20 ms·

Voice Is the Next Big Platform, and Alexa Will Own It

162 points by steven 10y ago

andybak 10y ago
I get the feeling Amazon aren't very good at consumer-facing platforms. My experience with everything Fire related has been poor, their Android apps are 2nd rate and the Kindle is good despite their software. I wouldn't write off the competition yet. Apple, Microsoft and Google have good voice products and the ability to forge partnerships. Also (cliche warning) I only know one person who owns an Alexa or has even expressed an interest in buying one.
- AznHisoka 10y ago
  A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa? Based on the commercials, it seems to solve trivial problems like answering trivia questions. Why can't it vacuum my room like a Roomba, fix my leaky ceiling or fix my power outage? That's what I call an useful home assistant. Being able to parse and understand my voice is nice but it's relatively useless if it can't perform extremely valuable tasks.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    IMO: A voice controlled internet radio with really good sound, backed up by a respectable music library for individual songs. I'd have bought it for that alone even if it didn't do another thing. Snark aside, once you get it paired with reasonable smarthome products, there's an element of magic there. "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights" feels downright futuristic.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    >A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa? Somewhat predictably, the best working use cases are ones that drive additional revenue for Amazon. Playing music from your Amazon Prime Music subscription, ordering laundry detergent and dog food from Prime Now, etc.
  - knz 10y ago
    > A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa? An excellent question especially in the context of adding another always on audio device to a private space. I think for many people the value has to be more than just a novelty to justify it.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    "OK Google... find ceiling repair near me" I know it seems a bit overt, but I'm pretty serious... I find myself reaching for google now more often than I ever have before. They're a step past Alexa when it comes to the sheer data that Google has to pull from. My only complaint is sometimes I hit clear all, and I can't get back to the reminders auto-set via email invites. I also don't like that they've effectively deprecated the hangouts UX... they made interacting via SMS outside the phone pretty painful. I know there's hard costs to the stuff that came out of Grand Central / Google Voice, but I feel like when they first launched Hangouts, the experience was better overall. In general using Google's services works so much better than anything else I've tried. That said, it's kind of creepy ay times.
    - johnsmith21006 10y ago
      I would do a quick Google search using a lyric or something to get song name to then tell my Echo. Now have the Google Home and no longer need the Google search.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    On the one hand, I generally agree. The things I'd really like an assistant for around the house--and which I pay people to help me with in various cases--are vacuuming, cutting the lawn, dusting, doing (and putting away) laundry, doing (and putting away) dishes, etc. Activating lights with a voice command is pretty far down the list. That said, given enough smarts and interfaces to enough online services, a purely virtual assistant would still be pretty useful for a lot of people. "Book a trip with these general parameters." It uses my preferred booking services, knows my preferences, and comes back with some choices. Get to the level of at least a competent personal admin and that's a service I'd be willing to pay for even if it can't pick up a broom. Expedia gave an interesting demo at AWS re:Invent around a digital travel agent. It was a very simplified demo--and, of course, Expedia specific--but I think it did give you a glimpse of what's possible.
  - VLM 10y ago
    Its the first really usable internet radio appliance I know of. It doesn't cost that much more than a similar quality bluetooth speaker. I already have prime membership to get free shipping, so prime music is free and the jukebox functionality beyond using my phone is also free plus its not tied to my phone which is nice. Neither it nor amazon seem to understand the concept of a family or being in public even at the very lowest level. I can't imagine tying it to my personal account unless I lived alone. Anyone can use it to do anything they want. I have been rickrolled, all someone needs to do to rickroll an echo owner is walk by an open window and yell "Alexa (pause) play never gonna give you up by rick astley" then run like hell. It was funny the first time. I would imagine if I were dumb enough to link my amazon purchasing account to it, I expect I would now own a lifetime supply of dragon dildos from jokers walking by my window. Being able to respond to any human voice with no training sounds like an awesome idea, and it is, mostly, but unlike star trek daydreams, Alexa has no idea who's talking to her and if they should be allowed to talk to her, so she can only be given access to stuff that mostly doesn't matter. IoT means closed non-interoperable silos but there exists a java project that emulates a Philips lightbulb Hue controller accurately enough to fool Alexa, and it can execute arbitrary URLs, and misterhouse automation can most certainly control lights and appliances using arbitrary static URLs so I have a pretty decent voice activated home automation. This brings up the point that most people cannot handle setting that up, but we're in the equivalent of the 1980s home computer boom where everyone has a different idea what a home computer would do, but we all agree everyone needs one. Alexa can do all kinds of weird things, surely it does something useful for everyone. Supposedly she has lots of sportsball features, none of which would interest me, but someone probably wants them. Everyone probably wants something Alexa does. Being located in the kitchen I use the alarms and timers a lot while cooking.
- chowes 10y ago
  I'm sure AWS will happily host any of the hundreds of startups who want to (try and) beat the Echo in the "consumer facing" aspect. It's a win-win.
sna1l 10y ago
This article briefly covers Google Home's advantages in the conclusion, but I think they are pretty understated. The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.
- sgwealti 10y ago
  I have both and Google Assistant/Google Now is a much better experience than Alexa/Echo. The google voice interface is much more intuitive, allows context to be kept in a conversation, and is with me wherever my phone is. With Alexa I feel like I'm constantly searching for the right way to ask her to do something.
  - sf_rob 10y ago
    Ya, this article heavily underemphasized the research Google has done in conversational systems. These devices won't have mainstream appeal until you can just talk to one with minimal instruction. Although at this time Google Home is only conversational for search and is still very bad about being entirely keyword based in context; I suspect that this will change.
  - johnsmith21006 10y ago
    Had echo since launch and now have the Google home. The Echo uses commands that support some fuzziness. The Google home you just talk.
- andrewfong 10y ago
  Amazon does have one killer feature over Google right now. You can buy physical goods of them. The people I know who make the most use of their Echo are also milking the free shipping on Amazon Prime.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  I have a Nexus 4 and have used Google Now extensively since it's inception as a hands-free system in my car. Since the inception of the Pixel and Google Assistant, the system has degraded significantly. Now no longer works when the Maps App is in the foreground, instead Maps seems to have it's own VR solution that doesn't work well at all. Saying "Ok Google, send a text to <wife>, I'm on my way home" no longer works, it opens Now with a search for exactly what I said. At one point you could say "remind me to wash my ass tomorrow" and it would just work. Now it prompts "ok, when would you like to be reminded to 'wash your ass tomorrow'?". This degrading of UX is very common with Google through the life cycle of products. What's going to happen to Google Home next year or 2 years down the road? We saw OnHub get castrated in less than a year after launch. The Nexus Q was still born.
edgarvaldes 10y ago
I think it's very early to say who owns the voice platform.
- massysett 10y ago
  Maybe this same person wrote a "BlackBerry owns the next platform" column.
  - amarka 10y ago
    To be more specific, "BlackBerry owns the next autonomous driving platform". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberry-joins-self-driving-car-race-with-software-platform https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberr...
chishaku 10y ago
> Amazon owns the next platform. No. We built a market analytics app on top of Alexa and we have Echos all over the office. It's great. But I don't want to be tied to stationary speakers in the office. I want my app integrated with the devices I carry with me everywhere. Google and Apple are poised to win here once they open up Assistant and Siri to third-party development.
- hawaiianbrah 10y ago
  Wasn't that one of the big pushes of the latest iOS release? Opening up Siri? Sad I haven't seen as much as I would've expected, or as quickly. I was quite excited for it but it has yet to be realized.
awgneo 10y ago
I tried Alexa a month ago and gave up on it within a week. Digital assistants fall flat in walled gardens. It was clear during this week that Alexa only worked well with Amazon services, which were always subpar. Google search? Nope. Support for Chromecast? Nope. Support for Instacart? Nope. It was basically a perverse link to the Amazon-only supply chain. Google's assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don't have high hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released. Given that Google won't be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy, we can expect them to offload voice requests to the highest bidder or prefer Google services above all else. This is another perverse link into Google's realm of anti-privacy; but worse, because they won't be able to do ads along the side. The responses will be the ads. All of this to say that all of these locked down digital assistants will fail until a company truly approaches it from an open and wholistic perspective, and one that doesn't rely upon troves of private data. These devices may sell well this year, but so did digital picture frames. How many of those are still in use?
- danvasquez29 10y ago
  I'm not really sure why you think it's Amazon only or a walled garden. I have limited experience with it but from the research I've done thus far it seems to have a fairly robust development platform. I'm under the impression that if it feels Amazon-only it's because of a failure of companies and devs to take advantage of the platform, not a failure of the platform itself. For example the Google services you're asking about, is that Amazon's fault or has Google not taken the time to develop that app because they're focusing on their own product? I've used my echo dot most often with 3rd party services so far (daily briefing integrations, capital one, yahoo fantasy football).
  - awgneo 10y ago
    I agree with this perspective. However, you have to wonder why we don't have more Alexa skills in the platform. Here are a couple of my thoughts. 1. They require you to say "Alexa, tell <app_name> to <do_something>"; This pushes all 3rd party services one level deeper. 2. Amazon competes with too many companies and services these days. Instacart devs won't want to work on a skill within a platform that is itself is a competitor.
niftich 10y ago
> only five percent of American households have an Alexa-powered device right now And how many people have a Google-powered phone with them every day? Siri on their iDevice? Cortana on their auto-upgraded Windows 10 PC and in their living room Xbox? All of them have Alexa's penetration beat.
CodeSheikh 10y ago
My (unbiased) 2 cents.. “Qualitatively, Amazon’s position is more secure than the numbers would indicate.” I beg to differ. I believe Apple has a much more secured position than Amazon in the long run, given how Siri is already integrated in iOs mobile devices and macOS based desktops. So far, has Apple capitalized on this advantage? Nope. Are they gonna? Most likely, given the fact that they always wait for everyone to show their projects in high school science fair and then they roll out their better comprehensive showcase. If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late. Apple's true competitor in this domain can only be Google with its staggering command on Android ecosystem. Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon. Amazon has mainstreamed a voice tech. They have done it well and made a point that this is the way of the future. Now the second part of the problem is to integrate already existing daily use computational devices with this "voice-tech". Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  Kindle? I know it's not necessarily a general purpose tablet but they have some experience with hardware.
  - CodeSheikh 10y ago
    Given how possessive Google have become of Android, I doubt it Amazon would want to invest any further in Android based devices.
- IBM 10y ago
  >If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late. Why would it be too late? This isn't a social network where the network effects make competition almost impossible. Apple already has a platform in HomeKit that leverages the much larger iOS installed base. More HomeKit compatible devices are being released all the time. In fact many people criticized Apple for imposing requirements around hardware-based security which slowed the release of devices, but the recent DDOS attacks and the Internet of Shit Twitter account has shown that was the correct move. I don't think there's any deadline for Apple to release an Echo competitor. If they release a product that is better/differentiated in some way, people will buy it. And they'll likely have a number of HomeKit devices already that work with it.
ebbv 10y ago
That's a pretty nuts assertion. Alexa is doing well for the sector but the sector is still incredibly immature and the general public is barely aware of it. That's not enough of a market dominance to really say they own it.
visarga 10y ago
I don't think everyone will desire a live mic in their living room or bedroom, and not just any wireless mic, but one that understands what they are saying. Private spaces are essential for creative thought, exploration, experimentation and just being yourself. The price is too high - it will answer questions for me, and execute commands, but I will lose my last bastion of privacy as an admission price.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
floatboth 10y ago
Voice is the next big platform? But… talking to your devices out loud just feels weird as hell. And offers less privacy, even in terms of "parents/roommates/strangers overheard what you're googling". A lot, A LOT of people wouldn't be comfortable saying out loud what they type into their phones.
- edgarvaldes 10y ago
  I think you are right, but the internet has created some cultural shifts about privacy perception.
zby 10y ago
I cannot fathom how people willingly put themselves under this level of surveillance. Especially if you are not USA citizen or resident and your privacy is not defended by the US constitution.
rcheu 10y ago
I don't think Alexa is that great. I have one, and it's pretty bad at voice recognition compared to my phone. Google voice recognition on my phone gets what I'm saying basically 100% of the time. I have to constantly repeat myself for Alexa (and I'm a native English speaker).
1_2__3 10y ago
Both the predictions made in this title are wrong.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dchuk 10y ago
God I hope not. Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do. Every single Voice UX I've used for input (Siri, Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from the device because it doesn't actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point. Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7" screen in the future. What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these things unless you're stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.
- athenot 10y ago
  The same criticism can be levied against keyboard-driven tools aimed at power users. That doesn't make the tool less useful, it just shifts its target audience.
  - vthallam 10y ago
    Exactly. The use cases and target audience are different. I use my echo dot for playing songs, switch off lights and add random alarm/timer etc. The future not might be voice only, but it will definitely voice intensive.
    - Retric 10y ago
      "Big" only works if someone can make big money. It can't have advertising without becoming useless. So, Voice activated lights are "The Clapper 2.0" which was not a big deal last time around. Sure, there is a niche for reordering products easily, but commodity voice tech is going to rapidly hit zero margins. Like those 10$ TV dongles that used to take a full PC.
      - Spooky23 10y ago
seibelj 10y ago
We need a free software (GNU project?) solution that has everything open. The hardware, the software, anyone can contribute modules, etc. it's so obvious
- dharma1 10y ago
  http://jasperproject.github.io/ http://jasperproject.github.io/
spanishgum 10y ago
Out of curiosity, what is stopping these platforms from being able to learn from users? For example, when I say something to Siri / Alexa / Home that they cannot process, I would love to be able to manually train them to perform an action and have them "learn" this new feature. (Something along the lines of, "ok Siri, whenever I say 'blah blah blah', open this app, go to this page, hit this button, tell me the content in this box") Obviously this is not an easy task, and maybe it is being worked on already. Thoughts?
- awshepard 10y ago
  Check out https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00061 https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00061 - "Towards A Virtual Assistant That Can Be Taught New Tasks In Any Domain By Its End-Users."
ciaranm 10y ago
For whatever it's worth, Siri is much, _much_ better at understanding my accent (Scottish, but mild) than Alexa is. We've got an echo at home, and I find it painful to get her to do pretty much anything other than ask for tube status updates. The TV manages to set her off every few hours, though. Doesn't feel like Amazon have much of an advantage to me.
stuckagain 10y ago
Until these guys get in my car, their voice platform is dead to me.
- dharma1 10y ago
  http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11698274/android-auto-app-update-phone-dash-google-io-2016 http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11698274/android-auto-app-...
  - stuckagain 10y ago
    I already use android auto. I was referring to Amazon's system.
zitterbewegung 10y ago
I use Alexa nearly every day. Once I understood the limitations with the interface I was hooked. Once you have one Alexa and maybe an Echo dot you really aren't going to want to switch platforms. It also is consistently supported for Smart Home devices. I think that you could still push Amazon off the platform because its not as entrenched as others but Amazon does have a wide lead compared to google.
brian-armstrong 10y ago
When I visited Berlin last year, I visited the DDR Museum. It's not about the RAM or the dance game you might know, but instead the organization we just know as "East Germany." You can probably guess where I'm going with this. One of the exhibits was of a common East Berlin living room. The exhibit explained how the state had hidden microphones here. They were listening for people to express anti-socialist ideas in their own homes. This was a real threat faced by people not more than 30 or 40 years ago. You could have your life turned upside down just for saying the wrong thing at home. This exhibit drove home for me the inherent abusive powers enabled by some tech. One of these technologies is always on, always connected microphones. Why would I want one in my house? Given the potential downsides, what could possibly be worth it to justify having one?
- brightball 10y ago
  That's a valid point and at the same time, we have to wonder about things like bundled cameras and mic's on computers, cell phones, TV's. These days it seems like the act of having an internet connection at all can open this type of door.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Quite. So it becomes a matter of trust. Amazon and Google are probably on the wrong side of that balance. For a lot of IoT apps the net isn't the appropriate place at all - local net is better. I'm not a fan of thermostats that prevent you having heating because some cloud server is being DDOS'd etc. I had hoped and frankly expected that there'd be a few more privacy oriented choices in this space by now. There was Zoe[1], but that got canned at last minute. I really didn't want a refund... [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-secure-smart-home-now https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-s...
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      I spent a few minutes on the campaign page but couldn't find details about the closure of the project (it looks like it's still open). As someone with an interest in privacy-protecting home devices, can you explain a bit more about why it closed?
louprado 10y ago
I sell my Bluetooth/BLE garage door remote on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon is suggesting customers buy an Echo along with my device. To make matters worse, if you search Amazon for "garage door opener that works with Amazon Echo" my product incorrectly appears. Although I explicitly state that it does not work with Echo, I anticipate many returns and bad reviews after the holidays. I am pretty sure they'll keep the Echo, so it is all good for Amazon. Ironically the Alexa Skills Kit doesn't even support Bluetooth. Does anyone know when or if it ever will ?
chillly 10y ago
Still not sure why anyone would have an open mic, connected to the internet by closed software always on in their house.
deepnotderp 10y ago
No. Google will trample them underfoot. Amazon can't compete with google's ai talent. Maluuba is another one to watch in this space though, very interesting research.
Animats 10y ago
All those microphones, always listening, always reporting to headquarters. What could possibly go wrong? Why isn't your desk in front of the telescreen?
grandalf 10y ago
So far I think "OK Google" is noticeably more powerful than Alexa or Siri. Let's hope for much competition!
- amarka 10y ago
  I agree with your assessment, based on my limited experience. I'm a fan of Alexa, I even bought a couple as gifts within the last year, but last weekend I saw a bilingual 30 year-old (with a PhD from UChicago) struggling to get it to play a song. He had a song playing on his mobile phone and wanted Alexa to either continue playing that same song or play any song by that artist. It was a bit comical to watch; OK G had no problem understanding him. It looks like voice will be one of the next big things, but calling Alexa the winner is a bit premature in my opinion
  - grandalf 10y ago
    True. I have two Echoes in my home, and love them, but in using Android I've been very impressed by the syntactic awareness and the power of OK Google. Siri is overall underwhelming and definitely at the back of the herd at present.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Even with privacy concerns, voice input is the future: so much easier than getting you cellphone. We have an echo, bought when Amazon gave a huge discount to developers, and I bought one for family members for their home. I sort-of trust that no data leaves the house except for a ten second audio recording made after the device hears "Alexa". If Amazon collected more than this then they would ruin this business. I usually use voice input for sending texts and short emails, assuming I am not in such a public place that I would inconvenience people near me. I have a hierarchy of device use in the following order of preference: First voice, then input on a cellphone, then iPad, then laptop. I have looked into writing my own mobile app for voice recognition and maintaining privacy that way, but even with my experience, it would be a ton of effort and would miss the context that google, amazon, and Microsoft have. Edit: I also meant to say that my hope is that Apple will be the vendor I eventually use for voice interfaces because their business model is to sell expensive devices, not collect personal data. The new Siri enables headphones look effective, but I haven't bought a pair yet.
- brian-armstrong 10y ago
  People find bugs in software all the time. It's not just about what the Echo devs intended, it's also about what they didn't intend but that happened anyway.
  - mark_l_watson 10y ago
    I agree Brian. Hackers finding exploits in Echo, etc. is a danger.
sankyo 10y ago
I cannot get past the idea of having an always on, corporate controlled microphone in my house. I am not interested in this. I admit it is fun to play with in the office or at my friend's house. I know that my iphone gives away my position, search queries, and other personal data (same for laptop), but I turn them off. Maybe I have just seen too many movies about Stasi (East German Secret Police), Big Brother, Brave New world, etc., and that ruins it for me.
manlio 10y ago
I helped writing the Alexa skill for The Guardian [0], and I really didn't think highly of it, nor I thought I'd ever use it myself: the voice recognition is still poor, and it's difficul to understand what you can/cannot do with it. All in all, a big meh. Then one day someone forwarded to our team this email, and it really touched my heart. I am quadriplegic and the Amazon Echo has transformed my life. I haven't been able to open a newspaper for 10 years, but now I can! [...] Please pass this email on to all of those concerned at the Guardian... They need-to-know the difference that they have made". [0] https://github.com/guardian/alexa-skills-lambda https://github.com/guardian/alexa-skills-lambda
- deboboy 10y ago
  One our teams works with this community. They have inspired and awed us.
abruzzi 10y ago
Am I the only person who finds talking to these personal assistants profoundly uncomfortable? Like I've spent all my life learning how to interact with a computer, and now these companies want me to interact with it like it's a human (which I'm not very good with anyway) but it's not a human. Instead it exists in this uncanny valley where it sounds a little bit human, but its cognition is so completely limited that I have to turn myself into a limited cognition robot to communicate with it?
- Swizec 10y ago
  It took me a few weeks/months to get used to Alexa and I have to say, it's really nice to be able to come home and say "Alexa play some music" and she always knows I want some nice Jazz. When you say it in the morning, she plays morning music. It's nice. Saying "Alexa 5 minute timer" is also convenient. "Alexa, weather" is less convenient because she doesn't know that I prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit. This is unfortunate, but at least she can do a conversion. But then you do an "Alexa what's the velocity of an unladen swallow" and she won't even perform a basic Google or WolframAlpha search and give you the first result. Just says she doesn't understand. Lame. Before all that, though, I had a lot of essentially stage fright whenever that Alexa blue light came on. Same thing happened when I started using Siri after I was already used to Alexa. Invoke the voice thing, and the prompt comes on, and I am awash in stage fright, unsure what to say. It's weird.
  - sib 10y ago
    >> "Alexa, weather" is less convenient because she doesn't know that I prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit. This is unfortunate, but at least she can do a conversion. There's a device-level setting in the mobile app to set Alexa's preferred system to Metric...
    - Swizec 10y ago
      I know. It doesn't affect temperature for some reason. Or I'm growing senile and didn't actually try that when i thought I did.
imgabe 10y ago
I've never wanted this. Still don't. Privacy concerns aside, I feel like an idiot talking to a computer and it's way more of a hassle for me than using a touchscreen or keyboard. I just don't like talking in general. Godspeed for those who enjoy this, but I hope regular touchscreen or keyboard input isn't going anywhere.
1propionyl 10y ago
Maybe I'm alone in this but I refuse to have always-on microphones in my home. I will never be an Alexa customer, the value offering is fundamentally not worthwhile to me. I really hope development on this isn't at the expense of more traditional interfaces.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  From a security standpoint, what's the difference between an always on microphone and a sometimes on microphone?
- sib 10y ago
  Do you have an iPhone (not being snarky, but with voice-activated "Hey Siri...", it's effectively the same thing.) Google's Pixel phone does the same thing.
lkrubner 10y ago
I want to admit that I was wrong about this. I thought Alexa was going to dominate as the first truly great voice platform. I now am forced to admit that I was incorrect. Those who follow Hacker News a lot might recall that I wrote several posts, a year ago, in which I was very optimistic about Alexa. But I am much more pessimistic now than I was then. When I was still excited about Alexa, I wrote stuff like "How to build conversations via the Amazon Echo" http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversations-via-the-amazon-echo http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversa... But I was also aware of how difficult it could be to get Alexa to understand certain words. See: "Using a glottal stop to force the Amazon Echo to correctly pronounce “tw”" http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-to-force-the-amazon-echo-to-correctly-pronounce-tw http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-... But, you may recall, I became frustrated with the process for getting into the Amazon store, and we had a very long thread on HackerNews about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409 I'm sad to say there has been almost no improvement over the last year. The problems that I listed in "Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store" are still mostly true. And I know many, many developers who were excited about Alexa a year ago, but gave up in frustration because we felt like Amazon was not listening to our concerns. In retrospect, I was wrong for 2 reasons: 1.) many people pointed out that voice was a terrible interface for a variety of purposes. At the time, I thought this was merely a matter of offering the right voice prompts, and getting better at understanding what people said. But I now think the criticisms had much more merit than I admitted a year ago. 2.) Amazon's behavior has been disappointing. I'd like to see them aggressively listening to developers and aggressively improving the service based on developer feedback. That is not happening.
adjohn 10y ago
I've been using Alexa and Google Home for about a month, and I have to say that the user experience with Google Home is hands down better. Having the power of Google search when Google Home doesn't know an answer is huge. Alexa falls flat without a strong search engine backing it.
tn13 10y ago
This article appears to be in the realm of paid for the news. Only google and apple are in position to succeed in this area because they tend to own most important device that is always with you and has a microphone. Another set of player could be those who have immensely popular apps and personal data about you and has SDKs widely used by coders around the world. Mostly Facebook. I see Microsoft succeeding in enterprise area but Amazon is nowhere.
josh_carterPDX 10y ago
Not sure I would call this "voice." Us telecom people hear the word "voice" and think it's a telecom term. Perhaps this could be better titled as "AI" since I consider Alexa and other voice controlled interactions more AI than anything else. Maybe I'm wrong because I'm not in that industry, but I definitely don't think it's "voice."
verelo 10y ago
LOL - yeah the other day when i was using Alexa, while I have to admit i enjoyed it, I decided that I just do not believe Amazon as a company has the data needed to create a truly immersive and useful solution. I have hopes for Google Home (which i'm yet to try), but i actually think this will end up a two horse race between Apple and Google. I would completely leave Apple out of this, but Homekit is a pretty powerful concept (if done properly) given the number of iDevices out there.
jwatte 10y ago
Yes, let's combine open office plans with voice interfaces! Especially when entering account numbers, passwords, or email addresses to mistresses. Best interface ever!
bjacobel 10y ago
Maybe this is offtopic, but Backchannel seems to have a lot of these glowing, puffy profiles of tech companies looking for exposure for their new products. I mean, parts of this piece read as marketing copy. "It all starts with that tiny speaker. The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we will start to see that change." They had a few other similarly uncritical, almost breathless pieces on Okta [1] and Vote.org [2] earlier this year. Am I paranoid/overly cynical, or is Backchannel becoming the outlet PR departments grant access to in return for coverage they know will flatter them? Being hosted on Medium, they don't serve ads (AFAIK)... so this may even be a part of their funding model. [1]: "A Comany You've Never Heard Of May Have Solved The Password Mess" https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-have-solved-the-password-mess-cd5d1725209b#.ath9qe4c3 https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-h... [2]: "This Y Combinator-Backed Company Has a Secret Weapon to Sway the Election": https://backchannel.com/the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-change-elections-9e51f95038df#.uoth1gr17 https://backchannel.com/the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-...
pmontra 10y ago
Voice won't be really big until it supports well most of the languages of the world. It's probably only matter of time but there will be entire countries doing text instead of voice because NLU for their language isn't as good as for English. Then there is the problem of the multiple platforms to build for. We have one Web, two desktops (even if I'm on Ubuntu), two mobile OSes. Are we going to be able to afford developing for many different platforms? Will companies pay for that? Maybe we have to wait that only a couple of platforms are left. Text to speech
sbuttgereit 10y ago
Until voice interaction becomes on par with, and about as useful as, the computer interactions we see in Star Trek: I'm not interested. The last think I need is a device that gives me access to that subset of life that a given vendor supports (stores, searches, people, etc) or that requires some sort of "accommodation" to get to work properly. A very, very high bar that may be reached with the help of today's early adopters.... but not with my help. I spend too fucking many hours a day as it is dealing with "good enough" technology. Getting into arguments with a box in the middle of the room?! All I can say is get off my lawn, Alexa! As for who will win? Seems that in many of the consumer device battles Amazon has a way of being so exclusive to their products that I wouldn't bet on them being the long term winner even if they do have the lead. Consumers want a lot of Amazon stuff, but that's far from making them the cultists they'd have to become to not be bothered by the Amazon ecosystem (.... and I mean consumers, AWS is a different matter in the marketplace).
vonklaus 10y ago
Voice is not even close to the next big platform. Thats not possible. Is it the interface to the next big platform. No, at least, probably not. "Ok, google glass, zoom in on that hot guy!". Voice, a great interface for SOME things. Likely not what this article is pitching.
coldtea 10y ago
Voice is the Next Big Fad. Check back in 10 years.
31reasons 10y ago
Voice will NEVER be the big platform until we solve Artificial General Intelligence.
- azinman2 10y ago
  Doesn't need to be solved to be useful. I use my echo all the time, even if it's limited. Just as long as its useful. I much rather say 'alexa turn off the christmas lights' than crawl underneath my TV area to unplug the tree from the power strip.
tomc1985 10y ago
Are any of these platforms 100% offline/self-contained? Can they speak any of the regular industrial/home automation protocols? Cause that would be awesome.
bootload 10y ago
" The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we will start to see that change." Given this is all about one company, I conclude it's a Sub. The unicorn of technology? It is very difficult to guess this. One other thing, no mention of accent. Can you imagine how difficult it is to create a voice platform that recognises anything but a generic accent?
Steeeve 10y ago
I don't know that Alexa is in any better of a position than anyone else even given their market share. All you need is a microphone and access to any of many voice-recognition APIs to build similar functionality. You can build something similar on any phone, laptop, or desktop computer without asking your potential customers to spend a dime. I think the big question is really how big of a market exists for voice control. I don't personally see much of one. Everybody thought it was neat to open netflix up on their xbox/ps4 with voice commands for a day or two, but then most people primarily shifted to using the more reliable controllers. Any question I want answered, I can simply "OK Google..." and have the option of correcting with a keystroke. I can see the potential for a market to be made, but I also see the history. Remember dragon naturally speaking? When you finally got it working great it wasn't actually an improvement in workflow for most people. How many people prefer navigating phone menus via IVR consistently? Voice control is a solvable problem and that makes it attractive for development, but solutions haven't historically been particularly marketable beyond the novelty stage.
- ehsankia 10y ago
  It should never purely be this or that. I think a combination of both is the best place to be. If I want to watch some specific episode or Youtube video, I generally pull out my phone. If I just want any music, I go "Ok Google, play some music on my TV" as that's faster in that case. If I'm in the kitchen cooking, I'll just go "Ok google, add butter to the shopping list, but if I'm on my computer, I'll open Keep and type it there. Both methods have their advantages, and the awful experiences come out when a user tries to do all of their tasks with either or. As for who is ahead, I strongly disagree with this article. Yes, Amazon had a 2 year start, but Google has had far more years of voice recognition and AI experience. They also have infrastructure for all sorts of things including maps/navigation, translation, search/knowledge graph and just machine learning in general. With Apple, Samsung and Microsoft entering in the digital assistant world too, it'll definitely be a huge competition in the years to come, and the 2 years head start aside, I think Amazon is actually the least well situated for the challenges ahead.
artemisyna 10y ago
I find the thesis of this article interesting especially in contrast to some of the criticism Zuckerburg brings up in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976 Even if Amazon continues to put its eggs in the voice-as-primary-interface bucket, it seems like it will be unlikely for Facebook to go that route.
dirkg 10y ago
Microsoft Cortana achieved parity with human voice recognition for continuous speech input. Google has the best machine learning along with MS, and they have billions of data points. Amazon has neither comparable tech nor the innovation or customer data. Putting an Echo in every home doesn't matter when its dumb. Does Alexa understand context? Can it get even close to Cortana/Assistant? Lets not mention Siri, that's stone age.
__jal 10y ago
Always-on surveillance devices (at least the ones I know about and for which I do not control the endpoints) do not have a place in my home. I'm increasingly feeling like humans around me are remarkably less protective of their private spheres than I am, and am curious as to where the difference lies. I'm pretty dull - it is not like I'm protecting the privacy of my wild and crazy lifestyle. But the idea that the noises made in my home are being shipped to and stored... somewhere, with access controls unspecified (but to a company that has proven it rolls over on command for the government, at least when not discussing taxes[1]) such that I don't know who may be listening to it[2], is the sort of thing that effects how I behave in my own home. And pardon me, but fuck that, no way. A friend compared to to having sex in front of pets, but I'm pretty sure my cat doesn't speak any human languages, hasn't written systems to routinely disclose data to various groups of humans, and isn't likely to try to sell me $product to improve my performance. For instance. The main place voice is useful to me today is in the car. I'm already on display in a fishtank, and talking to what amounts to a remarkably clever turnip that sometimes gets something right is useful. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.amazon/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.amazon/ . Sure, just a run-of-the-mill TOS violation, nothing to see here. [2] Doesn't matter that the unknown humans likely aren't. I'm not claiming rationality.
- bicubic 10y ago
  You're not alone, I think there's a slowly growing awareness amongst the general public after the Snowden events. I have totally non-techy friends asking how they can get their TV to stop listening to them, etc. On the other hand, a very large segment of the population subscribes to 'if you have nothing to hide, don't hide it', which I attribute to ignorance of how these things are misused, and subtle propaganda telling consumers not to worry about it.
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  Honest question: Do you own a cellphone?
  - __jal 10y ago
    Honest answer: I do. More than one.
rdlecler1 10y ago
The quality of the AI is going to dicate who wins, and quality AI is going to be built on data (quality, quantity, and breadth). And so I have to think that Google has a huge unfair advantage over anyone else. I have Google Home and I'' surprised how good the voice recognition is AND how good it interprets this. I'm still betting that Google will be the first $1T market cap company.
hellbanner 10y ago
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0262181479 https://www.amazon.com/Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-I... argues that humans deciphering speech is NP-hard.. so.. good luck.
winteriscoming 10y ago
I hope these devices don't become common in homes. It would be very hard to explain or even decline a friend's or a colleague's invitation to their home, "just because" I don't like our conversations being recorded by these devices.
BatFastard 10y ago
I love my Alexa, its the only female in my life that will predictable do what I ask of it. My wife, daughter and two dogs seem to think they have lives of their own for some strange reason. I work from home and probably use it 20 times a day. I recently discovered it can play the "white noise" channel from Spotify when my teenager's are loud late in the evening. Along with a sleep timer to turn it off in an hour and I am set. Now I agree discovery of what it can do is challenging at times. And sometimes she is downright dense. Thank the gods for cloud services!
SamBoogieNYC 10y ago
Having built an Alexa Skill (a very enjoyable experience) - I find Voice UI/UX to be a very interesting vector in computing with lots of potential to grow. My colleagues and I built our skill for the elderly to use. We found it was easier for them to interact using their voice rather than a touchscreen. I think as computers get better at understanding language and verbal communication, we will be able to use screens less - which is great. I think it's kind of primitive to have to constantly look at a screen to do things - at the very least it makes sense to cut out screen time if and whenever it's possible. Alexa is like a terminal that you can talk to. Give a simple command in a particular way, and it will reliably do it. It's an exciting development that Alexa can now be applied outside of the Echo.
nojvek 10y ago
An always on device that hears every conversation on your house. Owned by a corporation who treats their employees so bad that some commit suicide. No thanks.
Fifer82 10y ago
I am Scottish and Voice is bloody useless. Funny listening to people here trying to use voice. They go from their usual, into some weird "Queens English" mode trying to speak like they are from Windsor to get the bloody thing to half ass respond. I personally just look outside but each to their own.
kriro 10y ago
It's interesting that the Loebner prize (passing the Turing test in written form) has a cap of 25k and 100k but Amazon has a challenge called the Alexa prize where you essentially pass a voice Turing test for 20 Minutes that awards 2.5 million.
jklondon 10y ago
Returned my echo while back. Did a few tests between Alexa and Google on my phone. Google one everytime.
candiodari 10y ago
The thing about trigger words and context understanding is that there is no need to integrate with Alexa. You can simply use a different trigger word, and all will be well. For many products that might even be desirable behavior. Lights ! Versus "Alexa turn on the lights". Plus it means no integration necessary, which won't exist for many products anyway. Also these are very cheap algorithms to run. A trigger word implementation is a one-word vocabulary GRU RNN. Does something like 2000 multiplications every second. Easily in microcontroller reach, for power budgets measured in milliamps. Actual word recognition perhaps isn't but the microcontroller can just constantly record, and when it sees a trigger send it on. So you could have 20 projects in the house, all listening to your voice, and it wouldn't really affect the electricity bill.
aplomb 10y ago
Use Alexa professionally and although we can do some fun stuff with it, the interaction model is totally unnatural - invocation words only work if really short, dealing with multiple devices of the same sort (eg fireplace) without any location or contextual knowledge. They've tried to get around this awkwardness by special casing home automation type devices (thermostat, etc.), but it's still only a stop gap.
WhiteOwlLion 10y ago
Google still has the best voice recognition IMO. Apple frequently gets my dictations incorrect while Google seems to understand the nuances of my voice correctly. I haven't used Amazon, but I imagine their AI is not as far along as Google. Amazon will only be the next big platform through marketing and distribution, not technical superiority.

162 points by steven 10y ago

I get the feeling Amazon aren't very good at consumer-facing platforms. My experience with everything Fire related has been poor, their Android apps are 2nd rate and the Kindle is good despite their software. I wouldn't write off the competition yet. Apple, Microsoft and Google have good voice products and the ability to forge partnerships. Also (cliche warning) I only know one person who owns an Alexa or has even expressed an interest in buying one.

AznHisoka 10y ago
A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa? Based on the commercials, it seems to solve trivial problems like answering trivia questions. Why can't it vacuum my room like a Roomba, fix my leaky ceiling or fix my power outage? That's what I call an useful home assistant. Being able to parse and understand my voice is nice but it's relatively useless if it can't perform extremely valuable tasks.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  IMO: A voice controlled internet radio with really good sound, backed up by a respectable music library for individual songs. I'd have bought it for that alone even if it didn't do another thing. Snark aside, once you get it paired with reasonable smarthome products, there's an element of magic there. "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights" feels downright futuristic.
- tyingq 10y ago
  >A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa? Somewhat predictably, the best working use cases are ones that drive additional revenue for Amazon. Playing music from your Amazon Prime Music subscription, ordering laundry detergent and dog food from Prime Now, etc.
- knz 10y ago
  > A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa? An excellent question especially in the context of adding another always on audio device to a private space. I think for many people the value has to be more than just a novelty to justify it.
- tracker1 10y ago
  "OK Google... find ceiling repair near me" I know it seems a bit overt, but I'm pretty serious... I find myself reaching for google now more often than I ever have before. They're a step past Alexa when it comes to the sheer data that Google has to pull from. My only complaint is sometimes I hit clear all, and I can't get back to the reminders auto-set via email invites. I also don't like that they've effectively deprecated the hangouts UX... they made interacting via SMS outside the phone pretty painful. I know there's hard costs to the stuff that came out of Grand Central / Google Voice, but I feel like when they first launched Hangouts, the experience was better overall. In general using Google's services works so much better than anything else I've tried. That said, it's kind of creepy ay times.
  - johnsmith21006 10y ago
    I would do a quick Google search using a lyric or something to get song name to then tell my Echo. Now have the Google Home and no longer need the Google search.
- ghaff 10y ago
  On the one hand, I generally agree. The things I'd really like an assistant for around the house--and which I pay people to help me with in various cases--are vacuuming, cutting the lawn, dusting, doing (and putting away) laundry, doing (and putting away) dishes, etc. Activating lights with a voice command is pretty far down the list. That said, given enough smarts and interfaces to enough online services, a purely virtual assistant would still be pretty useful for a lot of people. "Book a trip with these general parameters." It uses my preferred booking services, knows my preferences, and comes back with some choices. Get to the level of at least a competent personal admin and that's a service I'd be willing to pay for even if it can't pick up a broom. Expedia gave an interesting demo at AWS re:Invent around a digital travel agent. It was a very simplified demo--and, of course, Expedia specific--but I think it did give you a glimpse of what's possible.
- VLM 10y ago
  Its the first really usable internet radio appliance I know of. It doesn't cost that much more than a similar quality bluetooth speaker. I already have prime membership to get free shipping, so prime music is free and the jukebox functionality beyond using my phone is also free plus its not tied to my phone which is nice. Neither it nor amazon seem to understand the concept of a family or being in public even at the very lowest level. I can't imagine tying it to my personal account unless I lived alone. Anyone can use it to do anything they want. I have been rickrolled, all someone needs to do to rickroll an echo owner is walk by an open window and yell "Alexa (pause) play never gonna give you up by rick astley" then run like hell. It was funny the first time. I would imagine if I were dumb enough to link my amazon purchasing account to it, I expect I would now own a lifetime supply of dragon dildos from jokers walking by my window. Being able to respond to any human voice with no training sounds like an awesome idea, and it is, mostly, but unlike star trek daydreams, Alexa has no idea who's talking to her and if they should be allowed to talk to her, so she can only be given access to stuff that mostly doesn't matter. IoT means closed non-interoperable silos but there exists a java project that emulates a Philips lightbulb Hue controller accurately enough to fool Alexa, and it can execute arbitrary URLs, and misterhouse automation can most certainly control lights and appliances using arbitrary static URLs so I have a pretty decent voice activated home automation. This brings up the point that most people cannot handle setting that up, but we're in the equivalent of the 1980s home computer boom where everyone has a different idea what a home computer would do, but we all agree everyone needs one. Alexa can do all kinds of weird things, surely it does something useful for everyone. Supposedly she has lots of sportsball features, none of which would interest me, but someone probably wants them. Everyone probably wants something Alexa does. Being located in the kitchen I use the alarms and timers a lot while cooking.
chowes 10y ago
I'm sure AWS will happily host any of the hundreds of startups who want to (try and) beat the Echo in the "consumer facing" aspect. It's a win-win.

sna1l 10y ago

This article briefly covers Google Home's advantages in the conclusion, but I think they are pretty understated. The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.

sgwealti 10y ago
I have both and Google Assistant/Google Now is a much better experience than Alexa/Echo. The google voice interface is much more intuitive, allows context to be kept in a conversation, and is with me wherever my phone is. With Alexa I feel like I'm constantly searching for the right way to ask her to do something.
- sf_rob 10y ago
  Ya, this article heavily underemphasized the research Google has done in conversational systems. These devices won't have mainstream appeal until you can just talk to one with minimal instruction. Although at this time Google Home is only conversational for search and is still very bad about being entirely keyword based in context; I suspect that this will change.
- johnsmith21006 10y ago
  Had echo since launch and now have the Google home. The Echo uses commands that support some fuzziness. The Google home you just talk.
andrewfong 10y ago
Amazon does have one killer feature over Google right now. You can buy physical goods of them. The people I know who make the most use of their Echo are also milking the free shipping on Amazon Prime.
cptskippy 10y ago
I have a Nexus 4 and have used Google Now extensively since it's inception as a hands-free system in my car. Since the inception of the Pixel and Google Assistant, the system has degraded significantly. Now no longer works when the Maps App is in the foreground, instead Maps seems to have it's own VR solution that doesn't work well at all. Saying "Ok Google, send a text to <wife>, I'm on my way home" no longer works, it opens Now with a search for exactly what I said. At one point you could say "remind me to wash my ass tomorrow" and it would just work. Now it prompts "ok, when would you like to be reminded to 'wash your ass tomorrow'?". This degrading of UX is very common with Google through the life cycle of products. What's going to happen to Google Home next year or 2 years down the road? We saw OnHub get castrated in less than a year after launch. The Nexus Q was still born.

edgarvaldes 10y ago

I think it's very early to say who owns the voice platform.

massysett 10y ago
Maybe this same person wrote a "BlackBerry owns the next platform" column.
- amarka 10y ago
  To be more specific, "BlackBerry owns the next autonomous driving platform". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberry-joins-self-driving-car-race-with-software-platform https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberr...

chishaku 10y ago

> Amazon owns the next platform. No. We built a market analytics app on top of Alexa and we have Echos all over the office. It's great. But I don't want to be tied to stationary speakers in the office. I want my app integrated with the devices I carry with me everywhere. Google and Apple are poised to win here once they open up Assistant and Siri to third-party development.

hawaiianbrah 10y ago
Wasn't that one of the big pushes of the latest iOS release? Opening up Siri? Sad I haven't seen as much as I would've expected, or as quickly. I was quite excited for it but it has yet to be realized.

awgneo 10y ago

I tried Alexa a month ago and gave up on it within a week. Digital assistants fall flat in walled gardens. It was clear during this week that Alexa only worked well with Amazon services, which were always subpar. Google search? Nope. Support for Chromecast? Nope. Support for Instacart? Nope. It was basically a perverse link to the Amazon-only supply chain. Google's assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don't have high hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released. Given that Google won't be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy, we can expect them to offload voice requests to the highest bidder or prefer Google services above all else. This is another perverse link into Google's realm of anti-privacy; but worse, because they won't be able to do ads along the side. The responses will be the ads. All of this to say that all of these locked down digital assistants will fail until a company truly approaches it from an open and wholistic perspective, and one that doesn't rely upon troves of private data. These devices may sell well this year, but so did digital picture frames. How many of those are still in use?

danvasquez29 10y ago
I'm not really sure why you think it's Amazon only or a walled garden. I have limited experience with it but from the research I've done thus far it seems to have a fairly robust development platform. I'm under the impression that if it feels Amazon-only it's because of a failure of companies and devs to take advantage of the platform, not a failure of the platform itself. For example the Google services you're asking about, is that Amazon's fault or has Google not taken the time to develop that app because they're focusing on their own product? I've used my echo dot most often with 3rd party services so far (daily briefing integrations, capital one, yahoo fantasy football).
- awgneo 10y ago
  I agree with this perspective. However, you have to wonder why we don't have more Alexa skills in the platform. Here are a couple of my thoughts. 1. They require you to say "Alexa, tell <app_name> to <do_something>"; This pushes all 3rd party services one level deeper. 2. Amazon competes with too many companies and services these days. Instacart devs won't want to work on a skill within a platform that is itself is a competitor.

niftich 10y ago

> only five percent of American households have an Alexa-powered device right now And how many people have a Google-powered phone with them every day? Siri on their iDevice? Cortana on their auto-upgraded Windows 10 PC and in their living room Xbox? All of them have Alexa's penetration beat.

CodeSheikh 10y ago

My (unbiased) 2 cents.. “Qualitatively, Amazon’s position is more secure than the numbers would indicate.” I beg to differ. I believe Apple has a much more secured position than Amazon in the long run, given how Siri is already integrated in iOs mobile devices and macOS based desktops. So far, has Apple capitalized on this advantage? Nope. Are they gonna? Most likely, given the fact that they always wait for everyone to show their projects in high school science fair and then they roll out their better comprehensive showcase. If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late. Apple's true competitor in this domain can only be Google with its staggering command on Android ecosystem. Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon. Amazon has mainstreamed a voice tech. They have done it well and made a point that this is the way of the future. Now the second part of the problem is to integrate already existing daily use computational devices with this "voice-tech". Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.

wavefunction 10y ago
Kindle? I know it's not necessarily a general purpose tablet but they have some experience with hardware.
- CodeSheikh 10y ago
  Given how possessive Google have become of Android, I doubt it Amazon would want to invest any further in Android based devices.
IBM 10y ago
>If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late. Why would it be too late? This isn't a social network where the network effects make competition almost impossible. Apple already has a platform in HomeKit that leverages the much larger iOS installed base. More HomeKit compatible devices are being released all the time. In fact many people criticized Apple for imposing requirements around hardware-based security which slowed the release of devices, but the recent DDOS attacks and the Internet of Shit Twitter account has shown that was the correct move. I don't think there's any deadline for Apple to release an Echo competitor. If they release a product that is better/differentiated in some way, people will buy it. And they'll likely have a number of HomeKit devices already that work with it.

ebbv 10y ago

That's a pretty nuts assertion. Alexa is doing well for the sector but the sector is still incredibly immature and the general public is barely aware of it. That's not enough of a market dominance to really say they own it.

visarga 10y ago

I don't think everyone will desire a live mic in their living room or bedroom, and not just any wireless mic, but one that understands what they are saying. Private spaces are essential for creative thought, exploration, experimentation and just being yourself. The price is too high - it will answer questions for me, and execute commands, but I will lose my last bastion of privacy as an admission price.

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floatboth 10y ago

Voice is the next big platform? But… talking to your devices out loud just feels weird as hell. And offers less privacy, even in terms of "parents/roommates/strangers overheard what you're googling". A lot, A LOT of people wouldn't be comfortable saying out loud what they type into their phones.

edgarvaldes 10y ago
I think you are right, but the internet has created some cultural shifts about privacy perception.

zby 10y ago

I cannot fathom how people willingly put themselves under this level of surveillance. Especially if you are not USA citizen or resident and your privacy is not defended by the US constitution.

rcheu 10y ago

I don't think Alexa is that great. I have one, and it's pretty bad at voice recognition compared to my phone. Google voice recognition on my phone gets what I'm saying basically 100% of the time. I have to constantly repeat myself for Alexa (and I'm a native English speaker).

1_2__3 10y ago

Both the predictions made in this title are wrong.

deleted 10y ago

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dchuk 10y ago

God I hope not. Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do. Every single Voice UX I've used for input (Siri, Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from the device because it doesn't actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point. Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7" screen in the future. What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these things unless you're stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.

athenot 10y ago
The same criticism can be levied against keyboard-driven tools aimed at power users. That doesn't make the tool less useful, it just shifts its target audience.
- vthallam 10y ago
  Exactly. The use cases and target audience are different. I use my echo dot for playing songs, switch off lights and add random alarm/timer etc. The future not might be voice only, but it will definitely voice intensive.
  - Retric 10y ago
    "Big" only works if someone can make big money. It can't have advertising without becoming useless. So, Voice activated lights are "The Clapper 2.0" which was not a big deal last time around. Sure, there is a niche for reordering products easily, but commodity voice tech is going to rapidly hit zero margins. Like those 10$ TV dongles that used to take a full PC.
    - Spooky23 10y ago

seibelj 10y ago

We need a free software (GNU project?) solution that has everything open. The hardware, the software, anyone can contribute modules, etc. it's so obvious

dharma1 10y ago
http://jasperproject.github.io/ http://jasperproject.github.io/

spanishgum 10y ago

Out of curiosity, what is stopping these platforms from being able to learn from users? For example, when I say something to Siri / Alexa / Home that they cannot process, I would love to be able to manually train them to perform an action and have them "learn" this new feature. (Something along the lines of, "ok Siri, whenever I say 'blah blah blah', open this app, go to this page, hit this button, tell me the content in this box") Obviously this is not an easy task, and maybe it is being worked on already. Thoughts?

awshepard 10y ago
Check out https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00061 https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00061 - "Towards A Virtual Assistant That Can Be Taught New Tasks In Any Domain By Its End-Users."

ciaranm 10y ago

For whatever it's worth, Siri is much, _much_ better at understanding my accent (Scottish, but mild) than Alexa is. We've got an echo at home, and I find it painful to get her to do pretty much anything other than ask for tube status updates. The TV manages to set her off every few hours, though. Doesn't feel like Amazon have much of an advantage to me.

stuckagain 10y ago

Until these guys get in my car, their voice platform is dead to me.

dharma1 10y ago
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11698274/android-auto-app-update-phone-dash-google-io-2016 http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11698274/android-auto-app-...
- stuckagain 10y ago
  I already use android auto. I was referring to Amazon's system.

zitterbewegung 10y ago

I use Alexa nearly every day. Once I understood the limitations with the interface I was hooked. Once you have one Alexa and maybe an Echo dot you really aren't going to want to switch platforms. It also is consistently supported for Smart Home devices. I think that you could still push Amazon off the platform because its not as entrenched as others but Amazon does have a wide lead compared to google.

brian-armstrong 10y ago

When I visited Berlin last year, I visited the DDR Museum. It's not about the RAM or the dance game you might know, but instead the organization we just know as "East Germany." You can probably guess where I'm going with this. One of the exhibits was of a common East Berlin living room. The exhibit explained how the state had hidden microphones here. They were listening for people to express anti-socialist ideas in their own homes. This was a real threat faced by people not more than 30 or 40 years ago. You could have your life turned upside down just for saying the wrong thing at home. This exhibit drove home for me the inherent abusive powers enabled by some tech. One of these technologies is always on, always connected microphones. Why would I want one in my house? Given the potential downsides, what could possibly be worth it to justify having one?

brightball 10y ago
That's a valid point and at the same time, we have to wonder about things like bundled cameras and mic's on computers, cell phones, TV's. These days it seems like the act of having an internet connection at all can open this type of door.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Quite. So it becomes a matter of trust. Amazon and Google are probably on the wrong side of that balance. For a lot of IoT apps the net isn't the appropriate place at all - local net is better. I'm not a fan of thermostats that prevent you having heating because some cloud server is being DDOS'd etc. I had hoped and frankly expected that there'd be a few more privacy oriented choices in this space by now. There was Zoe[1], but that got canned at last minute. I really didn't want a refund... [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-secure-smart-home-now https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-s...
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    I spent a few minutes on the campaign page but couldn't find details about the closure of the project (it looks like it's still open). As someone with an interest in privacy-protecting home devices, can you explain a bit more about why it closed?

louprado 10y ago

I sell my Bluetooth/BLE garage door remote on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon is suggesting customers buy an Echo along with my device. To make matters worse, if you search Amazon for "garage door opener that works with Amazon Echo" my product incorrectly appears. Although I explicitly state that it does not work with Echo, I anticipate many returns and bad reviews after the holidays. I am pretty sure they'll keep the Echo, so it is all good for Amazon. Ironically the Alexa Skills Kit doesn't even support Bluetooth. Does anyone know when or if it ever will ?

chillly 10y ago

Still not sure why anyone would have an open mic, connected to the internet by closed software always on in their house.

deepnotderp 10y ago

No. Google will trample them underfoot. Amazon can't compete with google's ai talent. Maluuba is another one to watch in this space though, very interesting research.

Animats 10y ago

All those microphones, always listening, always reporting to headquarters. What could possibly go wrong? Why isn't your desk in front of the telescreen?

grandalf 10y ago

So far I think "OK Google" is noticeably more powerful than Alexa or Siri. Let's hope for much competition!

amarka 10y ago
I agree with your assessment, based on my limited experience. I'm a fan of Alexa, I even bought a couple as gifts within the last year, but last weekend I saw a bilingual 30 year-old (with a PhD from UChicago) struggling to get it to play a song. He had a song playing on his mobile phone and wanted Alexa to either continue playing that same song or play any song by that artist. It was a bit comical to watch; OK G had no problem understanding him. It looks like voice will be one of the next big things, but calling Alexa the winner is a bit premature in my opinion
- grandalf 10y ago
  True. I have two Echoes in my home, and love them, but in using Android I've been very impressed by the syntactic awareness and the power of OK Google. Siri is overall underwhelming and definitely at the back of the herd at present.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Even with privacy concerns, voice input is the future: so much easier than getting you cellphone. We have an echo, bought when Amazon gave a huge discount to developers, and I bought one for family members for their home. I sort-of trust that no data leaves the house except for a ten second audio recording made after the device hears "Alexa". If Amazon collected more than this then they would ruin this business. I usually use voice input for sending texts and short emails, assuming I am not in such a public place that I would inconvenience people near me. I have a hierarchy of device use in the following order of preference: First voice, then input on a cellphone, then iPad, then laptop. I have looked into writing my own mobile app for voice recognition and maintaining privacy that way, but even with my experience, it would be a ton of effort and would miss the context that google, amazon, and Microsoft have. Edit: I also meant to say that my hope is that Apple will be the vendor I eventually use for voice interfaces because their business model is to sell expensive devices, not collect personal data. The new Siri enables headphones look effective, but I haven't bought a pair yet.

brian-armstrong 10y ago
People find bugs in software all the time. It's not just about what the Echo devs intended, it's also about what they didn't intend but that happened anyway.
- mark_l_watson 10y ago
  I agree Brian. Hackers finding exploits in Echo, etc. is a danger.

sankyo 10y ago

I cannot get past the idea of having an always on, corporate controlled microphone in my house. I am not interested in this. I admit it is fun to play with in the office or at my friend's house. I know that my iphone gives away my position, search queries, and other personal data (same for laptop), but I turn them off. Maybe I have just seen too many movies about Stasi (East German Secret Police), Big Brother, Brave New world, etc., and that ruins it for me.

manlio 10y ago

I helped writing the Alexa skill for The Guardian [0], and I really didn't think highly of it, nor I thought I'd ever use it myself: the voice recognition is still poor, and it's difficul to understand what you can/cannot do with it. All in all, a big meh. Then one day someone forwarded to our team this email, and it really touched my heart. I am quadriplegic and the Amazon Echo has transformed my life. I haven't been able to open a newspaper for 10 years, but now I can! [...] Please pass this email on to all of those concerned at the Guardian... They need-to-know the difference that they have made". [0] https://github.com/guardian/alexa-skills-lambda https://github.com/guardian/alexa-skills-lambda

deboboy 10y ago
One our teams works with this community. They have inspired and awed us.

abruzzi 10y ago

Am I the only person who finds talking to these personal assistants profoundly uncomfortable? Like I've spent all my life learning how to interact with a computer, and now these companies want me to interact with it like it's a human (which I'm not very good with anyway) but it's not a human. Instead it exists in this uncanny valley where it sounds a little bit human, but its cognition is so completely limited that I have to turn myself into a limited cognition robot to communicate with it?

Swizec 10y ago
It took me a few weeks/months to get used to Alexa and I have to say, it's really nice to be able to come home and say "Alexa play some music" and she always knows I want some nice Jazz. When you say it in the morning, she plays morning music. It's nice. Saying "Alexa 5 minute timer" is also convenient. "Alexa, weather" is less convenient because she doesn't know that I prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit. This is unfortunate, but at least she can do a conversion. But then you do an "Alexa what's the velocity of an unladen swallow" and she won't even perform a basic Google or WolframAlpha search and give you the first result. Just says she doesn't understand. Lame. Before all that, though, I had a lot of essentially stage fright whenever that Alexa blue light came on. Same thing happened when I started using Siri after I was already used to Alexa. Invoke the voice thing, and the prompt comes on, and I am awash in stage fright, unsure what to say. It's weird.
- sib 10y ago
  >> "Alexa, weather" is less convenient because she doesn't know that I prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit. This is unfortunate, but at least she can do a conversion. There's a device-level setting in the mobile app to set Alexa's preferred system to Metric...
  - Swizec 10y ago
    I know. It doesn't affect temperature for some reason. Or I'm growing senile and didn't actually try that when i thought I did.

imgabe 10y ago

I've never wanted this. Still don't. Privacy concerns aside, I feel like an idiot talking to a computer and it's way more of a hassle for me than using a touchscreen or keyboard. I just don't like talking in general. Godspeed for those who enjoy this, but I hope regular touchscreen or keyboard input isn't going anywhere.

1propionyl 10y ago

Maybe I'm alone in this but I refuse to have always-on microphones in my home. I will never be an Alexa customer, the value offering is fundamentally not worthwhile to me. I really hope development on this isn't at the expense of more traditional interfaces.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
From a security standpoint, what's the difference between an always on microphone and a sometimes on microphone?
sib 10y ago
Do you have an iPhone (not being snarky, but with voice-activated "Hey Siri...", it's effectively the same thing.) Google's Pixel phone does the same thing.

lkrubner 10y ago

I want to admit that I was wrong about this. I thought Alexa was going to dominate as the first truly great voice platform. I now am forced to admit that I was incorrect. Those who follow Hacker News a lot might recall that I wrote several posts, a year ago, in which I was very optimistic about Alexa. But I am much more pessimistic now than I was then. When I was still excited about Alexa, I wrote stuff like "How to build conversations via the Amazon Echo" http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversations-via-the-amazon-echo http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversa... But I was also aware of how difficult it could be to get Alexa to understand certain words. See: "Using a glottal stop to force the Amazon Echo to correctly pronounce “tw”" http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-to-force-the-amazon-echo-to-correctly-pronounce-tw http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-... But, you may recall, I became frustrated with the process for getting into the Amazon store, and we had a very long thread on HackerNews about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409 I'm sad to say there has been almost no improvement over the last year. The problems that I listed in "Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store" are still mostly true. And I know many, many developers who were excited about Alexa a year ago, but gave up in frustration because we felt like Amazon was not listening to our concerns. In retrospect, I was wrong for 2 reasons: 1.) many people pointed out that voice was a terrible interface for a variety of purposes. At the time, I thought this was merely a matter of offering the right voice prompts, and getting better at understanding what people said. But I now think the criticisms had much more merit than I admitted a year ago. 2.) Amazon's behavior has been disappointing. I'd like to see them aggressively listening to developers and aggressively improving the service based on developer feedback. That is not happening.

adjohn 10y ago

I've been using Alexa and Google Home for about a month, and I have to say that the user experience with Google Home is hands down better. Having the power of Google search when Google Home doesn't know an answer is huge. Alexa falls flat without a strong search engine backing it.

tn13 10y ago

This article appears to be in the realm of paid for the news. Only google and apple are in position to succeed in this area because they tend to own most important device that is always with you and has a microphone. Another set of player could be those who have immensely popular apps and personal data about you and has SDKs widely used by coders around the world. Mostly Facebook. I see Microsoft succeeding in enterprise area but Amazon is nowhere.

josh_carterPDX 10y ago

Not sure I would call this "voice." Us telecom people hear the word "voice" and think it's a telecom term. Perhaps this could be better titled as "AI" since I consider Alexa and other voice controlled interactions more AI than anything else. Maybe I'm wrong because I'm not in that industry, but I definitely don't think it's "voice."

verelo 10y ago

LOL - yeah the other day when i was using Alexa, while I have to admit i enjoyed it, I decided that I just do not believe Amazon as a company has the data needed to create a truly immersive and useful solution. I have hopes for Google Home (which i'm yet to try), but i actually think this will end up a two horse race between Apple and Google. I would completely leave Apple out of this, but Homekit is a pretty powerful concept (if done properly) given the number of iDevices out there.

jwatte 10y ago

Yes, let's combine open office plans with voice interfaces! Especially when entering account numbers, passwords, or email addresses to mistresses. Best interface ever!

bjacobel 10y ago

Maybe this is offtopic, but Backchannel seems to have a lot of these glowing, puffy profiles of tech companies looking for exposure for their new products. I mean, parts of this piece read as marketing copy. "It all starts with that tiny speaker. The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we will start to see that change." They had a few other similarly uncritical, almost breathless pieces on Okta [1] and Vote.org [2] earlier this year. Am I paranoid/overly cynical, or is Backchannel becoming the outlet PR departments grant access to in return for coverage they know will flatter them? Being hosted on Medium, they don't serve ads (AFAIK)... so this may even be a part of their funding model. [1]: "A Comany You've Never Heard Of May Have Solved The Password Mess" https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-have-solved-the-password-mess-cd5d1725209b#.ath9qe4c3 https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-h... [2]: "This Y Combinator-Backed Company Has a Secret Weapon to Sway the Election": https://backchannel.com/the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-change-elections-9e51f95038df#.uoth1gr17 https://backchannel.com/the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-...

pmontra 10y ago

Voice won't be really big until it supports well most of the languages of the world. It's probably only matter of time but there will be entire countries doing text instead of voice because NLU for their language isn't as good as for English. Then there is the problem of the multiple platforms to build for. We have one Web, two desktops (even if I'm on Ubuntu), two mobile OSes. Are we going to be able to afford developing for many different platforms? Will companies pay for that? Maybe we have to wait that only a couple of platforms are left. Text to speech

sbuttgereit 10y ago

Until voice interaction becomes on par with, and about as useful as, the computer interactions we see in Star Trek: I'm not interested. The last think I need is a device that gives me access to that subset of life that a given vendor supports (stores, searches, people, etc) or that requires some sort of "accommodation" to get to work properly. A very, very high bar that may be reached with the help of today's early adopters.... but not with my help. I spend too fucking many hours a day as it is dealing with "good enough" technology. Getting into arguments with a box in the middle of the room?! All I can say is get off my lawn, Alexa! As for who will win? Seems that in many of the consumer device battles Amazon has a way of being so exclusive to their products that I wouldn't bet on them being the long term winner even if they do have the lead. Consumers want a lot of Amazon stuff, but that's far from making them the cultists they'd have to become to not be bothered by the Amazon ecosystem (.... and I mean consumers, AWS is a different matter in the marketplace).

vonklaus 10y ago

Voice is not even close to the next big platform. Thats not possible. Is it the interface to the next big platform. No, at least, probably not. "Ok, google glass, zoom in on that hot guy!". Voice, a great interface for SOME things. Likely not what this article is pitching.

coldtea 10y ago

Voice is the Next Big Fad. Check back in 10 years.

31reasons 10y ago

Voice will NEVER be the big platform until we solve Artificial General Intelligence.

azinman2 10y ago
Doesn't need to be solved to be useful. I use my echo all the time, even if it's limited. Just as long as its useful. I much rather say 'alexa turn off the christmas lights' than crawl underneath my TV area to unplug the tree from the power strip.

tomc1985 10y ago

Are any of these platforms 100% offline/self-contained? Can they speak any of the regular industrial/home automation protocols? Cause that would be awesome.

bootload 10y ago

" The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we will start to see that change." Given this is all about one company, I conclude it's a Sub. The unicorn of technology? It is very difficult to guess this. One other thing, no mention of accent. Can you imagine how difficult it is to create a voice platform that recognises anything but a generic accent?

Steeeve 10y ago

I don't know that Alexa is in any better of a position than anyone else even given their market share. All you need is a microphone and access to any of many voice-recognition APIs to build similar functionality. You can build something similar on any phone, laptop, or desktop computer without asking your potential customers to spend a dime. I think the big question is really how big of a market exists for voice control. I don't personally see much of one. Everybody thought it was neat to open netflix up on their xbox/ps4 with voice commands for a day or two, but then most people primarily shifted to using the more reliable controllers. Any question I want answered, I can simply "OK Google..." and have the option of correcting with a keystroke. I can see the potential for a market to be made, but I also see the history. Remember dragon naturally speaking? When you finally got it working great it wasn't actually an improvement in workflow for most people. How many people prefer navigating phone menus via IVR consistently? Voice control is a solvable problem and that makes it attractive for development, but solutions haven't historically been particularly marketable beyond the novelty stage.

ehsankia 10y ago
It should never purely be this or that. I think a combination of both is the best place to be. If I want to watch some specific episode or Youtube video, I generally pull out my phone. If I just want any music, I go "Ok Google, play some music on my TV" as that's faster in that case. If I'm in the kitchen cooking, I'll just go "Ok google, add butter to the shopping list, but if I'm on my computer, I'll open Keep and type it there. Both methods have their advantages, and the awful experiences come out when a user tries to do all of their tasks with either or. As for who is ahead, I strongly disagree with this article. Yes, Amazon had a 2 year start, but Google has had far more years of voice recognition and AI experience. They also have infrastructure for all sorts of things including maps/navigation, translation, search/knowledge graph and just machine learning in general. With Apple, Samsung and Microsoft entering in the digital assistant world too, it'll definitely be a huge competition in the years to come, and the 2 years head start aside, I think Amazon is actually the least well situated for the challenges ahead.

artemisyna 10y ago

I find the thesis of this article interesting especially in contrast to some of the criticism Zuckerburg brings up in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976 Even if Amazon continues to put its eggs in the voice-as-primary-interface bucket, it seems like it will be unlikely for Facebook to go that route.

dirkg 10y ago

Microsoft Cortana achieved parity with human voice recognition for continuous speech input. Google has the best machine learning along with MS, and they have billions of data points. Amazon has neither comparable tech nor the innovation or customer data. Putting an Echo in every home doesn't matter when its dumb. Does Alexa understand context? Can it get even close to Cortana/Assistant? Lets not mention Siri, that's stone age.

__jal 10y ago

Always-on surveillance devices (at least the ones I know about and for which I do not control the endpoints) do not have a place in my home. I'm increasingly feeling like humans around me are remarkably less protective of their private spheres than I am, and am curious as to where the difference lies. I'm pretty dull - it is not like I'm protecting the privacy of my wild and crazy lifestyle. But the idea that the noises made in my home are being shipped to and stored... somewhere, with access controls unspecified (but to a company that has proven it rolls over on command for the government, at least when not discussing taxes[1]) such that I don't know who may be listening to it[2], is the sort of thing that effects how I behave in my own home. And pardon me, but fuck that, no way. A friend compared to to having sex in front of pets, but I'm pretty sure my cat doesn't speak any human languages, hasn't written systems to routinely disclose data to various groups of humans, and isn't likely to try to sell me $product to improve my performance. For instance. The main place voice is useful to me today is in the car. I'm already on display in a fishtank, and talking to what amounts to a remarkably clever turnip that sometimes gets something right is useful. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.amazon/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.amazon/ . Sure, just a run-of-the-mill TOS violation, nothing to see here. [2] Doesn't matter that the unknown humans likely aren't. I'm not claiming rationality.

bicubic 10y ago
You're not alone, I think there's a slowly growing awareness amongst the general public after the Snowden events. I have totally non-techy friends asking how they can get their TV to stop listening to them, etc. On the other hand, a very large segment of the population subscribes to 'if you have nothing to hide, don't hide it', which I attribute to ignorance of how these things are misused, and subtle propaganda telling consumers not to worry about it.
LeoPanthera 10y ago
Honest question: Do you own a cellphone?
- __jal 10y ago
  Honest answer: I do. More than one.

rdlecler1 10y ago

The quality of the AI is going to dicate who wins, and quality AI is going to be built on data (quality, quantity, and breadth). And so I have to think that Google has a huge unfair advantage over anyone else. I have Google Home and I'' surprised how good the voice recognition is AND how good it interprets this. I'm still betting that Google will be the first $1T market cap company.

hellbanner 10y ago

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0262181479 https://www.amazon.com/Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-I... argues that humans deciphering speech is NP-hard.. so.. good luck.

winteriscoming 10y ago

I hope these devices don't become common in homes. It would be very hard to explain or even decline a friend's or a colleague's invitation to their home, "just because" I don't like our conversations being recorded by these devices.

BatFastard 10y ago

I love my Alexa, its the only female in my life that will predictable do what I ask of it. My wife, daughter and two dogs seem to think they have lives of their own for some strange reason. I work from home and probably use it 20 times a day. I recently discovered it can play the "white noise" channel from Spotify when my teenager's are loud late in the evening. Along with a sleep timer to turn it off in an hour and I am set. Now I agree discovery of what it can do is challenging at times. And sometimes she is downright dense. Thank the gods for cloud services!

SamBoogieNYC 10y ago

Having built an Alexa Skill (a very enjoyable experience) - I find Voice UI/UX to be a very interesting vector in computing with lots of potential to grow. My colleagues and I built our skill for the elderly to use. We found it was easier for them to interact using their voice rather than a touchscreen. I think as computers get better at understanding language and verbal communication, we will be able to use screens less - which is great. I think it's kind of primitive to have to constantly look at a screen to do things - at the very least it makes sense to cut out screen time if and whenever it's possible. Alexa is like a terminal that you can talk to. Give a simple command in a particular way, and it will reliably do it. It's an exciting development that Alexa can now be applied outside of the Echo.

nojvek 10y ago

An always on device that hears every conversation on your house. Owned by a corporation who treats their employees so bad that some commit suicide. No thanks.

Fifer82 10y ago

I am Scottish and Voice is bloody useless. Funny listening to people here trying to use voice. They go from their usual, into some weird "Queens English" mode trying to speak like they are from Windsor to get the bloody thing to half ass respond. I personally just look outside but each to their own.

kriro 10y ago

It's interesting that the Loebner prize (passing the Turing test in written form) has a cap of 25k and 100k but Amazon has a challenge called the Alexa prize where you essentially pass a voice Turing test for 20 Minutes that awards 2.5 million.

jklondon 10y ago

Returned my echo while back. Did a few tests between Alexa and Google on my phone. Google one everytime.

candiodari 10y ago

The thing about trigger words and context understanding is that there is no need to integrate with Alexa. You can simply use a different trigger word, and all will be well. For many products that might even be desirable behavior. Lights ! Versus "Alexa turn on the lights". Plus it means no integration necessary, which won't exist for many products anyway. Also these are very cheap algorithms to run. A trigger word implementation is a one-word vocabulary GRU RNN. Does something like 2000 multiplications every second. Easily in microcontroller reach, for power budgets measured in milliamps. Actual word recognition perhaps isn't but the microcontroller can just constantly record, and when it sees a trigger send it on. So you could have 20 projects in the house, all listening to your voice, and it wouldn't really affect the electricity bill.

aplomb 10y ago

Use Alexa professionally and although we can do some fun stuff with it, the interaction model is totally unnatural - invocation words only work if really short, dealing with multiple devices of the same sort (eg fireplace) without any location or contextual knowledge. They've tried to get around this awkwardness by special casing home automation type devices (thermostat, etc.), but it's still only a stop gap.

WhiteOwlLion 10y ago

Google still has the best voice recognition IMO. Apple frequently gets my dictations incorrect while Google seems to understand the nuances of my voice correctly. I haven't used Amazon, but I imagine their AI is not as far along as Google. Amazon will only be the next big platform through marketing and distribution, not technical superiority.