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by signatoremo 35 days ago
Did you ever take Uber in a unfamiliar place? When you're supposed to be at a particular spot but you don't know where that is? When the driver doesn't speak English very well? When both your hands is busy with luggages? When you need glasses to read signs? That's very common when you travel. Agent would be godsend, and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back to the phone. Anywhere.

What if the agent can also communicate with the car's agent? They may even negotiate the meeting spot. Agent is superior.
2 comments
hn_throwaway_99 35 days ago
> Did you ever take Uber in a unfamiliar place? When you're supposed to be at a particular spot but you don't know where that is? When the driver doesn't speak English very well? When both your hands is busy with luggages? When you need glasses to read signs?

This feels a lot like all those "where did the soda go" commercials (i.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/ ), where some mundane task is imagined to be hopelessly complex with a bunch of possible what-ifs. For what it's worth, yes, I have taken Uber in all of those conditions, and no, I never found it difficult or had a problem with it.

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lxgr 35 days ago
> no, I never found it difficult or had a problem with it.

If you don't even notice the dark patterns, they're working exactly as intended.

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yladiz 35 days ago
Yes I have traveled to places where I don’t speak the language, need to get an Uber at a specific place, and need to read the signs. You can get surprisingly far if you know a few words in the local language, and in your hypothetical future, even if you and the driver have an agent, what are you going to do if you need to communicate with someone in person that’s not that driver? Ask your agent to? I don’t see how that’s a feasible idea.
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lxgr 35 days ago
Why not? People are already holding their phone running Google Translate up to strangers to communicate with them.
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yladiz 34 days ago
In part because communication is not just language.
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lxgr 34 days ago
Isn’t that a good argument for needing a more capable model for assisting in it then?
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yladiz 34 days ago
Not really. You can't really train a model to perform body language.
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