Home Voice Assistants - I'm Sorry, I Can't Help You With That.

The other day I was halfway through watching a movie, Altered States (1980) and, without any prompting from me, our Google Home Mini Assistant pipes up, "I'm sorry, I can't help you with that."

Good to know.

I don't know what it thought the question was? I hadn't said anything at all, and I'm pretty sure no one within a movie released in 1980 said 'Okay Google'.

The movie itself is about altering reality by somehow projecting thoughts into existence but I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking 'Okay Google' at any point during the film.

Perhaps, after weeks of nobody asking it a question, our Home Mini just wanted to give a voice to the depression it must be developing as a result of not actually being helpful with anything at all?

"I'm sorry, I can't help you with that."

Voice assistants are trendy right now but they're really just a stepping stone to autonomous robots. Machines that you can speak to as if it was a living, breathing, intelligent entity.

Sure I could deck my home out with all sorts of things that my voice assistant could turn on and off for me but that's not nearly as cool as having your personal chef robot help you cook almost anything.

These robot arms have been personally trained by a real Master Chef.
It works through a touch screen user interface.
Image: Moley Robotics

Sonny from I Robot.

Because, really, that is the end goal, creating machines that can understand us well enough to be controlled through voice commands.

Ultimately I think it's creating fully sentient machines/beings in our own image but short term, an android assistant along the lines of Sonny, from the movie I Robot is a more achievable goal.

Home voice assistants aren't really there yet. Along with Home mini, I have Cortana on all my computers, and Google assistant on my smartphone. My partner has Siri on her phone. We don't use any of them for actual assistance.

Occasionally I might give one of them a shot but they nearly always make an easy job much harder. I have to consciously try and speak the words clearly so the voice assistant will understand them the first time. (If you've got a voice assistant you'll know the struggle of trying to get any kind of help if it doesn't actually recognize the words). Once you get into an 'argument' over what you know you said but the assistant can't understand, you may as well have just used a keyboard.

That's not even the kicker. If your voice assistant does start giving you an answer, you can't quickly scan for just the bit you need. You have to listen to that computer voice drone on, and on, or you have to cut them off because you've just realized, it would have been much simpler to have used a keyboard and screen in the first place.

Until a voice assistant is placed inside a machine whose only purpose is to assist with whatever task the voice assistant has been instructed to do you'll be hearing this quite a lot:

"I'm sorry, I can't help you with that."

"Yeah I know. That's why I never asked in the first place."

Comments

Movie Review: A Complete Unknown (2024) No Spoilers

Y ou would think the Bob Dylan story would be 'wind-swept and interesting,' to quote Billy Connelly, however, despite A Complete Unknown being quite an engaging film, it feels like it missed the years that really shaped him as a song writer/performer. The film starts in 1961, with a then unknown, 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in New York City with his guitar. From there he forges relationships with musical icons on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking performance that reverberates around the world. The problem being, according to this film, Dylan arrived in New York, for the most part, fully formed as a folk singer/song writer. In virtually no time he makes a very important connection that puts him on the trajectory of doing the work and becoming a name, before making his world changing performance. While there is some drama behind the scenes with his various relationships, none of it is particularly unique to any number of up and com...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Movie Review: Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) No Spoilers

I would not call myself a comic book fan of Hellboy. I've never read a single comic about him. My sum total knowledge of the character comes from the first two live action films, Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), staring Ron Pearlman in the titular role. Essentially I'm a fan of those two films. Particularly Ron's portrayal of the character. I've been wanting to see the two later reboot attempts, in particular, David Harbor's run at the character in, Hellboy (2019), but reviews suggested I'd be disappointed if I spent any extra on them beyond a streaming service subscription. I missed David's Hellboy when it was on streaming, and currently I think you can only rent or buy it. However, Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) surfaced, at no extra cost on Amazon Prime, so I decided to give it a go. The poster says it's the fourth installment in the franchise, so I guess these films are loosely set in the same continuity and are all the sa...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls. The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

I'm Joining the Illuminati Brotherhood By Personal Invitation of Hiltom Rothschild... Wait, What?

How special am I to have finally come of age (53 years young) and am now eligible to participate in building the world alongside other members of the Illuminati Brotherhood... Yes I've received the call by way of an email, which I'm sure is real because I had to translate it from the Dutch language and it was personally written by Hiltom Rothschild, one of the non-existent members of the Rothschild family (or perhaps deep undercover because Google has never heard of them?). A Transcript of the email below: To: etourist From: Illuminati Brotherhood Subject: Illuminati Broederschap (Illuminati Brotherhood) I am Hiltom Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, one of the 13 families of the Illuminati brotherhood. I'm here to let you know that you've come of age and are eligible to participate in building the 🌎 world. It is a calling and a privilege to honor him with pride and gratitude as not everyone will ever be chosen by the LIGHT, many are called but few are ch...

Movie Review: Superman (2025) No Spoilers

T he one thing I like about James Gunn as a comic book movie director is that he leans into the comic book nature of the world and the characters. He's not trying to do a realistic take on any of the characters. He's simply bringing the comics to life. It's still his take on the characters, but he doesn't shy away from their comic book origins. James Gunn's Superman is very much a comic book movie in every sense. Nothing is off the table because it's too 'comic-booky' and might look silly in a live action film. To me that's incredibly liberating. It lets James actually tell a proper Superman story that isn't hamstrung by reality, or tip toeing into the fantastical just enough to allow Superman to exist in the real world. Superman begins in the middle of a battle. Metropolis is under attack by a super powered being known as 'Hammer of Boravia', however everything is not as it seems, and Superman (David Corenswet) must work with other s...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog