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Ask HN: What do you wish digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) could do?

37 points by raybb ↗ HN
I mostly use Allo/Google Now but I've spent time playing with Cortana and Siri as well. Some random things I wish they could do include: Tell me when the high/low tides will be. Do things at a later time (tomorrow at 5 message Jack to bring the frisbee) Of course we'd all like a good API to make our own stuff.

What would you want the assistants to do that would make them more helpful?

71 comments

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Eridrus
Control my TV, Roku and sound bar so that I never have to look for the damn remote or open the Roku app again.
krautjakob
I'd be happy if Siri were finally able to understand a proper sentence at least most of the time. That would be helpful.
canuckintime
It's odd that you still can't directly type to Siri, even on the Mac. (You can indirectly type by 'editing' a previous voice query).

The compeitors: Cortana accepts both voice and text input. Google Now/Allo does too (although the new Assistant in the Pixel is only voice though). Alexa is only voice.

pdq
If you click on your incorrect voice command, Siri has a "tap to edit" link, where you can correct in text and re-execute the command.
hashtagMERKY
This is probably the biggest improvement to Siri they could make right now. The ability to enter commands to a natural language command line could be really convenient.
[dead] MylesHildebrand
Maybe your accent just sucks.
yladiz
My accent is perfectly fine (neutral US) and Siri can't pick up probably 10% of the words I say, primarily words that are uncommon or have multiple pronunciations, especially if the pronunciation I use is not the most common version.
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[dead] tooFastFuckYou
Suck a mean...

Get my toaster to talk to my dishwasher! Or my refrigerator to talk to my oven!

Oh wait, those were the stupid selling points for "home automation" that haven't changed in 20 years...

Um... open the pod-bay doors?

jjcm
More open/extensible APIs. I want to be able to register my own actions with them with ease. Right now Alexa seems to be the most flexible, but even then you gotta do some serious hacking to get it to work.

Another thing I was working on at Microsoft back in the day was contextual deep voice search mixed with touch. Essentially the UI pattern was tap and hold on an app, then speak. The voice command would be sent directly to the app itself so you could have it be recognized by it. Example: hold your finger on the pictures app and say, "show me Mike". It'd then bring up pictures of Mike.

Linell
I really wish that Alexa could handle push notifications. "Your order is leaving Domino's Pizza now" would be great.
johnchristopher
I whish Internet access wasn't needed for basic tasks like "play that song".
raybb
I agree. Even something like a "note to self" command requires internet for Google Now.
douche
Go away. I'm starting to feel like I won't be able to buy a toaster that won't have a personal assistant shoehorn ed into it in a few years.

Maybe I can set them up in a circle and let them babble away to each other?

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cosmouser
I'd really appreciate a good cooking or baking assistant.
remir
Things an actual assistant could do, like call XYZ to make an appointment on my behalf. Find the best price for my car insurance. Send flowers to my wife. Find tickets for an event.
JaumeGreen
Plan a retreat for me and my S.O. without me telling it, checking for approval, while checking both agendas for availability.
richardboegli
Be completely open source so that you could control the privacy of it.

Completely offline with local processing on the device of choice.

bobsil1
Make routine phone calls. Call school and tell them my kid will be out. Understand routine replies.
flipactual
I would like to be able to tell any digital assistant enabled device in my home to "play latest episode of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on the living room TV" and have it work. I feel like that's a very simple, minimal viable product, sort of request. Siri responds with "Hmm, I'm not finding anything for that."

I'd also like to be able to ask "How many steps have I taken today?" Siri responds with "I can't answer that on your iPhone but you can find it in the Health app: Open the Health app"

This may feel like a big ask considering the majority of the basics aren't covered on the platform I'm using, but compound questions would be wonderful – "show me the thirty largest US cities" "remove any that do not have a moderate climate" "which one has the lowest cost of living?"

If platforms already provide these services and I'm simply using the wrong one – oops.

yladiz
I think the health one is just Apple being conservative when it comes to health data. I'm sure it's on purpose that they don't let the Health app talk to Siri directly.

However, it would be nice if you could tell Siri to play an episode of a show on a specific TV, but I think they would want you to have an Apple TV for every TV in your home, not just one to control all of the TVs.

flipactual
I was thinking the same thing in regard to interfacing with the Health app. Wouldn't a simple Siri for Health opt-in fix this?

I've got a bad case of Apple lock in – Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, MacBooks. Saying, to my phone, "Play The Walking Dead on the TV" brings up TWD in the TV app (iOS 10.2, I haven't been paying attention, this is possibly beta track) which prompts me to start watching it... but it then plays on the phone. I can cast it to the TV, but I can't hand it off to the TV.

Maybe that's precisely how most people would expect and want it to work, but it seems unintuitive to me.

TheOtherHobbes
"Siri, close [app name]" "Siri, open Google Maps and show a route to [location]"

"Hey Siri" on the Mac would be good. So would more interaction between devices - so I could set up an alarm on one particular device from any other device.

Cloud things are still clumsy from that POV. A lot more could be integrated.

My biggest (minor) annoyance is not being able to toggle switches.

I can say "Alexa, lights on" and "Alexa, lights off".

But I can't just say "Alexa, lights" and have the app read the current state and flip it - which is annoying because it would be efficient and useful, but also because it's so close, and yet so far, from living in a Star Trek TNG episode.

tomjen3
Let me add commands myself. Yes I want to be able to say "computer turn on the light" and imagine I am on DS9, but more practically I need that to free my smartphone from my hands, which is needed as a driver.
Vosporos
I wish they wouldn't spy on me.
jayajay
In the next 5-20 years, I think "programming and IOT without screens" will allow pretty much anyone to do a lot of useful stuff on the computer without actually being present at one, or knowing the exact technical syntax for how to do it.

"Please analyze the traffic from Y and let me know if there's any anomalous traffic regarding ISIS" --anyone

"Please start a server on local port 8080 from my computer and serve all of my birthday pictures from when I was 10 until 20, and then download the files from my phone and save it into a new album called 'Birthday Teens'" --anyone who knows what a server is

"Please transfer the files from my computer in directory X to my phone in a new album with the same name as X" --anyone

"Please send a request to bing for the first 50 pages of cat images, and save the files into Y directory, then open the first image" --anyone

"Please Open up Steam and start up Skyrim" --anyone

"After that, send a message to Henry and ask him if we wants to play again" --anyone

"Please get me a list of all of the processes about mongo" --anyone who knows what a computer is

"Please close the windows or tabs on reddit" --anyone

"Please open up my school portal email" --anyone

Thinking things into existence. That gap is still pretty big. It's easy to think of ideas, but putting them into action is hard. That gap is going to get smaller. At some point, pretty much everyone will be a commander of AI, which will be like a team of programmers working for them. When that happens, we have a reason to be scared.

andai
What is your reason to be scared?
jayajay
Simple -- people tend to think in the gutter, because there's no harm in it. I can wish you dead right now, and it will literally not materialize into anything, and because of that, I may not even feel bad about it. A problematic situation arises when thinking about something is pretty much all you have to do to make it so. There's a lot of good, and also a lot of bad that come from having that power.
weaksauce
Remember context and respond accordingly. It's getting better but still not great.
cybernytrix
I'd say AI is real when it can do everything my 4yr old son can understand and do. I used to think this is a low bar, But going by how slow and painful the progress has been, I'm not hopeful it will happen even in my son's lifetime :(
Eridrus
Could you elaborate on that for those of us who are unaware of what cognitive abilities a 4 year old child should possess?
andai
Approx the intelligence of a cat
stkyle
#1. Eliminate the need for a hub for each smart device I own.
aliencat
I would really wish for a timer assistant. When I'm cooking in the kitchen with both of my hands occupied, I could just ask it to set timers.
xux
You already can. Try it out: "Hey Siri, set a timer for 5 minutes"
detaro
Which one doesn't have that? That's the one feature I see people consistently mention that they love about their digital assistants.
madamelic
This is basically why I bought an Alexa.

It is really embarrassing because I really only use her for converting from F to C, asking the weather while I am getting dressed, waking me up and setting cooking alarms.

Basically all of those can be answered with a Google search but it is a nice hands-free, from the kitchen or bed thing.

SunboX
OK Google, when does the supermarket XXX in city YYY open today?
synthmeat
To be usable with non-mainstream language names. Yes, I can speak in English with it but I can't rename people/places. Which means I can't mail/message/reference them which is, to me, most exciting current use case.
skraelingjar
I wish they could control laser cutters and 3D printers. It would make my job a heck of a lot easier. "Start printing the chess set in red and green on printer #2" It would be great if I could also use them for design.
mrfusion
I'd like reminders to work better on Siri. It puts them in this reminder app and they never seem to go away until I manuly delete them.

Also geofencing reminders seem to kill my battery and constantly make the location icon show up.

mrfusion
I really wish I could talk to Siri in public without feeling silly.