Almost a year after its release, users of the R1 are finally seeing a beta version of this feature, and much like the R1 as a whole, it's a bit of a mixed bag. For this hands-on, the task is to pull the latest review from the NotebookCheck website. Although relatively straightforward, the process leaves much to be desired.
To begin, R1 users navigate to the teach mode tab in R1's online portal, the "Rabbit Hole." Once there, users have the option to create a new lesson or use a lesson from the community. Currently, there are 11 community lessons that range from website interaction to generating images. However, to create their own lesson, users start by entering the URL of the site they want to teach the lesson on.
Once Notebookcheck.net is entered into the URL section, the portal loads into a second menu where users can log into a website if the lesson requires an authenticated website session. However, no authentication is needed to proceed with the lesson in this case. On the next page, users are prompted to name their lesson, give a general description of what the lesson does, and input the necessary actions to accomplish the task.
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For the lesson, the Rabbit Portal hosts a cloud-based Chrome browser instance that highlights the web objects the user interacts with. In this case, the only actions needed to complete the task of getting the latest review are clicking a checkbox to filter non-review articles, clicking on the latest result, and using the built-in read mode to read a summary of the page.
Now on the R1, users can prompt the execution of the lesson by saying "Get the latest review from notebookcheck using my lessons". After about a minute of processing, the R1 will begin to execute the actions taught in the lesson and will announce each action as it is completed. Finally, about four to 5 minutes later, the R1 will start reading a summary of the article.
Interestingly, the R1 did not read the highlighted section in teach mode. Instead, it provided its own generated summary that subtly changes each time the lesson is executed. Overall, the information presented by the R1 is accurate, and it did a decent job of providing concise and helpful information. Unfortunately, the R1 struggles to perform the lesson consistently. Of the six times the lesson was called, the R1 did it successfully three times.
It is commendable that Rabbit Inc continues to improve on the R1, but it is clear that the teach mode is still very much in beta. It is also worth mentioning that any lessons taught in teach mode are subject to analysis by Rabbit Inc., and information gathered through the lessons can also be sold to third parties. Given this information, it is essential to consider what users teach the R1.