Bizarre Hey Lucid Interaction

[Lightmatrix]

The voice activation can be shut off if you wish.

I know, I am being silly. Thank you, though.

 

[xponents]

It's kind of an automatic assumption these days that companies are doing things like this whenever they can. It's really assuring that you, as an owner not connected to the company but better connected than some of us, have that faith in what is and isn't gong on.

Especially given he works in cybersecurity, which made me think he would be the most suspicious out of all of us! The fact that @borski has faith in the company regarding this is a great sign.

I do have one unresolved question, which perhaps somebody can help answer... what is causing Lucid's "rep BS" issue? It is extremely common to see Lucid Customer Service reps state absolute nonsense, and I'm a bit confused why this issue still persists with Lucid.

 

[borski]

It's kind of an automatic assumption these days that companies are doing things like this whenever they can. It's really assuring that you, as an owner not connected to the company but better connected than some of us, have that faith in what is and isn't gong on.

It shouldn't be an automatic assumption. I know it is too, but it shouldn't be. You should throw products that do that directly into the trash and never buy them.

That's hard to do, of course, when it's every goddamn refrigerator that really wants to know I only have eight ounces of milk left and would I like to get more.

But yeah; do not take my statement to mean that Lucid has no issues at all, or that it is perfectly secure and respects all privacy, etc. I cannot and would not say that; I have no idea, and mistakes happen.

I can and do believe, however, that their intent is to build a secure, privacy-respecting vehicle. Intent matters a lot. That's how I knew this wouldn't have flown and was unintentional.

 

[borski]

I do have one unresolved question, which perhaps somebody can help answer... what is causing Lucid's "rep BS" issue? It is extremely common to see Lucid Customer Service reps state absolute nonsense, and I'm a bit confused why this issue still persists with Lucid.

In any given business, you have a few dozen touch points with the customer. Managing that experience is extremely difficult, and this is actually a perfect example of where a single touchpoint with a long-term happy and loyal customer completely ruined this customer's experience (even if temporarily).

Why do Lucid reps BS sometimes? I don't know. Could be training. Could be misaligned incentives (looking for positive reviews). Could be genuine lack of knowledge. Could be an overly drilled in sense of not wanting to say "I don't know" in an effort to help the customer.

Could be lots of things. But I agree it needs to be addressed.

 

[NoseyReporter]

People also have a fear of saying, "I don't know."

I always found that admitting that you don't know something can be very powerful way to build trust. Especially when you go out of your way to get the answer. It is a huge opportunity to build a relationship.

The one caveat to that is, if you don't have the support structure to get the correct answer. Then BS tends to follow.

 

[Adnillien]

I think Lucid is much better about privacy than many other car companies. Remember this thread about selling location and driving information:

S

Thread 'Does Lucid sell my driving data to third-party for auto insurance purposes?'

Mar 11, 2024

Just read this New York Times piece that some auto companies such as GM, Honda, Kia, etc, are selling drivers’ trip data (time/date/speed/miles/braking/acceleration, etc) to data banks such as Lexis-Nexis and Verisk, who then sells this data to auto insurance companies. Thus, allowing insurance co. a detail profile of your driving habits and raising/lowering your premiums.

From the article… “Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies
LexisNexis, which generates consumer risk profiles for the insurers, knew about every trip G.M. drivers had...

• socal
• Replies: 22
• Forum: Lucid Air

Lucid does not store driving or location information from your car. I was impressed a while back when talking to someone from the navigation team to find out that Lucid cannot even see this information internally since it is never stored. I know that my Jeep Grand Cherokee sells my driving and location information. A good reason to buy a Gravity and get rid of the Grand Cherokee. While Lucid is not perfect, they do a pretty good job with respect to customer privacy.

 

[joec]

When you think about various car companies and where their incentives might be, it makes sense Lucid would be less likely to be committing mass privacy violations. Even if you haven't met many employees of the company as some of us have, and believed from those personal interactions that leadership values privacy, you can infer the likelihood Lucid would be engaging in data harvesting from the following:

1) They are a new company trying to gain a loyal customer base. They can't afford a scandal.
2) They have tons of room to grow quarter after quarter just by selling more cars.
3) Any ads Lucid were to push on its customers would be worth less than pennies, given how few customers there are. It'd be a lot easier to sell another car than serve up the likely hundreds of millions of ads they'd need to make an equivalent amount of cash.
3) They are still early enough in their software journey to be playing catch up in adding driving features regularly to the car, thus making it unlikely they'd have time to be writing spyware on the side.
4) They are operating on just enough investor cash to get Gravity out the door while simultaneously developing Midsize. Investing in a contracted software side project would be an expensive distraction.

Personally, I consider all those factors and conclude it's highly unlikely Lucid is intentionally doing anything to violate privacy. There could, of course, be unintentional privacy concerns, but there's no way to determine that.

A company like GM (not trying to pick on them, just as an example) meanwhile is at a point where they've reached as many customers as they can, their software platform is well established, and they have millions of cars sold. Selling customer data starts to look a lot more attractive under those conditions, as the pressure to keep increasing revenue looms every quarter.

 

[borski]

People also have a fear of saying, "I don't know."

I always found that admitting that you don't know something can be very powerful way to build trust. Especially when you go out of your way to get the answer. It is a huge opportunity to build a relationship.

The one caveat to that is, if you don't have the support structure to get the correct answer. Then BS tends to follow.

I completely agree. In fact, it is one of the things I look for in interviews. If a candidate refuses to ever say "I don't know," I have serious trouble hiring them, because that either means a) they know everything, or b) they make shit up.

I have only once run into the former. I hired them and they remain one of my best friends.

Every single other time they have been the latter.

My favorite answer? "I don't know, but If I had to guess, it would probably work like this, based on $foo and $bar and $baz." I don't even care if they're right, just if their logic holds.
Second favorite? "I don't know - how *does* that work? Can we find out? Can I look it up real quick?" to which the proper response is "Totally - how would you look it up? Where would you go to look for it? Let's do that together"

And pretty much every answer is better than "Oh, yeah, you just <insert made up crap here>."

 

[koflo]

I completely agree. In fact, it is one of the things I look for in interviews. If a candidate refuses to ever say "I don't know," I have serious trouble hiring them, because that either means a) they know everything, or b) they make shit up.

I have only once run into the former. I hired them and they remain one of my best friends.

Every single other time they have been the latter.

My favorite answer? "I don't know, but If I had to guess, it would probably work like this, based on $foo and $bar and $baz." I don't even care if they're right, just if their logic holds.
Second favorite? "I don't know - how *does* that work? Can we find out? Can I look it up real quick?" to which the proper response is "Totally - how would you look it up? Where would you go to look for it? Let's do that together"

And pretty much every answer is better than "Oh, yeah, you just <insert made up crap here>."

In my line of work, I was taught to say “I don’t know but I will follow up with an email to answer your question and be sure to include documentation.” Goes over well with customers 99% of the time.

And yes, for a lot of people that is difficult. I mentor every year for people EIC and many times when they are in the spotlight they freeze. They don’t consciously even realize the word vomit that follows.

It’s human nature. When people’s backs are against the wall, the fight or flight kicks in which unfortunately means they will say and do whatever they need to get out of the situation. I’d imagine the CS team is no different. Pressing customers call in and they panic.

 

[borski]

In my line of work, I was taught to say “I don’t know but I will follow up with an email to answer your question and be sure to include documentation.” Goes over well with customers 99% of the time.

. This is a perfect response, assuming you then follow up.

And yes, for a lot of people that is difficult. I mentor every year for people EIC and many times when they are in the spotlight they freeze. They don’t consciously even realize the word vomit that follows.

It’s human nature. When people’s backs are against the wall, the fight or flight kicks in which unfortunately means they will say and do whatever they need to get out of the situation. I’d imagine the CS team is no different. Pressing customers call in and they panic.

I totally agree. But that just means more training is necessary, and more feedback from recorded calls. Running a CS team is difficult, no doubt.

And I agree that it’s human nature. And that’s exactly why we train to prevent it.

 

[hmp10]

In the days since I first had "Hey, Lucid" interrupt a conversation, no discernible pattern has emerged. We will go a couple of days without the system triggering, despite lots of conversation in the car. Then we will have bouts of frequent interruption. In no cases have we had only a single interruption during a drive. It's either zero interruptions or two or more interruptions, usually close on the heels of the preceding one.

We had an outbreak of multiple incidents in the car last evening with four people on the way to a neighboring town for dinner. (One of them was the software programmer/analyst whom I had asked earlier about it.) It was first noticed by a backseat passenger who asked why a box at the bottom of the Glass Cockpit satellite map was writing out a display of what I was saying while I was discussing something about our recent hurricane. There were several full sentences displayed, so it had been listening a while. It continued to write out our continuing conversation until I said "Hey, Lucid, cancel."

I will give it this, though. It was accurately capturing everything I said. Not a single error.

I asked the passengers whether they could think of anything that was said that might have triggered the system, and no one could. Even during this, the system triggered again and began tracking the discussion.

I know I can turn this feature off, but at this point I'm going to keep it on to see if I can figure out how close we get to something that sounds like "Hey, Lucid" before the digital assistant springs into action.

 

[Bobby]

In the days since I first had "Hey, Lucid" interrupt a conversation, no discernible pattern has emerged. We will go a couple of days without the system triggering, despite lots of conversation in the car. Then we will have bouts of frequent interruption. In no cases have we had only a single interruption during a drive. It's either zero interruptions or two or more interruptions, usually close on the heels of the preceding one.

We had an outbreak of multiple incidents in the car last evening with four people on the way to a neighboring town for dinner. (One of them was the software programmer/analyst whom I had asked earlier about it.) It was first noticed by a backseat passenger who asked why a box at the bottom of the Glass Cockpit satellite map was writing out a display of what I was saying while I was discussing something about our recent hurricane. There were several full sentences displayed, so it had been listening a while. It continued to write out our continuing conversation until I said "Hey, Lucid, cancel."

I will give it this, though. It was accurately capturing everything I said. Not a single error.

I asked the passengers whether they could think of anything that was said that might have triggered the system, and no one could. Even during this, the system triggered again and began tracking the discussion.

I know I can turn this feature off, but at this point I'm going to keep it on to see if I can figure out how close we get to something that sounds like "Hey, Lucid" before the digital assistant springs into action.

Sounds annoying. That’s why I turned off the voice activation, the little microphone button is never more than an inch away from my hand so it’s easy to press when I actually want it to activate (which is very seldom when using CarPlay).

 

[hmp10]

Sounds annoying. That’s why I turned off the voice activation, the little microphone button is never more than an inch away from my hand so it’s easy to press when I actually want it to activate (which is very seldom when using CarPlay).

I know. But the voice activation is actually a useful feature for some. When I'm in the car with my partner as a passenger, he likes to choose the music. (He has not yet fully acknowledged the beauties of Bluegrass, gospel, folk, and country music.) Not only does he have a pronounced Polish accent (which the system sometimes handles surprisingly well), but he likes a lot of European bands and artists with tricky names. It can often take several tries before Spotify lands on what he's seeking. This routine plays out more smoothly for both of us if he's not having to ask me to push the mic button every few seconds.

 

[scal_air]

A more mundane "hey Lucid" quirk...
When I ask Lucid to call Mrs scal_air, it either states contact not found which nessitates me reciting the phone number (which then shows Mrs scal_air in the display) or confidently dials Mr Occcasional Work Contact whose name is only vaguely similar to Mrs scal_air...

 

[A Fischman]

In my line of work, I was taught to say “I don’t know but I will follow up with an email to answer your question and be sure to include documentation.” Goes over well with customers 99% of the time.

And yes, for a lot of people that is difficult. I mentor every year for people EIC and many times when they are in the spotlight they freeze. They don’t consciously even realize the word vomit that follows.

It’s human nature. When people’s backs are against the wall, the fight or flight kicks in which unfortunately means they will say and do whatever they need to get out of the situation. I’d imagine the CS team is no different. Pressing customers call in and they panic.

Taught at the U.S. Naval Academy

 

[hmp10]

In a video just put up by Marques Brownlee, he had the "Hey, Lucid" assistant start listening to him when he said the phrase "advantage Lucid" (with nothing close to "Hey" being said). It's at 8:49:

 

[borski]

In a video just put up by Marques Brownlee, he had the "Hey, Lucid" assistant start listening to him when he said the phrase "advantage Lucid" (with nothing close to "Hey" being said). It's at 8:49:

I didn't even know he spoke Danish!

 

[William Short]

I just found this thread...

I recently had a car full of Icelanders for a long weekend, ferrying them to and from hotels, restaurants, and training site, and most of the conversations were in Icelandic. "Hey Lucid" was falsely triggered multiple times by something being spoken in Icelandic. I could never figure out what Icelandic phrase was triggering the response.

I have never had a false trigger in other circumstances where American English is being spoken.

 

[fisheral]

Mine was triggered by various songs, so I finally shut it off.

 

[Lucken]

I just found this thread...

I recently had a car full of Icelanders for a long weekend, ferrying them to and from hotels, restaurants, and training site, and most of the conversations were in Icelandic. "Hey Lucid" was falsely triggered multiple times by something being spoken in Icelandic. I could never figure out what Icelandic phrase was triggering the response.

I have never had a false trigger in other circumstances where American English is being spoken.

Easy solution, no Icelanders allowed.