Yes it feels very cyberpunk.

Me: I can't breathe, am i going to die?

Enthusiastic woman's voice: Yes Jim, that's absolutely correct! You will die of suffocation in approximately 3 minutes 41 seconds. Anything else i can do for you?

I believe you might be looking for the term “toxic positivity”? I don’t necessarily subscribe to that description, but I see where you’re coming from.

It’s an interesting choice on their part. Probably targeted at a certain audience who are not grumpy software engineers (myself included).

To be fair, they do have a “sarcastic” voice demo and I found it quite endearing.

I think there will be something for everyone in the end.

The first thought that came to my head was that it's being "way too American". Not in a good way.

Her enthusiasm about it "being about her" was really bizarre and I wonder if it wasn't staged a bit. I mean I hope it was staged a bit. If my AI servant started wasting all that time by acting all silly I would be pretty annoyed. But maybe it's smart enough to know that this is a situation where they just want her to be playful and fun instead of deliver information.

Absolutely. I can feel but — but this is one/two calibration steps away from me not caring/noticing. I would be very hard pressed to believe this is where the magic human sauce will forever lie (or even more than +1 year), will fully acknowledging how weirdly off it feels right this moment. The progress is undeniably at a speed that surpasses anything I can process or adjust to. It's a rollercoaster ride.

I have no trouble believing the best (whatever that means to me) humans that have ever existed in 2 years will not be human. But I have trouble understanding.

I think also very US-culture-specific.

Someone else in these comments linked a Unitree biped robot demo video, and that has both someone kicking it in the back and punching it in the chest with a boxing glove on to show that it doesn’t fall over. And nothing else - no neutral trip hazard, opening a door in its way, slippery floor surface, gust of wind - only physical assault from a larger humanoid.

I see a wider problem here, interacting with this AI could train people to behave the same way with real people. Interrupt them whenever you feel like it, order them to do things, turn them off, walk away while they are still talking. People may start imitating the AI's behavior to put someone down, treat them as second class, as though they were also an AI just to be used, and not a person. If people use this conversational AI often then the ways they interact with it will creep into peoples use of language with each other. People imitate each other all the time, they will start imitating the AI. They'll think it is funny but after a while it may not turn out to be so funny.

> You can hit a robot very hard while it does its job and then what ? It just goes on without complaining.

Maybe you’re referring to a different video than the one I watched (or I may be misremembering), but from what I recall the point of the video didn’t seem to be “you can abuse robots and they won’t fight back” but rather to show them recovering well from unpredictable situations (which could be environmental, not human).

Well, there was one video where the point was abuse, but that was CGI and not made by Boston Dynamics.

https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/17/18681682/boston-dyna...

I do agree with your larger point, I don’t wish to detract from that.

To be honest, this comment makes me think it would be interesting to have a grumpy version of AI just for fun

This could be part of great stress relief device.

Just install it in a mannequin with with a punchable face, telling you how sorry it is that your are struggling with your life, with that happy, ironic and cynical voice intonation.

I assume you can give voice-specific custom instructions. "Talk like a Clive Cussler audiobook narrator" - problem solved.

I get the feeling but what altenrative would you prefer?

I do want my phone to just go again without complaining without a crash, after all.

The AI woman's voice is far too breathy and emotive. I instantly hate it and don't want to hear it. The AI has also copied one of my personal pet peeves, which is dropping or swallowing d's and t's from certain words, like "didn't" to "di-unt" and "important" to "impor-unt"--which I find to be a new unbearable laziness spreading amongst younger Americans today. There are TWO T's in important goddammit (I'll die on that hill).

I hate this voice, it will just overprint everyone's voice now with Silicon Valley's annoying "Valley-girl-lite" accent.

Yeah, but honestly at the same time we’ve got useful models with no self awareness. Aside from the exhausting corpo-speak, we’ve got no reason to want anything other than something convenient for us.