10 ms·

A run down on the tech and some key employees credited with contributions would've made it more interesting for me. Something a little more than Bezos + 1 seco

A run down on the tech and some key employees credited with contributions would've made it more interesting for me. Something a little more than Bezos + 1 second. This article sounds a lot like the Jobs hating ones, just from a positive perspective. Anyway Bezos has obviously already done tons for Amazon. The article does nothing to boost Amazon's image and it's a weak attempt at boosting Jeff's.

codyb 11y ago
Yea, I was hoping for the same. Specifically I came in curious as to how it knows to "start paying attention" at the prompt Alexa. I assume it must be integral to the local system although I was under the impression most of these artificial intelligence systems did a lot of their speech processing back home and not locally. Otherwise Amazon would A) be processing a lot of irrelevant conversation and B) be eavesdropping. So my guess was that the Alexa aspect must be local. Very neat, even with the kind of weak article I did put myself in the place of "Alexa, call me an Uber please, I'd like to go to the movies" which is pretty neat. Especially since you could work through, "what's playing nearby Alexa?" ..."okay, in 25 minutes call me an Uber for the Avengers Alexa" I assume you have to say Alexa everytime? But maybe once you're conversing it will keep talking with you? Can you say Alexa at the end? Does it keep track of the last five seconds or so of audial information at any given point for parsing questions? Lots of interesting challenges.
- alok-g 11y ago
  Excerpts from Wikipedia [1]: "In the default mode the device continuously listens to all speech, monitoring for the wake word to be spoken." "... Echo only streams recordings from the user's home when the 'wake word' activates the device." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo
- anonymouse12345 11y ago
  All wake word spotting (whether for "Alexa," "Amazon," or "Echo," takes place on the device in order specifically to not stream unintended audio to the cloud (for privacy and for separately beneficial reduction in cloud processing costs).
- azinman2 11y ago
  It's the same as "ok Google" on certain phones... Local dsp chip that only needs to process the wake word.

codyb 11y ago

Yea, I was hoping for the same. Specifically I came in curious as to how it knows to "start paying attention" at the prompt Alexa. I assume it must be integral to the local system although I was under the impression most of these artificial intelligence systems did a lot of their speech processing back home and not locally. Otherwise Amazon would A) be processing a lot of irrelevant conversation and B) be eavesdropping. So my guess was that the Alexa aspect must be local. Very neat, even with the kind of weak article I did put myself in the place of "Alexa, call me an Uber please, I'd like to go to the movies" which is pretty neat. Especially since you could work through, "what's playing nearby Alexa?" ..."okay, in 25 minutes call me an Uber for the Avengers Alexa" I assume you have to say Alexa everytime? But maybe once you're conversing it will keep talking with you? Can you say Alexa at the end? Does it keep track of the last five seconds or so of audial information at any given point for parsing questions? Lots of interesting challenges.

alok-g 11y ago
Excerpts from Wikipedia [1]: "In the default mode the device continuously listens to all speech, monitoring for the wake word to be spoken." "... Echo only streams recordings from the user's home when the 'wake word' activates the device." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo
anonymouse12345 11y ago
All wake word spotting (whether for "Alexa," "Amazon," or "Echo," takes place on the device in order specifically to not stream unintended audio to the cloud (for privacy and for separately beneficial reduction in cloud processing costs).
azinman2 11y ago
It's the same as "ok Google" on certain phones... Local dsp chip that only needs to process the wake word.