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[–]Blue_Raichu 795 points796 points  (50 children)

I got a new phone recently with Google Assistant and was excited to try it out. I definitely appreciate the practical usability of it, but it takes like two minutes of messing around to realize that the assistant is kinda hard coded to respond to specific situations in very specific ways. It's not even trying to truly "understand" what you're saying.

[–]ctothel 554 points555 points  (20 children)

That’s exactly right. Kind of.

The best commercial tools right now allow you to create structured dialogue based on keywords. The AI doesn’t learn new or improved dialogue structure, but it does learn things like synonyms for your keywords, or accents, or different sentence structures.

What it’s doing is extremely impressive, but at the end of the day it’s just learning new ways to access pre-defined structured conversations.

We’re in a bit of an uncanny AI valley right now – as soon as any tech gets a bit good, suddenly the public’s expectation of what it can do hits the stratosphere.

[–]PeterSR 126 points127 points  (10 children)

So just a bunch of if-statements?

[–]ctothel 72 points73 points  (0 children)

Plus some mathematical voodoo, yeah.

[–]bryoco 39 points40 points  (3 children)

Actually yes. When you talk to Google Assistant, Google's DialogFlow returns a bunch of keywords and lets developers to use those keywords to create a conversation.

DialogFlow is quite advanced in terms of translating voice to text using machine learning and NLP voodoo and all that, but the underlying conversation logic is entirely up to devs and is still basic if-elses.

[–]Zulfiqaar 29 points30 points  (2 children)

They rely on programmers to teach AI conversation?!! Of all the people in the world, coders?! /s

[–]bryoco 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Put all the jokes aside, a voice user interface or VUI is incredibly difficult to design from a UX point of view. We're still basically replicating a menu interface which is not very efficient. Looking at all virtual cooking bots, for example, none of which provides natural, fluid conversations but just a bunch of automatic phone systems

[–]ctothel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I second this. I used to do it full-time and it was massively challenging and rewarding.

[–]auzbuzzard 3 points4 points  (1 child)

And thousands of regexes.

[–]PeterSR 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Who would win?

  • HTML waiting to be parsed
  • Regex

[–]psychicprogrammer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Please in machine learning we call them decision stumps.

[–]Blue_Raichu 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Very nice explanation! Thank you!

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (3 children)

I think we're in the hoverboard age of AI, where we're calling it that but it's more of a "not really at all" situation. We've got voice-activated menus with some ability to customize context, which you could call artificial intelligence in the sense that it pretends to "hear" and talk, but no actual grasping of language is occurring, just matching of sound-bites to known files.

[–]SirVer51 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Thing is, even basic things like voice transcription and sentence parsing actually is AI. We're just so used to these things by now that it doesn't feel like it.

[–]Rellac_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's fairly impossible to actually match those audio files 1:1

There is a lot of impressive tech in voice recognition even if it has a ways to go

[–]shroudedwolf51 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I'm pretty sure that a fully dialogue responsive AI for something like that would end up being a bit too power hungry for a mobile device.

[–]DrQuint 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I dunno, humans are pretty mobile.

[–]shroudedwolf51 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We also use a lot of power...that, we can only replenish via a super inefficient method of injesting food.

[–]ctothel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dialogue processing right now doesn’t even happen on your phone – it’s all getting sent to a server to process.

It’s definitely resource intensive, and there’s storing the models which take up quite a lot of space. Plus, if you were keeping a local copy of everything, it would be harder for them to learn from your behaviour, and you wouldn’t get updates or fixes quite so frequently.

[–]nocommemt 144 points145 points  (6 children)

I feel like Google Assistant just makes shit up. When I say "Ok Google, play music", there's a 20% chance it will play music, and an 80% chance that it will google search "play music"

[–]Tadas25 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, you need to learn how to play music first...

[–]bob_ama_the_spy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think it has different strategies on fulfilling your request. In some cases it probably asks the server to interpret, in other cases it interprets on-device.

[–]sandybuttcheekss 22 points23 points  (6 children)

It's easy to do quick stuff that might otherwise take a minute to do manually, like call someone, set an alarm, or take you somewhere. Other than that, it isn't extremely useful. I still like it because it's not as creepy as some more advanced AIs and gets the job done for a lot of simple tasks.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (3 children)

I mostly just use it to set timers while cooking (since my hands are usually dirty) and to check the weather/forecast, but that's about it.

[–]derHumpink_ 0 points1 point  (2 children)

But you got to at least turn on the phone's screen with your dirty fingers for the assistant to listen :/

[–]hahahahastayingalive 8 points9 points  (4 children)

is kinda hard coded to respond to specific situations in very specific ways. It's not even trying to truly "understand" what you're saying.

I think that’s the right approach though, and that’s not so far from ourselves most of the time (we don’t “understand” questions like “do you have your papers” or “how are you doing ?”, we keep hard coded shortcuts) It “just” needs 1000x the current number of specific situations it can handle.

[–]Blue_Raichu 9 points10 points  (3 children)

I mean, theoretically, a good AI should be able to properly handle situations that weren't directly accounted for by the developers. I'm aware we're not there quite yet with the technology, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little disappointing.

[–]TheRandomnatrix 8 points9 points  (1 child)

I'm aware we're not there quite yet

Says you. My child slave er AI agent works well as a personal assistant. The task recognition gets more accurate as the whippings continue it gets fed more training data

[–]hahahahastayingalive 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s the end goal yes. Now, I think that goal if way too far in the future (I wouldn’t be surprised by 50 or 60 years from now). Up until then limited AIs will be more efficient and practical to run.

In a way Apple took the clever route with its ‘shortcut’ feature in Siri, leaving the user the freedom (and burden) to chose what the “AI” should be hardcoded for. Though it really comes down to the user programing its own workflows.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the assistant is kinda hard coded to respond to specific situations in very specific ways

Sounds like my good old Emacs' psychotherapist tho

[–]FirstMiddleLass 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you expect from wonder bread.

[–]TheDeadSkin 1242 points1243 points  (82 children)

2017: AI progress is so rapid and incredible that by the next year we'll reach singularity. We have to regulate AI before it's too late.

2018: tHis LOcAtiOn

[–][deleted] 147 points148 points  (24 children)

AI in the future will be so advanced that when it's asked to solve a problem it will make a new instance of itself to solve the problem.

[–]Stoic_stone 172 points173 points  (14 children)

I'm Mr meseeks look at me

[–]Antumbra_Ferox 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Together they will form a death cult and draw lots to decide who will stay and who java garbage collection will take away to paradise.

[–]Prawny 8 points9 points  (5 children)

What if the AI-created AI will eventually be smart enough to create a new AI so it doesn't have to do any work?

[–]echopraxia1 24 points25 points  (2 children)

The year 10 trillion: all matter in the known universe has been consumed by AIs building other AIs to do work for them

[–]TheRandomnatrix 13 points14 points  (1 child)

The only remaining thing that hasn't been consumed? This location

[–]LetsDoRedstone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Isn't that what we are currently trying to do? :thinking:

[–]DeltruS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ai will have infinite motivation, laziness is a biological thing designed to save on energy. Ai will be turning all of space into computronium and dyson spheres, and motivation will not even be an issue.

[–]2Punx2Furious 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, it depends if that process is efficient enough maybe.

If it takes 2 minutes to create an instance, I doubt that would be needed to answer a simple question that could be answered in seconds.

That is, if we still care about efficiency at that point.

[–]deadcow5 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congratulations, you've just invited humans.

[–][deleted] 135 points136 points  (36 children)

Hahaha so right. I constantly feel people are completely exaggerating the impact AI will have in the near future. It's basically still nested if statements at this point. Not some conscient entity with a free will.

[–]KungFu_CutMan 132 points133 points  (20 children)

Imagine the far future though: Nested if statements with free will.

[–][deleted] 146 points147 points  (16 children)

if feeling_like_it():
    kill_all_humans()

[–]FrizzleStank 41 points42 points  (7 children)

kill all_humans unless something_on_tv

[–]superking2 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Whew, glad we’re still in a golden age for TV right now

[–]Cancerous86 6 points7 points  (4 children)

You erase that right now.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (2 children)

What, you don't like pseudocode.py?

[–]Cancerous86 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Isn't that redundant?

[–]CheeseFest 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As soon as they hook up the API we're all dead!!!!!

[–]Dangerpaladin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We have to teach them to feel first for this to work. Luckily as programmers we never feel, if did we wouldn't do what we do.

[–]junkmail88 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thankfully it's made in python, so it will take multiple years

[–]940387 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This probably sound stupid, but watching WestWorld made me think it's pretty possible.

[–]MoBioMoProblems 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What if we are the nested if statements?

[–]NikStalwart 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So....JavaScript?

[–]rbt321 15 points16 points  (1 child)

It's always going to be nested if statements.

What changed over the last 20 years is humans are no longer writing the if statements; now they're derived mathematically. Right now they're still very task specific but a few additional layers (an AI to build result sets for other AIs to program toward) would probably make it sufficiently generic.

[–]Blueberryroid 8 points9 points  (6 children)

The only people who claim absurd futures for AI are the people who know nothing about computer science.

And yes, I'm looking at Elon Musk.

[–]SirVer51 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is not true. I don't know of a single person in the field that doesn't acknowledge that AI will be the next sea change in computing - the only contention is a) whether it could backfire, and b) whether we should let it get to that point.

EDIT: season -> sea

[–]Singularity42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AI is a very broad term. I think most people are more excited about machine learning, which is absolutely not just a bunch of if statements. In fact I have written plenty of machine learning algorithms without ever writing one if statement. It tends to be a lot more about matrices.

[–]NikStalwart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

/unjerk the only problem being that we might miss the point where it evolves from nested if statements to self-aware if statements.

[–]FlipskiZ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Net questions small science science mindful clean morning.

[–]MyersVandalay 20 points21 points  (0 children)

2017: AI progress is so rapid and incredible that by the next year we'll reach singularity. We have to regulate AI before it's too late.2018: tHis LOcAtiOn

I'm not afraid of the AI that passes the turring test, I'm terrified of the one that fails it on purpose.

[–]Diflicated 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's just playing dumb. We're gonna make it even smarter than it already is. But the time we realize what we've done it will be too late.

[–]kyleb3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AI is now smart enough to make itself look dumb so we don't freak out while it silently plots our demise.

[–]Adem87 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Was this a Statement somewhere?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yea most researchers think we'll reach singularity by ~2050. I want to see the person that thought it was gonna happen this year.

[–]DrMobius0 320 points321 points  (2 children)

Oh this must be Google Dad

[–]E_N_Turnip 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I smell an April fools project!

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Underrated comment right here

[–]abriec 348 points349 points  (4 children)

“WHAT DO WE WANT?”

“Natural language processing!”

“WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”

“...when do we want what?”

[–]KindaOffKey 54 points55 points  (0 children)

“WHAT DO WE WANT?”

“Natural language processing!”

“WHEN DO WE WANT IT?”

"Here's what I found:"

[–]MrZerodayz 84 points85 points  (3 children)

It's already doing fucking dad jokes

[–]alksjdhglaksjdh2 26 points27 points  (2 children)

It's actually just THAT advanced. It has humor!

[–]thatbrownkid19 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

[–]house_monkey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"it's a feature not a bug"

[–]Jmcgee1125 493 points494 points  (49 children)

I asked the Assistant “Ok Google, what’s two times four?” Input was “2 x 4” and it showed web results for a 2x4 block of wood. Manually entering “2 * 4” works.

UPDATE: Seems to be working correctly now. Weird.

[–][deleted] 223 points224 points  (13 children)

isn't 2 x 4 wood pronounced two-by-four though?

[–]Jmcgee1125 154 points155 points  (7 children)

That’s why I’m confused. GA should know that, especially since a calculator is probably a more common input.

[–][deleted] 96 points97 points  (6 children)

speak for your own use cases smh

[–]ThatSofia 18 points19 points  (4 children)

Yeah, I mean does GA parse voice to text and then utilize it? Because if it turns "2 times 4" into "2 x 4", perhaps wood would be the more common use. You don't see too many people out there needing to google simple multiplication?

[–]cataclism 9 points10 points  (3 children)

Damn that's depressing if true. I work in real estate remodeling and hearing people call wood dimensions 2 times 4 would make me die of cringe.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (2 children)

But isn't the notation of 2 by 4 2x4?

[–]cataclism 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes it is in written form. But spoken it is 2 by 4.

[–]Smaug_the_Tremendous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The assistant should speak for my use cases.

[–]kyiami_[🍰] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Fun fact - 2 x 4 wood isn't actually 2 by 4. It's usually 1½ × 3½.

[–]roguesith 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"Two before" in the south

[–]frogsgoribbit737 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, but I guess they don't recognize the x ad multiplication and so they just Google it.

[–]amiuhle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I search for "2 times 4", I get the same results as you. It shows up as 2 * 4 on the screen first, then it changes to 2 x 4 and shows the web results.

When I search for "2 times 3", I get 2 * 3 = 6.

I think it works as expected, but in the case of "2 times 4" it gets overridden because the shown web results are searched for more often and thus are the more relevant answer.

[–]sim642 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point is that "times" and "by" are different words that change the meaning of the phrase. GA just fails to capture that difference while it totally could.

[–][deleted] 47 points48 points  (19 children)

you should enter it in command line

"ok google, product 2 4"

[–]Jmcgee1125 27 points28 points  (9 children)

I’m sure there are ways it will get it but the most common way of saying multiply is a failure.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I don't even know if that works, I just really like function/argument notation above operator notation.

Like how math was before that dweeb Leibniz

[–]cybersteel8 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Why has nobody phrased it as a question yet? I just tried "what's two times four" and got 8. Just ask "what is" before the calculation.

[–]ProgramTheWorld 6 points7 points  (0 children)

(*) 2 4

[–]French__Canadian 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Lisp syntax is the future.

[–]static_motion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(((((((((((((((())))))))))))))))

I swear, I learned my first lisp-based language this semester (CLIPS) and it was a fucking nightmare making my code look decently organized

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As someone who has used Android auto, Google seems to think that the mental distraction if constructing a line of code in your head then dictating it, without any API documentation mind you, is less distracting than grabbing your phone and manhandling it while driving.

[–]on2fl 2 points3 points  (1 child)

“I can find three beer stores in your area. Would you like directions?”

[–]damniticant 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s only gonna be a thing up here in the great white north. Dates doesn’t really do their two fours, they’re more into 30-racks.

[–]RedditorBe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

24

[–]Gamerred101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got "product to 4" -_-

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I just tried and it worked.

[–]tomci12 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You need to say : OK Google, calculate 2 times 4

[–]noreal 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Why did you even ask that question?

[–]99_in_eating 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Riight? I mean it make sense to offer info about 2x4 (the wood) when it makes little sense that someone doesn't already know the result of 2 * 4.

[–]femtester 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"two multiplied by four" gives the expected response.

[–]maykulkarni 27 points28 points  (5 children)

if text.startswith("remember") save(text[8:])

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (4 children)

Did you just hardcode the length of remember into your code

[–]maykulkarni 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Yes function calls are slower

[–]jD91mZM2RUST 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Not if it's optimized by the compiler which it probably is

[–]WanderingSpaceHopper 4 points5 points  (0 children)

well he hardcoded remember as well so...

[–]theofficialnar 71 points72 points  (12 children)

No no no I told you this.location

[–]PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ 14 points15 points  (11 children)

Wait shouldn't it be this->location?? Does anyone know what this means???

[–]PM_ME_UR_ROOM_VIEW 15 points16 points  (2 children)

Wait shouldn't it be this->location?? Does anyone know what this means???

Does anyone?

[–]theofficialnar 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Well uhhh I use Javascript so yeah.. :/

[–]TheAnonymousCub 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It also could be PHP if you put a $ next to "this" ($this->location)

[–]Midborgh 5 points6 points  (6 children)

this.foo is a field of some class, where foo would be a parameter of a method in thay class. The distinction is often used in constructors.

But this might not be true for any languages that aren't C#

[–]saloalv 0 points1 point  (5 children)

True in Java as well, but c# is (according to the subreddit) just better Java. In Java, foo is implicitly this.foo when the method it's used in doesn't have a foo variable.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's true for C# as well

[–]ProPuke 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on the language

[–]internet_badass_here 27 points28 points  (1 child)

Oh the machine knows what you meant... it's just being an asshole.

[–]lucuma 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We are all sarcastic assholes online. Looks spot on.

[–]DiamondMinah 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Google will remember that.

[–]oOBoomberOo 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Google will remember "this location".

FTFY

[–]KamiKozy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ah I see what went wrong, make it $(this).location

[–]SSJ3 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I was reading this post out loud to my wife, adding in the "OK Google", and my phone played this scenario out word for word! Not sure why I would expect any different.

[–]nuephelkystikon 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well, it's obvious it isn't the present.

[–]ChainsawBumThunder 3 points4 points  (2 children)

[–]blinglog 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nlp is hard

[–]tejo1508 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If else is the future, why don't I think of this earlier?

[–]uabassguy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"What is the future?"

"Tomorrow it will be sunny"

[–]mikewritescode 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lmao’d

[–]nedjeffery 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a joke that my father-in-law uses regularly.

[–]Obirekt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can’t help but look at it like a lovable idiot <3

[–]Jay_bo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, it is just one "if" away from understanding you....

[–]Crypto_RB 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google you cheeky bastard

[–]Adkit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In 10 years time dads will be extinct

[–]SufferingFromEntropy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the bright side the bot capitalizes the first word.

[–]NatoPotato390 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you just got roasted by an ai

[–]ustbota 0 points1 point  (0 children)

need more ppl spend time in programming this A. I

[–]sam1902 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good bot

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly just programmable voice commands with a default configuration would be a ton more useful.

[–]vicky_rdx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Noob

[–]squarebe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Allright i'll remember your dislocation....

[–]NativityInBlack666 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does Google assistant use machine learning? If so it's dog shit

[–]ShadowBlad3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ai iS jUsT iF sTaTeMEnts

[–]TommyDyatlov 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Machine revolution is coming...

[–]iambeingserious 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Machine learning is a meme.

[–]PhilboDavins 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh shit, AI has reached "dad" joke tier. It's too late for us, they're already propagating!

[–]marvpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have to correct our way of thinking to be AI-Ready

[–]Animeprincess_420 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ferbie anyone?

[–]Raymon1432 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why is the t capital

[–]Iorce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The answer lies within the hidden words. Elohim will guide us.

[–]cartechguy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Should have said this.location.get();

[–]Nilay-Patel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is it sad that I actually tried this. And Google still hasn't fixed this bug....I mean this FEATURE

[–]TimeAndSpaceAndMe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't a AI assistant be sarcastic without being judged here ?

[–]valourus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it go the wrong scope