where one day I'm going to wake up and find out it's all downhill. I'm thrilled to be training Siri on what my voice sounds like and says.

[@anty.]

I think a big issue with voice assistance is the balancing act between the abilities of the assistant and privacy. There could be much more functionality if the assistant had full control of the inputs for one's device, maybe even allowing it to perform actions with the user not present, but most people do not have the trust in letting the company that runs the AI potentially doing anything they want, or finding out literally all of their personal information.