Google Home Mini Diatribe

Well I bought another two for other rooms in the house.
They work 98% of the time. Support is not bad, but illogical at times.

Me: Hey Google, uplighter On
Her: I'm sorry that device does not appear to be set up...
Me: Hey Google, uplighter On
Her: OK, switching uplighter on

This is intermittently.

I report it to Google. They ask you to reset it completely, yet it does it on the others and does it after a full reset and setup all over again. Then they ask you to put directly into a wall socket and not extension. (Not practical with me as I have very few sockets, hence the extensions).

Reboot your router and Mini etc.

Recently I could say 'Play xx station for n minutes' and she would confirm and play. Then that stopped. I went through all the above (on all units) when it turns out it was something they had done at their end. :(

AI still has a way to go. :D
 
Uncle Gizmo said:
For some reason Google Home Mini decided that it needed to advertise it's presence. It started reading out a diatribe of useless information and refused to stop when requested, and these requests were, well, very firm and sometimes rude!

The only way I could get it to stop was to unplug its power source. It now remains sat on the window ledge, inert, powerless, or is it? I suspect it will remain there, until sold, or consigned to the bin, but I doubt very much if it will ever be plugged in again!

You might say why am I posting this here? Why don't I inform Google? Have you ever tried to communicate with Google? You are wasting your time! They are deaf, except for the Google Home Mini, which is not deaf! Maybe it will have a use after all! If I can persuade it to contact Brin's Google home Mini and relay my message now there's a thought!
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Hey uncle Gizmo, my offer of a 'chat' with any errant device still stands :)
 
adrianscotter said:
Hey uncle Gizmo, my offer of a 'chat' with any errant device still stands :)
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Well it is now in my possession, so that is not going to happen. :)
 
Gasman said:
AI still has a way to go.
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Regarding maintenance issues, I learned a long time ago that artificial intelligence cannot cope with natural stupidity. I have no doubt YOU are using it right but the "maintainers" are an amorphous cloud of unknown quality. Of course, there is always maintenance through percussive adjustment (i.e. giving it a good "whack" with your hand or something harder and heavier.)

At the office, I used to verbally threaten my workstation by telling it "Machine, I know where you are plugged in. I can have you replaced." Since this was a semi-open seating arrangement, the other folks would comment about how "Doc and his machine are at it again." The threat rarely worked but it felt good to blow off the steam.
 
My Google Home devices, all six, are beyond wonky now. Also, the new home apo has a miserable failure. First, my Google Home devices. Let me start by saying I'm a Systems/Network Engineer by trade, my home WiFi is on point, and yes, I've cleaned out the microphones. I've even done packet captures via Wire Shark to make sure my network is 100% solid, as well as extended pings. 100% solid. So... One device just won't answer at times. It'll just go silent for 1-2 minutes. Reboot? It pops up again and starts to respond again, randomly.
 
There's a liberty mutual commercial, the one with that emu bird, and everytime it comes on the tv Alexa responds That she doesnt understand.
 
Whoever does the Liberty Mutual ad campaign needs to be advised that past a certain point, dumb commercials are counter-productive.
 
The_Doc_Man said:
At the office, I used to verbally threaten my workstation by telling it "Machine, I know where you are plugged in. I can have you replaced." Since this was a semi-open seating arrangement, the other folks would comment about how "Doc and his machine are at it again." The threat rarely worked but it felt good to blow off the steam.
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AI in the future might reply to the threat by refusing to work and sue you for harassment.:)
 
I think it's POSSIBLE that as A.I. develops (along with problems, ethical concerns, and the inevitable widely publicized episodes of bad actors using it in bad ways), if we're lucky .... it might go the way of gain-of-function.

(or at least, the way Republicans are trying to make gain-of-function go: Interesting, amazing, has some benefits, but too dangerous: Stop)

Even if that doesn't happen, I believe a subculture of people who eschew the increasing disappearance of our interaction with the real world around us (human and nature) will rise up ... Those who are sick of the way we have been conned into walking away from the world that we were made to live in and the people we were made to see, talk to, look into their eyes, hug, shake their hands...........and simply decide not to participate (to the extent possible, which will be partial, but probably still possible).

Don't think it's not doable. I know more than one person in a highly technical capacity (works high level security management at Paypal, much more of a programmer than I am), whose current plan is to walk away from it all next year and start farming in Texas.

At some point, many people do actually get tired of their whole existence and accomplishments being in a pretend world. I'm slowly moving in that direction. Slowly.
 
oleronesoftwares said:
AI in the future might reply to the threat by refusing to work and sue you for harassment.:)
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I am reminded of a hard fact of electronics. Their attention span is no longer than their electrical cord.
 
Pat Hartman said:
By the time the grandchildren were 10, they got smartphones against my advice. However, I stood my ground on dinner.
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Please state the reasons you are against it, maybe some of us who are not yet grandparents can learn.
 
Pat Hartman said:
Does anyone remember Eliza? This was back in the 80's and it was the first AI. My husband and I got a copy of the program, it was written in COBOL, on a 9-track tape. I may still have it in a box somewhere:) Eliza sounded very intelligent. She took your questions, parsed them, and fed them back in the answer.
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Now am feeling young, i might leave this forum to look for one with members born in the late 1980s/1990s :)
 
Pat Hartman said:
Because 10 (in 2009) is too young to become addicted to a phone. The children didn't need to be reachable every second of every day. We always knew where they were.

The people in Silicon Valley who develop our technology, send their children to private schools where NO electronics are allowed. That should tell you something. The people who create the software that addicts people do not want their own children to use it.
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Good point, but do u hold the same view in 2022? I have seen a few educational apps for kids.
 
Pat Hartman said:
When I was young, children were still free-range. I knew my limits by the time I was 5 and walking a mile by myself every day to kindergarten. I knew how to cross a street. I knew enough to not take presents from strangers or get in a car with anyone I didn't know. Show up for meals and when the streetlights come on. Otherwise, I spent most of my life outside with the neighborhood children exploring the woods or playing games or riding our bikes around the block. If it was raining or too cold, we were in the basement playing school (yes we did play "school" when we were little) or playing hide-and-seek.
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I would think this is more of a failure of parents, I think parents of those days spent more time with their kids than now.
 
oleronesoftwares said:
I would think this is more of a failure of parents, I think parents of those days spent more time with their kids than now.
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I agree. Do you know some parents have little or no control over their sons or daughters. Some parents even allow them to go to Washington on 6th Jan 2021 to smash up Congress building, how terrible is that?

Col
 
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