<story><title>Google&apos;s True Moonshot</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2023/googles-true-moonshot/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>The one part of this thesis that I pretty strongly disagree with is the idea that people would &lt;i&gt;prefer&lt;/i&gt; to have long, meandering voice conversations with an AI, compared to text.&lt;p&gt;Just look at anyone under the age of 25 (35 maybe?) They can easily have long, meandering conversations with &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; humans using voice, yet I see them go for text 9 times out of ten. As someone on the backside of middle age, I often find it pretty baffling. I like the succinctness of text when I need to send a quick update or ask a short question, but I normally always call someone for an in-depth conversation. But I&amp;#x27;ll see my nieces text back and forth with friends for literally hours, sometimes getting emotionally worked up, and I&amp;#x27;m thinking &amp;quot;OMG, just pick up the phone to your ear and just &lt;i&gt;talk&lt;/i&gt; to them.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But I think the reason people prefer texting is the same reason most people still prefer typing, despite tech that, these days, could easily transcribe with great accuracy. At least for me, typing frees up my brain to actually move &lt;i&gt;faster&lt;/i&gt;. When typing, I can think about the next phrase or sentence. When talking, I find it much more difficult to &amp;quot;think ahead&amp;quot;, so to speak.&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m really skeptical that voice interfaces will be &amp;quot;the wave of the future&amp;quot;. Sure, I use OK Google a lot, but basically for the same sets of commands as everyone else (What&amp;#x27;s the weather? Set my alarm. What&amp;#x27;s next on my calendar? Etc. etc.) Occasionally I&amp;#x27;ll ask it &amp;quot;search-like&amp;quot; questions. Perhaps I suffer from a dearth of imagination, but I just have a hard time believing long voice conversations with a machine are something most folks would want.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>satyrnein</author><text>Some potential &amp;quot;costs&amp;quot; of voice&amp;#x2F;video: it&amp;#x27;s (often) exclusive to one person, it&amp;#x27;s immediate, and it&amp;#x27;s easy to expose your own emotional state. In an emotionally fraught, developing situation, perhaps your nieces want to take it slow, check what their friends think, not let on that they&amp;#x27;re upset, etc.&lt;p&gt;This is all just speculation, I&amp;#x27;m not really a texter, but I do find it interesting when limitations might turn out to be features.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google&apos;s True Moonshot</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2023/googles-true-moonshot/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>The one part of this thesis that I pretty strongly disagree with is the idea that people would &lt;i&gt;prefer&lt;/i&gt; to have long, meandering voice conversations with an AI, compared to text.&lt;p&gt;Just look at anyone under the age of 25 (35 maybe?) They can easily have long, meandering conversations with &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; humans using voice, yet I see them go for text 9 times out of ten. As someone on the backside of middle age, I often find it pretty baffling. I like the succinctness of text when I need to send a quick update or ask a short question, but I normally always call someone for an in-depth conversation. But I&amp;#x27;ll see my nieces text back and forth with friends for literally hours, sometimes getting emotionally worked up, and I&amp;#x27;m thinking &amp;quot;OMG, just pick up the phone to your ear and just &lt;i&gt;talk&lt;/i&gt; to them.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But I think the reason people prefer texting is the same reason most people still prefer typing, despite tech that, these days, could easily transcribe with great accuracy. At least for me, typing frees up my brain to actually move &lt;i&gt;faster&lt;/i&gt;. When typing, I can think about the next phrase or sentence. When talking, I find it much more difficult to &amp;quot;think ahead&amp;quot;, so to speak.&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m really skeptical that voice interfaces will be &amp;quot;the wave of the future&amp;quot;. Sure, I use OK Google a lot, but basically for the same sets of commands as everyone else (What&amp;#x27;s the weather? Set my alarm. What&amp;#x27;s next on my calendar? Etc. etc.) Occasionally I&amp;#x27;ll ask it &amp;quot;search-like&amp;quot; questions. Perhaps I suffer from a dearth of imagination, but I just have a hard time believing long voice conversations with a machine are something most folks would want.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spzb</author><text>Typing also has the advantage that several people doing it in the same room at the same time don’t interfere with each other. A train carriage full of people texting is considerably less annoying than the same carriage full of people chattering away with their voice assistants</text></comment>