> It turns out that the current generation of "assistants" are mostly just template-matchers which really doesn't help me much at all.
All the cases you've indicated as "so simple" are only so simple as template matching.
When generalized, they are hard problems.
Sure, you could have humans sketch out a few thousand templates enabling "Ok Google" to support such simple things like "What is the air quality at <location> <Time>" which looks up from an API. But that doesn't generalize "for free" outside of your templates.
Google seems to want to avoid handcrafted templates and go straight for the generalized solution.
All the cases you've indicated as "so simple" are only so simple as template matching.
When generalized, they are hard problems.
Sure, you could have humans sketch out a few thousand templates enabling "Ok Google" to support such simple things like "What is the air quality at <location> <Time>" which looks up from an API. But that doesn't generalize "for free" outside of your templates.
Google seems to want to avoid handcrafted templates and go straight for the generalized solution.