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I'm going to stick my neck out as a potential Luddite here, but outside of playing music, and some general "answering questions", I don't see a use case for thi

by donw 10y ago

I'm going to stick my neck out as a potential Luddite here, but outside of playing music, and some general "answering questions", I don't see a use case for things like the Echo or Dot. Being able to ask for timers, or unit conversions while cooking, is probably the biggest bang-for-the-buck that I get out of Siri. But outside of that, there's nothing that a Dot does for me that warrants having a microphone in my house that is 24/7 connected to Amazon. Not having some sort of voice-print analysis is also a real concern. A friend bought an Echo a little while back, and me being me, I couldn't resist the urge to ask it to order 10 large bags of kitty litter... which it cheerfully tried to do. Maybe I'm just odd. What do other people use these things for?

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
I use it to turn my lights on and off. It works great for this, I don't need to leave my chair/couch/bed and I can turn many lights on quicker than any other method I'm aware of. I use it to play music, usually through Spotify. I use Amazon music occasionally when I'm looking for a song (usually while cooking or the like) but on the whole it's inferior. I ask for the weather in two or three cities while I'm tying my shoes, so I can decide if I need a jacket. I use it for timers when I'm already using my oven timer. I appreciate being able to ask how much time is left while I'm not in the kitchen and thus can't see the oven. I use it for unit conversions (how many oz in a quart? How many tablespoons in half a cup?). The most use I get from it is when my hands are busy, my phone is either: in my pocket, or in another room plugged in charging. Or dead (this happens less frequently since I bought a new phone recently). I also find that context matters. When I use my phone's voice assistant I'm usually trying to do something on my phone. With my Echo I'm just trying to do something. I have a lot more success with the Echo. I bought a few dots when they went on sale this fall, but I've only set up one. It works surprisingly well with the echo. They rarely get confused. Sometimes the device much farther away responds instead. You can set up a passcode for ordering, or disable it entirely -- I've never used it and probably never will. I already carry a microphone around with me all day and work in an office surrounded by literally hundreds of microphones, or a few dozen in my house (my Dropcam is always on and has a mic. My TV remote has a mic for some reason I hope to never discover. My laptop, my iPad, and various other devices have microphones too). Look, I didn't see a use case for it either. But once I got on, it infiltrated my home and now feels like an extension of it. I also didn't see the point of smart phones, tablets or IoT devices in general, but now I have all of them. It's clear this sort of interaction is the future.
agildehaus 10y ago
Under your definition, your phone is a 24/7 microphone connected to either Google or Apple, your PC a 24/7 microphone connected to Microsoft and literally every other vendor that has a service running. The privacy concern is valid, but its also valid for literally every other piece of electronics. At some point you have to trust that it's only recording during the short period after you say "OK Google" and if it were doing something more nefarious someone would figure that out and it'd be huge and damaging news. These are basically first-generation products. The idea is to improve upon their problems, find where they are useful and where they are not, and step closer to having a real virtual assistant.
- visarga 10y ago
  TL;DR - automate privacy protection in order to serve the uninformed masses of people leaking sensitive data online We're disclosing more and more private information to assistants, but especially to Facebook, Google and the respective phone company we're using. I think it would be the case to study automatic detection of sensitive information disclosure, in order to place better privacy guards. I envision a system where the web browser or voice agent would immediately know the sensitiveness level of information we are about to divulge, and route it through anonymous systems or block the leak before it happens. A database containing our online identities, credit cards, passwords and text run through a topic classifier would make good features for sensitive disclosure protection. It would be the privacy equivalent of antivirus software. Maybe we could have a smart (privacy protecting) web browser and agent. In the future, people are going to have to convince their personal assistants if they need to disclose any private info to third parties. It's not going to be so easy to collect massive hordes of private data about people. It's just the natural step for privacy, in a world where AI is already being used so much to undermine it. Time to get some AI fighting for our side of the privacy war.
deegles 10y ago
What would a voice assistant have to do to convince you otherwise?
chris_st 10y ago
My son-in-law was over for Christmas, and he didn't know that I had an Echo dot, so to show it off I said, "Alexa, tell me a joke". It told us a lame joke. My SIL had to whip out his android phone and say, "Hey Google, tell me a joke!" and it told us a lame, funny joke. Score one for Google. Then he said, "Google, tell me a Christmas joke" and it told us a pretty poor Christmas joke. I then asked Alexa for a Christmas joke, and it told us a funny Christmas joke! So, clearly, in by far the most import imaginable use case, they're pretty much tied :-)
Eridrus 10y ago
My Nexus 5X has asked me a few times if I'd like to unlock it with my voice, so it seems like they've got it working to some extent. I think that beyond the security concerns, it will be really useful when you share the assistant, so that it can have the proper context for recommendations, calendar info, etc.

by donw 10y ago

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago

I use it to turn my lights on and off. It works great for this, I don't need to leave my chair/couch/bed and I can turn many lights on quicker than any other method I'm aware of. I use it to play music, usually through Spotify. I use Amazon music occasionally when I'm looking for a song (usually while cooking or the like) but on the whole it's inferior. I ask for the weather in two or three cities while I'm tying my shoes, so I can decide if I need a jacket. I use it for timers when I'm already using my oven timer. I appreciate being able to ask how much time is left while I'm not in the kitchen and thus can't see the oven. I use it for unit conversions (how many oz in a quart? How many tablespoons in half a cup?). The most use I get from it is when my hands are busy, my phone is either: in my pocket, or in another room plugged in charging. Or dead (this happens less frequently since I bought a new phone recently). I also find that context matters. When I use my phone's voice assistant I'm usually trying to do something on my phone. With my Echo I'm just trying to do something. I have a lot more success with the Echo. I bought a few dots when they went on sale this fall, but I've only set up one. It works surprisingly well with the echo. They rarely get confused. Sometimes the device much farther away responds instead. You can set up a passcode for ordering, or disable it entirely -- I've never used it and probably never will. I already carry a microphone around with me all day and work in an office surrounded by literally hundreds of microphones, or a few dozen in my house (my Dropcam is always on and has a mic. My TV remote has a mic for some reason I hope to never discover. My laptop, my iPad, and various other devices have microphones too). Look, I didn't see a use case for it either. But once I got on, it infiltrated my home and now feels like an extension of it. I also didn't see the point of smart phones, tablets or IoT devices in general, but now I have all of them. It's clear this sort of interaction is the future.

agildehaus 10y ago

Under your definition, your phone is a 24/7 microphone connected to either Google or Apple, your PC a 24/7 microphone connected to Microsoft and literally every other vendor that has a service running. The privacy concern is valid, but its also valid for literally every other piece of electronics. At some point you have to trust that it's only recording during the short period after you say "OK Google" and if it were doing something more nefarious someone would figure that out and it'd be huge and damaging news. These are basically first-generation products. The idea is to improve upon their problems, find where they are useful and where they are not, and step closer to having a real virtual assistant.

visarga 10y ago
TL;DR - automate privacy protection in order to serve the uninformed masses of people leaking sensitive data online We're disclosing more and more private information to assistants, but especially to Facebook, Google and the respective phone company we're using. I think it would be the case to study automatic detection of sensitive information disclosure, in order to place better privacy guards. I envision a system where the web browser or voice agent would immediately know the sensitiveness level of information we are about to divulge, and route it through anonymous systems or block the leak before it happens. A database containing our online identities, credit cards, passwords and text run through a topic classifier would make good features for sensitive disclosure protection. It would be the privacy equivalent of antivirus software. Maybe we could have a smart (privacy protecting) web browser and agent. In the future, people are going to have to convince their personal assistants if they need to disclose any private info to third parties. It's not going to be so easy to collect massive hordes of private data about people. It's just the natural step for privacy, in a world where AI is already being used so much to undermine it. Time to get some AI fighting for our side of the privacy war.

deegles 10y ago

What would a voice assistant have to do to convince you otherwise?

chris_st 10y ago

My son-in-law was over for Christmas, and he didn't know that I had an Echo dot, so to show it off I said, "Alexa, tell me a joke". It told us a lame joke. My SIL had to whip out his android phone and say, "Hey Google, tell me a joke!" and it told us a lame, funny joke. Score one for Google. Then he said, "Google, tell me a Christmas joke" and it told us a pretty poor Christmas joke. I then asked Alexa for a Christmas joke, and it told us a funny Christmas joke! So, clearly, in by far the most import imaginable use case, they're pretty much tied :-)

Eridrus 10y ago

My Nexus 5X has asked me a few times if I'd like to unlock it with my voice, so it seems like they've got it working to some extent. I think that beyond the security concerns, it will be really useful when you share the assistant, so that it can have the proper context for recommendations, calendar info, etc.