Siri, What Time Is It in London? (daringfireball.net) 181
John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball: Nilay Patel [Editor-in-Chief of news website The Verge] asked this of Siri on his Apple Watch. After too long of a wait, he got the correct answer -- for London Canada. I tried on my iPhone and got the same result. Stupid and slow is heck of a combination. You can argue that giving the time in London Ontario isn't wrong per se, but that's nonsense. If you had a human assistant and asked them "What's the time in London?" and they honestly thought the best way to answer that question was to give you the time for the nearest London, which happened to be in Ontario or Kentucky, you'd fire that assistant.
You wouldn't fire them for getting that one answer wrong, you'd fire them because that one wrong answer is emblematic of a serious cognitive deficiency that permeates everything they try to do. You'd never have hired them in the first place, really, because there's no way a person this stupid would get through a job interview. You don't have to be particularly smart or knowledgeable to assume that "London" means "London England", you just have to not be stupid. Worse, I tried on my HomePod and Siri gave me the correct answer: the time in London England. I say this is worse because it exemplifies how inconsistent Siri is. Why in the world would you get a completely different answer to a very simple question based solely on which device answers your question? At least when most computer systems are wrong they're consistently wrong.
You wouldn't fire them for getting that one answer wrong, you'd fire them because that one wrong answer is emblematic of a serious cognitive deficiency that permeates everything they try to do. You'd never have hired them in the first place, really, because there's no way a person this stupid would get through a job interview. You don't have to be particularly smart or knowledgeable to assume that "London" means "London England", you just have to not be stupid. Worse, I tried on my HomePod and Siri gave me the correct answer: the time in London England. I say this is worse because it exemplifies how inconsistent Siri is. Why in the world would you get a completely different answer to a very simple question based solely on which device answers your question? At least when most computer systems are wrong they're consistently wrong.
OK voomer (Score:5, Insightful)
If he's been using Siri for almost a decade now, and only now realized that Siri gives inaccurate/inconsistent answers sometimes, then something is wrong with his head.
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It's because Google Assistant is so much better. I don't know how Alexa compares but Google Assistant is much more consistent and more likely to be right, so naturally every other assistant gets compared to it.
Don't feel too bad though, Samsung's Bixby is even dumber that Siri.
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Don't feel too bad though, Samsung's Bixby is even dumber that Siri.
I had a Samsung "Smart" TV with voice control once. It was hilariously bad. I could never get it to consistently respond to my voice, but it would constantly respond to voices coming from the TV. Really Samsung engineers? Really? You didn't filter for that? FFS Samsung.
Well, all Samsung products I've ever had have turned out to be crap, regardless of price point, so in hindsight it's expected. Man, Samsung went through the "Sony arc" fast.
Re: OK voomer (Score:2)
I started a avoiding them a while ago though, I assume their phones are quite nice, but I'm just basing that on popularity.
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Alexa used to be able to answer "What time is it at the Eiffel Tower" correctly, meaning it could link the landmark to the location, to the time zone, to the current time.
But I just asked it now, and it starts talking about when the tower was built. Oh well.
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"What time is it at the Eiffel Tower right now" works...
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"If he's been using Siri for almost a decade now, and only now realized that Siri gives inaccurate/inconsistent answers sometimes, then something is wrong with his head."
No, it just shows that Siri is actually like a real woman, with maybe more accurate and consistent answers.
Re:OK voomer (Score:5, Informative)
When Apple introduced Siri, they sold it as understanding context. One of the example dialogs in the keynote that introduced Siri was asking Siri what the weather was, then following up with "how about in Chicago?" and having her understand that meant "what's the weather in Chicago?" In fact, that was one of the major selling points of the original Siri: it understands context.
Except it doesn't. Or, in this case, it's trying too hard to understand context - it's using the user's current location to figure out how to decode "London." (This is a common problem in Apple Maps, too, incidentally: their geocoder is terrible and frequently confuses addresses. There are times when you can literally copy an address out of an Apple Maps point of interest, paste it into the search field, and find that Apple Maps all of a sudden locates the same street address in a completely different town. Never mind that you searched for a complete address, with state, town, and zip code given. This causes problems when you attempt to navigate to an address given in a meeting invite: there's no guarantee Apple Maps won't randomly change the town on you. Hope you checked the destination it picked carefully!)
Siri was sold as being something you could "hold a conversation with" except that - well, you can't. Siri is, like pretty much every actual "VUI" (yeah, that's a real industry term), based entirely on keywords. Stray too far from a pre-written phrase, and it just doesn't work.
It also helps that Siri is now an overloaded term. "Siri suggestions" are supposed to use on-device machine learning to learn things you frequently do and make suggestions based on that. So it would make sense that Siri as voice assistant would use that information. Except it can't, because that's all kept on-device (assuming you trust Apple is telling the truth). Instead, voice assistant Siri has its own database of "what you likely mean" that's kept on Apple's servers, because voice assistant Siri is all implemented server-side. (Your phone sends an audio recording, and all the speech-to-text and processing is done server-side.)
So, in theory, if you asked voice assistant Siri about London, England enough, voice assistant Siri would learn that's what you meant when you say London. But Siri suggestion Siri wouldn't. Instead Siri suggestion Siri learns what you likely mean based on things you do on your device itself. Likewise, if Siri suggestion Siri sees you're looking at London, England in Apple Maps, voice assistant Siri won't pick up on that context.
Incidentally, when I tried asking my iPhone what time it is in London, it just gave me the local time, completely ignoring the "in London" part.
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Not only that, but it can be difficult to accurately develop something that just works with context to everywhere.
For example, where I live, if somebody said "Do you want to do something *this weekend*?", and it was mid week, or it happened to be Sunday, they mean the upcoming weekend. But if they said that on Friday or Saturday, they mean the current weekend.
I know this is different in different areas, because I once had to work on a bug for software that was running in various places throughout North Ame
Re: OK voomer (Score:2)
It's constant confusion what "next weekend" or "next Friday" mean.
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If he's been using Siri for almost a decade now, and only now realized that Siri gives inaccurate/inconsistent answers sometimes, then something is wrong with his head.
I don't think it's so much that, as much as it is his attempt to call attention to the fact that it's been a decade and we're still dealing with these issues.
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Not confined to Siri (Score:5, Funny)
Bill Bryson tells of an incident in one of his books where he was living in England and phoned his local travel agent to book a ticket to Brussels. The agent phoned him back a few minutes later to ask, "Would that be the Brussels in Belgium, Mr Bryson?".
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Wisconsin?
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Bill Bryson tells of an incident in one of his books where he was living in England and phoned his local travel agent to book a ticket to Brussels. The agent phoned him back a few minutes later to ask, "Would that be the Brussels in Belgium, Mr Bryson?".
Better than the risk of buying an expensive ticket to the wrong place (in case he misheard the town name).
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Er, how would he buy "a ticket to Brussels" if it was Brussels, Wisconsin? It's a tiny town of less than 1200; no one would be flying there, and a train or bus ticket from England would of course be even more impossible.
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There's a number of anecdotes out there about people arriving in Auckland, New Zealand furious about the fact that they've just flown 17 hours to get to New Zealand when they thought they were buying a ticket to Oakland, California. So you have to watch out for homonyms and near-homonyms as well. Basically, verifying a location name or address completely is always a good idea. Just like with street names in any major metropolitan area. Many of them in the US and elsewhere are actually composed of several sm
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Several responses to my posting seem to have missed the point. The travel agent didn't say, "Sorry, did you say Brussels or Bristles or Bristol?" which would fit with the hypothesis that she just wanted to check that she'd heard correctly and wasn't booking tickets to a similar sounding place. The words used make it clear that, despite working in a travel agency, she wasn't familiar with Brussels as a destination, had done a bit of research, and wanted to make sure she'd found the right place. You have t
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What luck! Siri just told me it will take me about 950 hours to walk to Shades of Green in Bay Lake, FL and she's never steered anyone wrong. ;)
You've made me hungry now. I'll spend the rest of the day looking up brussels sprouts recipes.
Context. (Score:2)
It depends on context. Yes Siri's answer is bad. But it could be good. I have friends in London, Ontario. If Siri was smart it could reasonably understand that I have been to Ontario, but never the UK. For me, that would be a right answer. But yeah, if its just always answering Ontario, thats dumb. Smart assistants should always make the right decision based on Context. Ignoring it in this case, and just saying you'd fire someone for giving you Ontario time is just a dumb as Siri's response. Things should
Fire the assistant? (Score:4, Insightful)
if you're going to overreact like that, the assistant is better off. If anything, the assistant probably did it on purpose because you're an asshole who deserves it. I hope that important meeting you missed by five fucking hours results in severe reputational damage to you. Fuck you.
Hey Gruber, repeat after me (Score:2)
Siri Is Not a Person. Neither is Alexa. Neither is Google's Assistant.
I don't think Siri is good at all - but demonstrating the shortcomings of any of them by comparing its response to what a human would do under the same circumstances seems pointless. Guess what, John? They don't actually think at all!
And, right off, I probably would have said "London England" when I asked, just because I know what I expect (and don't expect) from these things.
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The oddity is that if you did a generic web search, google, bing, or Bob's Discount Web Crawler, you'd get the time for London England in half a second. Why is a "smart" watch doing this differently? Maybe it's trying too hard for a personalized approach and primitive algorithm spends most of it's time to exactly identify the location being referred to rather than use the common answer. I know my iphone starts whining like a puppy when I refuse to allow it to use my locaiton.
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Siri Is Not a Person. Neither is Alexa. Neither is Google's Assistant.
I wish the voice was the same as the voice in the game 'Portal'. Seems a little more proper.
Siri picked London, Ontario? I'm shocked! (Score:2, Insightful)
Given how utterly oblivious most Americans are to anything outside the borders of the USA, I'm kind of shocked Siri didn't give him the current time in London, Ohio.
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I visited London, California a few times. I remember that as a kid I was vaguely disappointed.
Singing: "Do you know the way to San Jose, I mean the one that's north of LA, not the one that's west of San Juan."
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That does sound a bit strange. The answer might have been different if Canada had more than a single town called London. As far as I know, there's just the one...located in Ontario.
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I could give you a logical, detailed response, perhaps explaining along the way that one side of my family is American, that my work takes me to the United States fairly often, and that thanks to family, business, education and social connectionsI quite possibly know more about your country than you do.
Sadly, I know the effort would be wasted, because I've seen from other comments you have made on this site that you're not the sharpest tool in the shed. (To be fair, there's no doubt you are, in fact, defin
This is one of the stupidest posts ever. (Score:2)
London ON is PROBABLY the closest London to them (assuming the giant crybaby is American).
Essentially, we have immature people throwing a tantrum because the decision trees of language processing didn't adequately understand what they in their imprecise question REALLY WANTED?
1) remember, it's NOT actually AI
2) it's still a correct answer, and given a limited set of criteria, decently correct because your dumb ass was vague
Not everyone in the world who says London, means London UK.
Dumb (Score:2)
Siri and Google Assistant aren't AI. The only AI thing they even remotely use is the actual voice recognition. The responses are all based on pre-programmed decision trees.
So, I live about an hour and a half away from London, ON. If I ask Siri for travel directions to London, am I talking about London, ON or London, England? If I ask for the weather, which am I talking about? How would it know what I am looking for? I guess you could argue that, if we are in the same time zone and I ask for the time, I'm pr
Where did this happen? (Score:2)
London is the tenth largest city in Canada (learned that in a quiz show), so people in Canada might actually mean London, Ontario. People in Detroit as well. To them it's nearby but in another country so it might be in a different time zone.
It was not what the guy expected, but the error is very noticeable, so it won't go undetected, and it's not that un
To some extent... (Score:2)
I find this is reminiscent of US practice. I have heard people from there repeatedly saying things like "Paris, France" or "London, England".
WTF do you think it is? If you don't specify that you mean a copy somewhere else, you are talking about the original. If I say "Edinburgh", I am not referring to somewhere in Indiana, or any of the 21 places in the USA that go by the name Glasgow or even the one that got swallowed up by Sydney in Australia. If you mean the original, you just say the name.
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If you don't specify that you mean a copy somewhere else, you are talking about the original.
There is Birmingham. Two major cities. The council of Birmingham, UK, famously created a brochure about their lovely town and had to destroy about 600,000 copies because they used stock images for Birmingham, USA.
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Asimov quote time. (Score:2)
also, the quote above should be in all caps, this is only here because the slashdot filter is wrong.
Artificial stupidity (Score:2)
People use the term AI like it's a real thing, but it's not.
At least, it's not what they think it is.
I was watching a Jeopardy where humans were playing against Watson.
Every question, the machine was there with the right answer while the humans were still trying to grok the question.
Until...there was a question that asked not for a fact, but for a definition.
Then the humans had reasonable answers, while the machine was stalled and fumbling.
That's when you realize that there is no I in AI.
It's just a search
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People use the term AI like it's a real thing, but it's not.
At least, it's not what they think it is.
If everyone uses a word a certain way, then that's what that word means. Sorry, hackers. "AI" means what we have now. In 20 yeas when "AI" is a lot better, "AI" will mean what we have then.
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I was with you right up until you said full self-driving cars won't happen. That's because I don't believe self-driving technology actually requires the sort of "smart" AI you're thinking of.
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That one. If you're using the technical term properly, AI is pretty much anything a person can do. The term arguably applies to a calculator doing basic math.
If you're using the colloquial term it means anything a computer *can't* do.
Article makes wrong assumption (Score:2)
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I would be curious to see the algorithm for determining the appropriate default of each location which shares a name with another location.
Why apple ? (Score:2)
Why buy apple in 2020 ?
They only put on the market hardware broken by design.
Maybe we don't use language the same way (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this exposes a difference in how we use language actually. If I ask what time it is in London I'm almost certainly talking about London, Ontario. If I wanted to know London, England, I'd probably ask the time in the UK. Because the entire UK is in one timezone but Canada spans 6, as does the US, with 4 of them overlapping and Canada going further East, US further west, and the US having an exclave in Hawaii).
I use the largest geographic entity that is unambiguous. Even Ontario isn't unambiguous, it spans multiple timezones. But just a couple sentences ago I said Hawaii and not Honolulu - I'd pick states and provinces where I'm pretty sure they are basically all one timezone, or at least the parts relevant to me are one timezone. Maybe it's because I grew up in a rural area and don't closely identify physical locations with major cities? Unclear.
I don't know how common that is compared to people who think of everything in a city-first manner, but for people like me, London, Ontario is a better answer, while making it very unambiguously clear which London you are referring to in your answer, just in case. At least while I'm in North America. Maybe if I was in Paris or something you might infer that I'm checking whether my flight to London crosses a timezone.
(I think it's highly likely I have asked a digital assistant about the time in London, but to be fair, I might have self-consciously added "London, Ontario" so the digital assistant wouldn't get confused, because I'm super explicit to those things).
Reveals a hard problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is that there are multiple places with the same name. There's more than one London, more than one Paris, more than one Berlin. For these more-than-one places, there's usually (usually) a really famous one, and one or more very much less famous ones. Sometimes the famous one is not the original (like Boston, Massachusetts named after Boston, England).
And then, this gets complicated by a lot of other factors. First, where is the person who is referring to an ambiguous location relative to each of the places with the same name? As they get farther and farther away from the less famous one, chances are they want to know about the more famous one. But there's also something specific about how the place is referenced: if the requestor is asking about the time in "London" and they are located in London, Ontario, chances are they mean the one in England. But if they are in London, England, under what circumstances do they mean London, Ontario? Perhaps if you know that they have personal or business ties to Canada. Or are planning a trip there.
At what radius away from London, Ontario do general references to "London" mean the one in England? That is a hard problem. And the best answer is to say, "which one do you mean?"
I live in a town that shares a name in two other states in the US (and a place in England). When I search for public school schedules without specifying the state, it should be obvious based on my location which one I mean, but I nearly always get one of the other ones. That's an easy case.
But say I'm in Amarillo, Texas and ask, "how far is it from Amarillo to Paris?" which Paris do I mean? Say I'm in Dallas, now which do I mean? Say I'm somewhere in California, now which one? Say I'm in Nice, now which one? It's a hard problem. And, again, the best answer is for the service (here, Siri) to respond, "which Paris do you mean, the one in Texas, or the one in France?". Learning from the selection then becomes easier because you have context.
Wow (Score:2)
Alexa is better (Score:2)
Here is the evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
So what's the I in AI ? (Score:2)
Artificial...Idiot?
The AI term is oversold. All there is a glorified statistical correlator supplemented with some simplistic rigid decision making algorithms (which is the case here likely). On the other hand, perhaps at high enough level of complexity these system will be comparable to our "wet-were" intelligence?
Works for me. (Score:2)
Balance Size/Distance (Score:2)
This is a hard problem. Apart from using recent context to see if there was a reference in the last five minutes to a location particularly close to any London, then what you're talking about does depend on where you are. If you're close to a non-UK London, then that's likely it, but if you're far from them all, then it's London, England.
Of course, it should probably be learning. If you immediately respond asking for a different London, then it should learn to default to that one for you, and it should a
Think Google is better (Score:3)
If I could fire Google, I would.
Searched on Google Maps for Edmonton - a place in London, England about 6 miles from where I live, I get Edmonton in Canada or Australia. This is a persistent menace.
Answers on the other side of the world replacing much nearer ones, are a daily issue - including Google maps sending people to other countries.
If it is more than an hour's drive away, they at the very least it needs "are you sure?" even if there is no obvious alternative - it could be a typo.
And yes, I did mean "Las Vegas" the bar two miles away, and not the place with a similar sounding name 5,000 miles away.
Artificial intentigence? No it is
Actual Idiocy
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Searched on Google Maps for Edmonton - a place in London, England about 6 miles from where I live, I get Edmonton in Canada or Australia. This is a persistent menace.
I can just see you taking a taxi to Edmonton, the driver goes 200 miles to the coast, and tells you to swim the rest.
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I don't know why people in the UK think that it's a good idea to name their towns after cities in Canada or Australia. You're creating your own problems.
We need a "first world problems" category (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously. This is the kind of stuff that we've known forever makes complete sense to humans and no sense at all to computers and AI. Worse yet, if I lived across the time zone line from London, KY, I might actually be asking that if I ask someone "What time is it in London?" Human interaction is really, really complex.
PROTIP: Cultural conditioning cannot be "AI"ed! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly what I always said: To get this kind of questions right, you have to have grown up in the same culture as the asker!
Nothing can substitute that. Definitely nothing that assumes absolute truths. Let alone a shitty matrix of weights that falsely gets called "AI"!
And no, you would not necessarely fire an assistant like that. Because, yes, people from far away from your culture might give such an answer too! Hell, *I* might assume you meant London, Ontario, if that place is close enough to where we are! Why would you ask for the weather halfway around the planet?
At best, I would ask "Which London?", if in doubt.
But yes, this is exactly and precisely why what is currently called "AI" will always be a trainwreck. ;)
Maybe you should have hired a psychologist or sociologist or neurologist or really any scientist with a knack fornthe philosophical underpinnings and with an actual clue about humans and real brains? Instead of mathematicians and programmers who also only know human behavior and scientific philosophy from hearsay.
Re:PROTIP: Cultural conditioning cannot be "AI"ed! (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend posted an article recently with the question: "if I tell you the meeting on Wednesday is moved forward one day, is the new time on Tuesday or Thursday?"
Apparently the answer depends on an individual's psychology, not even on their culture.
You youngsters!! (Score:2)
There was an "All in the Family" episode where Archie Bunker didn't get his Christmas Bonus because he sent a package that was supposed to go to London, Ontario to London UK.
No Shit (Score:2)
Context is hard. Follow-up clarifying questions are even harder.
Tell Alexa: "What's the pink elephant eating in the weather?" and she will give you the local weather.
The current effort is, sadly, all about creating skills that provide useful features or that can be used to advertise paid-for services rather than linguistic capability. They aren't assistants. They're just fast keyboards in specific cases.
This post is proof SlashDot (Score:2)
has reached a new low.
SlashDot is following the National Enquirer down the media toilet.
I used to come here for news that has been filtered and above the "lowest common denominator" level....
Should change the name to FaceDot!
You Laugh But... (Score:2)
I mean, how is Siri suppose to know that you mean London sorted by common sense rather then by any other category, such as distance. The vast majority of people take this for granted but for AI, and some humans even, context in spoken language is not an easy problem to solve. Especially if it's not something that the developer is already proficient with in their regular lives. Think about that for a little bit.
A friend of mine gets completely stumped by a simple "Good morning!" because "is it really a 'good
What do you expect from artificial stupidity? (Score:2)
Because that is all these things can do. Pattern matching, statistics and some hard-coded rules. That does not create intelligence.
Also, don't expect this to get better in the next few decades and maybe not ever. This specific case may not get a hard-coded rule though.
Multiple correct answers should clarify (Score:2)
Apple's turning into 90s microsoft (Score:2)
In Kentucky, it could be relevant (Score:2)
With the way that time-zones work in Kentucky, it might be a legitimate question to ask, "What time is it in London," and really mean London, Kentucky.
Par for the course for personal assitants (Score:2)
Humans Make Mistakes Too (Score:4, Interesting)
Really old British joke (Score:2)
Location: London, England. A traveler hails a taxi cab (the real thing, not a Uber car).
[cabbie] Where to, sir?
[traveler] Waterloo.
[cabbie] You mean the station?
[traveler] I am sure we are late for the battle.
(disclaimer: over the time I met with different takes on the same tale, some even claimed to be anecdotal. This is just my retelling)
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What Apple needs is more cash for R&D...oh, wait
Re: No doubt (Score:3)
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Try asking Siri how many of the dead hookers you can fit in the trunk of a 1994 Honda Civic per trip, bet she'll be clueless.
I tricked somebody into trying it, Siri didn't answer but half an hour later he was picked up by the FBI serial killer task-force.
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You're talking about John, right? Too bad he's in prison, because he just got a thank you card in the mail yesterday along with a rebate of 10% on his next Honda purchase.
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Try asking Siri how many of the dead hookers you can fit in the trunk of a 1994 Honda Civic per trip, bet she'll be clueless.
I did. She asked me to clarify if they're dismembered or intact.
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She asked me if I meant African or European.
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Better save that one for Hans Reiser.
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Try asking Siri how many of the dead hookers you can fit in the trunk of a 1994 Honda Civic per trip, bet she'll be clueless.
Sounds like one of those weird Google interview questions ...
[Wonder if the interviewer would feel if you gave a quick, definitive answer.]
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Yes. Gruber is so busy criticizing he doesn't stop to think.
Siri is giving the time in London, Ontario (or presumably Texas) to people who are near those places. It's giving London, England, to people who are not near a local London.
Around here when someone says "I was in London" we ask "you mean London, Ontario, or the real London?"
Proximity is context, which makes a difference. What Siri is lacking is the knowledge that for time zones, unlike most queries, we're almost certainly *not* interested in someth
Re: No doubt (Score:2)
My iPhone gave me the correct answer for London but the wrong answer for Paris. It gave me my local time for Paris. It didnâ(TM)t tell me which Paris but I can only assume it is the Paris with a population of 1200 about an hour from me.
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Just tried it and Siri gave me the wrong answer. I also tried with Google Assistant and it gave me the correct answer.
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Several observations:
1. I don't know what took a long time meant, but it may have dumped into a human review. In which case the human was an idiot, and, like the Turing Chinese box, the box as a whole was not intelligent, but an idiot.
2. They may have tickle mechanisms when people start suddenly asking the same question, that also initiates a human review to make sure it's the correct answer. (This could be because of an event, or someone found something funny with a wrong answer; either is sufficient rea
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It probably meant the system was trying to figure out WHICH London you meant. It took a long time because there are two plausible answers to your question and was trying to figure out from context which one you probably wanted. It probably searched your contacts to see if maybe you had a friend in
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Yeah, I hate when signs do that. I've driven around parts of this country and other places do the same thing. If you're like me and plan out your route and follow the roads, knowing which one to take, it's not that big a deal. But if you're mindlessly following a piece of software and see that sign, it can get disconcerting because for a moment you think you're going the wrong way
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Ditto, and I'm in Boston (London ON: 620ish miles away, London UK over 3200). Asked my phone, not a watch, but still...got it right. Consistently inconsistent, how delightful!
Ditto, and I'm in Canada at the moment. This blogger is full of shit.
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Well, except Patel actually recorded a video of it and posted it online, so it's verifiably true that they are NOT full of shit.
And again, this is EVEN WORSE, because now not only does Siri vary from device to device, but from person to person.
I'm as big an Apple user as there is on /. (seriously, just check my posts) and I consistently swear at Siri for doing something stupid.
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A couple of possibilities.
Patel asked for the weather in London, ON before and now his Siri is smart enough to assume he always means that one when he asks about London so he recorded the video and posted it.
OR
Apple saw his story pretty quickly and already changed Siri to assume London, UK by default.
AND Siri is pretty stupid.
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Exactly. As you say, the logic being this was probably: there's too many places, too many cities with the same name, so let the algorithm use the closest one.
Where they made a huge mistake is by not having exception lists for places and cities known worldwide, such as London.
But then again you fall into the same problem for people living close enough to London, Ontario. "Stupid Siri, I don't give a fuck about the time in London, UK!"
Re: No doubt (Score:2)
Why would you want to know the time in a nearby city? Unless you live close to a time zone border and the DST rules are different you will know what the time is there (and in lost cases it will be the same as the time where you are.) Anyway, when 99+% of the people on the planet refer to just "London", there is no ambiguity.
Re: No doubt (Score:2)
What they need is open research. Apparently, no one wants to do AI research for a company that's going to keep it all locked inside a tiny ecosystem. They've started making strides towards this, but Apple's got years of catching up to on this front.
Do doubt,- CNR (Score:2)
Siri returns the time in London, England. This whole post is about something fixed a while ago or from people who live so close to London, Ontario that Siri made an assumption. No one on this thread verified it, cause it aint a thing.
Please /. post my story about how Microsoft, when you open a browser other than Edge, causes your computer to spring laser guns and shoot you. Apparently, not being real isn't an obstacle to making it to the front page.
Re: (Score:2)
This whole post is about something fixed a while ago or from people who live so close to London, Ontario that Siri made an assumption. No one on this thread verified it, cause it aint a thing.
I'm running iOS 13.5, and I just asked Siri for the time in London.
She gave me the time in London, KY.
I'm in Indiana, about 170 miles from London, KY.
So, in summary:
1. It is still an issue (not fixed)
2. It is a thing.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, I have no idea how they caused it. Maybe they were in a different timezone and 10 meters from London, Ontario.
Re: (Score:2)
I grew up in a place near a time zone border, and a border that moved depending on the time of year because a little chunk of the neighbouring timezone didn't observe DST. What time is it in the city a half hour drive from here was a not uncommon question, and one that usually required some figuring.
"What time is it in London, Ontario" is a reasonable question for someone living in Detroit, for example. It's close, but it's across an international border. Or Chicago (it's different).
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"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so." - Ford Prefect
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What is the point asking about time in a faraway place in or outside the same time zone?
So when you want to call your friend in London after dinner, you can find out before you call him that it's 3am there. Much less important if you're calling a London that's the next town over.
Re: (Score:2)
Be nice to Siri, she was born slow, and she's doing the best she can.
Personally, I type my questions into an HTML field instead. But I don't blame Siri. It isn't her fault.
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Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that might be _why_ the watch gave a different answer than the HomePod. Since "London" is ambiguous, they could be guessing from the context whether you want the "local" answer or the "global" answer. So they could be thinking that when you are using your watch you're thinking more locally, and they used the watch's location to pick the closest "London". When I use Siri to ask about London, and I am in Atlanta, it responds with London, KY. Which is the closest London.
It's true that Siri isn't terr
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that the question is about the time, rather than other local facts like population or gas station locations, makes a difference. Asking "What's the time in London" when I'm in the same timezone as London ON -- the respondent should recognize that I would not want an answer that is the same as the time where I am asking. Asking "What's the price of gas in London" -- you cannot make this decision as easily.
Another example: if I live in California and have been planning a trip to Ontario, researching
Re: (Score:2)
When you've just woken up in the morning and are wondering whether you should get up and make that morning coffee, or keep your eyes closed and go back to sleep.
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I used to live in Montreal. I set the Google maps voice to an Australian. The resulting turn-by-turn directions were hilarious.