It has been nearly 15 years since Siri was introduced and I still never, ever want to talk out loud to my computer. Am I alone in this? Is yapping at your computer a popular interaction mode?
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There are only 2 places I've used voice controls - in the car, and in the kitchen when I have my hands busy. And both are still awful experiences where it often doesn't understand a bloody word I say.
I like to use it for setting a timer but that's it. I never want it to talk back to me. Anything else I just don't feel like dealing with the issue of it not understanding what I asked.
I mostly use Siri for controlling my blinds / lights and not much beyond that. I probably will when it actually gets decent
I do however talk to my computer a lot as I use https://wisprflow.ai instead of typing often. I have carpal tunnel and so I try to avoid typing when possible to save my hands
The only context in which using Siri doesn’t feel weird is when I’m at home, where I already regularly give voice commands that are misinterpreted or ignored by way of being the parent of young children.
As someone who has been known to mumble…hell no. As someone who doesn’t trust voice assistants listening in and sending information back home…another hell no.
The only time I yap at a computer is when I'm using my projector's android TV functionality; and even then I yap at a computer and invariably it hears me wrong, I get frustrated, and I pick out whatever I was searching for character by character anyways
Yup, I switch it off on my laptop; don’t have any need for a mic on my desktop. Whereas, I dictate pretty much all text on my phone (other than when that’d be antisocial).
The occasional « play {album} by {artist} on {service} » for music (and even that is often too much to ask, it often defaults to the eponymous song rather than the whole album).
Never to the computer but I do speak to Siri on my phone regularly for two scenarios:
1. When I'm driving and think of something I want added to my to do list.
2. When I'm cooking or doing dishes and want to add something to my grocery list without stopping and washing/drying my hands to type it.
I don’t want to have a conversation with it, but I do like asking random questions that pop into my head, or to control my HomeKit stuff, and for timers or reminders it’s useful too.
I don’t use Siri but I do use my voice a fair bit when I’m using a computer. Whisper is very good for conversational English voice to text, saves me typing most of the time. https://talonvoice.com is great for navigating around my desktop.
+1 to this! I've also only ever felt frustration when Siri thinks I'm talking to it, and have always felt the urge "how can I ensure this DOESN'T work" when I'm shown things that are "smart" that I otherwise want to try out.
There is only one case where I want to talk out loud to a computer, and that is when I can’t touch the computer, like I’m cooking and my hands are dirty.
"timer 5 minutes" is literally the only thing I ever tell Siri (on my phone). I have it set to activate from the home button rather than voice activation
Only ever in the car, shouting at it, what to play on spotify. Kinda useful, since you supposed to keep eyes on rhe road and hands on the wheel, but thats all.
In principle, I hate it. In practice, I use it occasionally to create a reminder. (But that’s partly because I haven’t found a dead simple interface for creating reminders manually on the fly.)
Many of us are able to live a good life without Siri or Alexa, etc. It seems to be hype, and occasional or specific use is different than widespread usage. Direct use of AI is different than indirect usage. At this point it seems that only 20% use voice search. https://www.yaguara.co/voice-search-statistics/
Not specifically my computer, no. But on my phone for:
- Setting timers and reminders
- Asking what time it is (when I'm half asleep, and only when I won't wake anyone else)
- Directions and such when driving
- Basic unit conversions (I live in a mixed Fahrenheit/Celsius household)
To get a little highfalutin, with a GUIs you are showing the computer what you want to do, and with a CLI you are telling the computer what you want to do, and at its best Siri and its ilk is something like a CLI for famously GUI-heavy Apple OSes.
I don't siri, but the googs is good and also does a really good job of dictation when writing document it's really easy to get to a first rough draft quickly
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Had an argument at a conference about this. Even Sci-fi speech interfaces seem highly inefficient. It's just not practical outside of small use cases
I prefer a visual thing to look at (also why I don’t like the terminal much)
I do however talk to my computer a lot as I use https://wisprflow.ai instead of typing often. I have carpal tunnel and so I try to avoid typing when possible to save my hands
"Hey Google, what's the weather tomorrow?"
"Okay Google, play Not Like Us"
I do at least one of these every single day
“All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again”
The occasional « play {album} by {artist} on {service} » for music (and even that is often too much to ask, it often defaults to the eponymous song rather than the whole album).
Siri is like the awkward sibling who interferes without asking and never listens.
Feels especially weird that I'm surrounded by at least 3 other devices that I'm more likely to use Siri with whenever I'm at my computer.
1. When I'm driving and think of something I want added to my to do list.
2. When I'm cooking or doing dishes and want to add something to my grocery list without stopping and washing/drying my hands to type it.
- set a timer
- roll a dice
- toss a coin
That’s genuinely about it.
(And I have never done a single other thing with it)
https://www.yaguara.co/voice-search-statistics/
- Setting timers and reminders
- Asking what time it is (when I'm half asleep, and only when I won't wake anyone else)
- Directions and such when driving
- Basic unit conversions (I live in a mixed Fahrenheit/Celsius household)
I understand there are people who it works great for and love it but I am not one of them.