This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Despite attempts to reduce driver distraction by enabling select voice commands to activate things like the air conditioning or change a radio station,
You know what worked great and didn't distract? Haptic buttons and knobs. I don't know what I can buy when my current car dies. I don't want all this shit again.
My car has voice commands but it can't even do simple tasks like turning on the headlights or wipers, and requires an active internet connection to do anything at all, so yeah, its fuckin useless.
Meanwhile my phone can dictate entire paragraphs with no internet connection at all.
Just get stuff replaced. I'd rather get a new engine, transmission, chassis, and all parts replaced one by one then get a car with bullshit installed.
"I need to grab lunch, find some highly rated sit-down restaurants along the way. I'm not in a rush, oh, and I’d like to eat outside,” Google offers as an example, stating that it will pull in reams of data, including reviews, from Google Maps to help make a decision.
Yeah that's not how I use my car...
Do you guys not have phones? /s
We should have taken this sentiment for the (industry) warning it was.
It's worse, that was when the industry realized we weren't using our phones how they wanted, so they had to start cramming this shit in our cars and door bells and thermostats because they couldn't reliably monitor the entire populace just through phones. ~~We~~ (corpos) need smart ~~smoke alarms~~ (surveillance devices), legally mandated in every room of the house, to keep us ~~safe~~ (monitored) 24/7.
Yeah, who gets into the car not knowing what the target is?
What I'd like to have is plain old Google Assistant, with its deterministic nature, plus a keyword that enables Gemini for more advanced stuff should I need it.
Especially looking up info while listening to a podcast or something like that.
Yes, the non-determinism is crazy.
I have like one thing I use voice for usually. "Call ". With Google Assistant, it reliably called that specific person.
Now that my phone decided to gemini, it will sometimes make a call, and sometimes it says something like "I have found one contact with that name in your contacts, their phone number is 1-555-555-5555" Sometimes with some extra language clearly intended to be stuffed back into context to guide some next step that isn't coming, don't remember but something along the lines of "Contact match added to context to enable dialing the phone now" or something.
I'm perfectly fine with a different wake word or chaining it to google assistant, "Hey google, ask gemini ...." would be fine.
And yes, it might be vaguely useful for doing a maps search in the car, as that is a pain. A vaguely decent answer I can confirm is nice for things like a road trip stop for food or some small thing.
A few days ago, me to Google home:
"Hey Google, turn on the light"
"Sorry, I can't control powered devices."
"Hey Google, turn on the light"
"Turning on the light."
I had a similar experience getting it to summarize my maps info, it would alternate between correct answers and claiming it had no access to the data.
You missed
"And just so you know here are some new ways I can help you turn on lights..." Etc. etc
This thing popped up on my Android Auto the other day in the middle of a drive and I cursed at it because I was trying to get directions and then it kept responding "I don't respond to hostile language". Fucking annoying.
fuck you, you piece of shit!
I don't respond to hostile language
you just fucking responded you piece of shit!
you're right, I did respond, I'm sorry.
So how do you disable it?
Of all the voice LLMs Gemini is the worst. You'll ask a factual question, "How many Grammys has U2 won?" It will give an answer based off its training then ask, "Would you also like to know about blah blah blah."
No. I would not. Stop asking follow-up questions. I simply was curious about this one thing while listening to the radio.
The fact people fall in love with or depend on these auto complete bots is crazy. Not to mention, they're wrong as often as they're right.
I watched someone try to use Gemini through Android Auto to navigate somewhere a few days ago. It was kind of amazing.
He told it to navigate to a place, and it found a match on a different continent, refused to navigate to it and then rambled about two other irrelevant places it wanted him to go to instead for a while before it finally shut up and he could try again. It didn't work the second time either.
Ye olde Google Assistant, when told "navigate to ", will open maps and search for .
I am a person. You are an object. Do as you're fucking told, I'm not interested in listening to you trying to fake having an opinion.
The fake opinion is to steer you towards some marketing crap.
A lot of these LLMs heap praise on the user - some more blatantly than others - whether it’s warranted or not.
Those most susceptible tend to be the ones who don’t regularly receive that recognition in their day-to-day lives, so they become infatuated with this “AI” that treats them nicer than they’re accustomed to.
A certain portion of "dumb" is neccessary to fall for this automated crap.
“How many Grammys has U2 won?”
Correct answer: who cares.
I really don't like where all of this is going. All the integrated pay-to-use, cloud-enabled, surveillance (and surveillance-adjacent) tech was bad enough. Then there's the runaway average pricing for cars and increasing loan terms. And now we're getting AI foisted in while we're at it? At what point does it implode, with everyone just sticking with older tech and sticking to the used market?
Shit. They're going to make old cars illegal, aren't they?
Why do you think cash for clunkers happened ? All a plan to get rid of repairable, affordable, non government/corporation controlled cars. Its been the plan since the tech came along to make it possible.
2027, your car is mandated to be filled with cameras, mics, and air sensors , all of this sent to a database, or you cannot drive. This is not conspiracy. This is real.
Really hate this era. Can I skip ahead 70 years after collapse or go back 30 years please ?
If this takes 70 years to collapse humanity won't be here to witness it.
Soon they will require proof of these systems in older cars to get registration. Watch.
They will bring back inspections for surveillance but not for emissions.
Goddamn, I am so tired of modern convenience. My god we have made shit complicated in the name of simplicity.
It's not even convenience, it is more distracting and useless bloat, and in a car of all places. They just got this product they invested billions in, so they are desperate to look for "solutions" to problems that doesn't exist with it.
Nah "we" made it complicated in the pursuit of money.
Nah, wasn’t “we” , it was “them” who sold us on a promise, but was really a leash, or muzzle. The “them” is the oligarchs, the billionaires, the epstein class…
I'll be buying and fixing pre 2015 cars till I learn to make my own. Hopefully I can also learn how to do electric conversions.
This is going to become a lucrative business very soon. Until its illegal.
Running man/handmaids/1984 , we are here.
What happened in 2015? (Only have a 2001 and 2012 right now)
2015 is when surveillance came standard with all cars.
Hey Google, how about you fucking fix voice so that "navigate to Dutch Bros" works for both Android Auto and just Android instead of randomly trying to open the Dutch Bros app?
Oh and maybe look at your voice to text quality and actually navigating to places correctly.
I sure hope some good quality manufacturers jump in and fill the consumer need for dumb tech cars and everything else that can be "smart"
These days any AI or Smart feature just makes any product far less interesting to me
you missed the part where this will be mandated by the USDOT for "safety".
just like headlights that are so bright that they blind everybody in front of them
I never feel safer than when I'm approaching the crest of a hill on a corner with a 15-ft deep rocky ditch to either side at 80 km/h on a narrow road with almost no shoulder and I can see the night sky lit up in front of me like it's a football stadium because the car on the other side of the hill has LED high beams on. Then we reach the point where we can see each other's headlights, and I am flash banged from the intensity going directly into my squinting eyes. I see a barely discernible flash as their auto-highbeams recognize that I am a vehicle and it switches to low beams, which are the exact same intensity and still going directly into my eyeballs, except now it's not lighting up the night sky as well as the treetops.
I turn my own LED highbeams* on in response in an attempt to see some of the road in front of me so that I can avoid the ditch, and I steer towards the middle of the road where there is only a chance of danger instead of guaranteed danger from driving off the road. Hopefully the other driver sees me well enough to avoid me if I get too close to center or even go over the line.
We complete the pass, my night vision returns over the next 30 seconds, and I start saying a small prayer thanking God for how safe I was kept during that interaction, but I am interrupted by the exact same scenario happening on the next hill.
Cant. There's no free market. Its already mandated.
Think of the amazing cars and tech we could have otherwise. We are so held back by this shit.
I'd be buying a "brand new" 1999 civic right now.
I always loved the cars, but I’m never buying one because of the whole intrusive Android integration. Thank god I don’t really use my car that much anymore as public transportation is amazing here.
It's sold with small car model shaped as anal plug, so you can feel it.
These cars will be cheaper just like SmartTVs because the manufacturers know they can make more money off of saps who buy them loaded up with shitware.
It has sucked since gemini came into android auto. Its slightly worse in every way.
Well, it's a good thing I can't afford a new car anyway....
Ford has had Amazon Alexa built-in for something like 5 years ...
Several vehicle infotainment systems literally run Android. Android Automotive is an entire branch dedicated to being an entire vehicle infotainment system... separate from Android Auto on your phone.
