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The Skin-Envelope Advantage
I was talking to my phone the other day, like you do, while barreling down I-25 in Colorado. I had a practical problem to solve: determining where would be the best place to gas up, knowing that I would have to pee before the tank was empty, and wanting to make the most economical use of time and money on this leg of the road trip. I wanted to pee and gas up at the same place, buy gas at optimal price and volume, and if possible, avoid excruciating discomfort: a win-win-win. We have powerful networked computers with us at all times. Why not take advantage?
I know the road pretty well and I had reduced the information-gathering phase of the problem to a Q&A, alternating two types of questions: “How far away is X?” and “What’s the price of gas in X?” All went well for a couple of iterations until I popped the question, “How far away is Trinidad?” A heartbeat later, loud and proud, Google Assistant showed me this:
Of course what I meant was Trinidad, Colorado, not Trinidad, island nation in the Caribbean Sea. If this had been a real-life, human-to-human conversation, Google’s response would be classified as a joke, or a Gricean fail: the algorithmically determined answer to my question (despite being…
