notwithstanding voice->text part:
Is it just me or does it seem like these tasks would be not all that hard if you just, you know, programmed them rather than trying to be so fancy with ML?
Is it just me or does it seem like these tasks would be not all that hard if you just, you know, programmed them rather than trying to be so fancy with ML?
That's how you do it at the moment. For example, in Google home you have "Routines"[1] which are a list of sequential actions triggered by a key phrase (or optionally something else).
i.e. you can program the use case "turn off the lights in 5 minutes" but that doesn't cover the use cases of "turn off the lights when i leave the house", "turn off the lights and turn on the tv" or "turn on the lights at 10pm tonight" - and there are so many potential scenarios here that it can quickly scale up.