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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Are people really using these assistants for anything more than making the device do something? Because in my experience Siri will set reminders, timers etc. just fine and will find the song you are listening just fine and will call someone just fine.

The other stuff feels like a gimmick to me or more like stuff that some middle-level manager spawned to get a nice bonus.

Using a voice assistant "AI" usually feels like trying to make a really stupid person do something for you. It will accomplish 90% of the thing that I am trying to do for %75 of the times and then it will completely miss the point. Okay, maybe with Google it is like %85 of the time but when it misses the point still misses the point completely.

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The day when you can just say “lights on, 50%” and the assistant in the next room understands you don’t mean it is when we will have the right amount of universal compatibility.

Until we can derive decisions based on who is speaking and where they ”are” - I think it’ll always be clunky.

“Hey Alexa tell Hue to set light scene livingroom to 80%” is cool that it exists for those who really need the solution but its not easier or cool for sure but we’re so far from that.

I listen to the Twit podcast, which is usually very good. One thing they do, however, is to stop themselves from saying the word Alexa, and if someone accidentally does so, they beep it out.

Why? Because they don't want to set off any so-called smart speakers.

I'd argue that going so low as to change the way we speak just to accommodate these devices is quite terrible, and if you have to watch what you say so that a smart speaker don't misunderstand you, then it's not very smart.

Their listeners shouldn't complain that their hosts use the word Alexa. They should complain to the vendors that their products are garbage.

I wouldn't use one of those even if they weren't garbage, but at least I wouldn't be infuriated every time I hear someone on the podcast stop themselves from saying the name of the product that's the topic of their discussion.

Accidental Tech Podcast use "Hey Dingus" :)

In our house we refer to Alexa as "Alesto" when we're discussing her.

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