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I just got an Echo for black friday. I can't get how dumb the thing is with all this press? Alexa play some ambient music... "I think you'll like this... play

I just got an Echo for black friday. I can't get how dumb the thing is with all this press? Alexa play some ambient music... "I think you'll like this... playing Selena Gomez"... Alexa I hate Selena Gomez... "Shuffling Selena Gomez..." Alexa Stop "Playing Stop & Erase by Selena Gomez" Literally happened here just now.

nmstoker 9y ago
I don't want to come across as an Alexa fanboy and defend it, but it would help to understand which parts of your interaction you think of as dumb. I agree Alexa Stop was clearly a mistake (albeit, not one I've ever observed) but for the rest, it's understanding what you said, you simply have different expectations of what the best response is. Were it a human, one wouldn't say they were dumb, just that they had differing taste or ideas. In particular what did you expect from "I hate Selena Gomez"? Have you seen any other music player that handles that kind of ambiguous "command"?
- aaronbrethorst 9y ago
  A natural language interface should adapt to you as opposed to requiring you to adapt to it. The part where it comes across as being "dumb" is where it Requires. The. Human. Being. To. Conform. To. Its. Very. Strict. And. Narrow. Language. Processing. Abilities.
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    I mean, does “Play something else” work? That’s one step removed from expecting Alexa to understand human emotions but still a rather natural interaction
    - derefr 9y ago
      If phone trees can jump straight to a representative when you swear at them, Alexa should be able to treat an angry tone of voice as a generic undo.
      - BoorishBears 9y ago
        If phone trees can jump to an option in a tree whose options you could probably map out by hand in a few minutes... NLP should recognize your tone of voice and undo actions that have an uncounterable number of subtle interactions with different systems? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? And generic undo of playing a station is... playing a different station? Not stopping the music altogether? The concept of generic undo would be hard for people to come to a consensus on, let alone an NLP system.
      - lozenge 9y ago
        "Alexa, play I'm going crazy" "Sorry. Turning off".
    - kraig911 9y ago
      I tried that. It did not work.
      - BoorishBears 9y ago
        Looks like a bug: https://www.reddit.com/r/alexa/comments/6s7tgp/play_something_else_command_no_longer_working/ https://www.reddit.com/r/alexa/comments/6s7tgp/play_somethin...
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  I would agree with OP that if it can't understand "I hate $musical_artist" it is almost worthlessly dumb
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > it would help to understand which parts of your interaction you think of as dumb. All of them were dumb. That's the problem with AI conversational interfaces. Once people talk to an "assistant" they intuitively expect the level of intelligence of a human. Because of that, mistakes are not tolerated much and conversation quickly goes from "ah this is so awesome we are living in the future" to "this is the dumbest thing ever, just give me a search box and I'll type what I need or I'll click with the mouse". Usually irritation gets amplified because with each mistake, the AI forces the human to repeat or explain things, which just makes it worse. > Have you seen any other music player that handles that kind of ambiguous "command"? Other music players are not anthropomorphized AI assistants. So people don't expect that from them. Once it has a human sounding name, and you are addressing it by that name, the expectation is that it would act and perform like a human. > Were it a human, one wouldn't say they were dumb, just that they had differing taste or ideas. That's interesting solution perhaps, what if it responded with "I don't know much about music, so I can't decide or pick what to play". I think some people would have preferred that instead of Selena Gomez. Even further maybe start a dialog about "can you give me some example of the artists or songs you like, I'll find some similar ones". That might be less irritating than simply playing Selena Gomez. > In particular what did you expect from "I hate Selena Gomez"? No OP, but I would expect it to never pick or play Selena Gomez again, unless explicitly asked.
  - vadimberman 9y ago
    The phrase can and should be handled as a synonym of "stop" in the current context.
- arkades 9y ago
  > Have you seen any other music player that handles that kind of ambiguous "command"? Siri does sorta; I just tested it now. I said “I hate this song,” and I got the feedback “I’ll remember you hate that song,” and a different song from another artist immediately began. “I hate this artist” immediately transitioned to a song by a different artist. “I hate (artist name)” didn’t work, but the framework is clearly there. This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable functionality to expect at all. It’s already mostly there. In Siri.

nmstoker 9y ago

I don't want to come across as an Alexa fanboy and defend it, but it would help to understand which parts of your interaction you think of as dumb. I agree Alexa Stop was clearly a mistake (albeit, not one I've ever observed) but for the rest, it's understanding what you said, you simply have different expectations of what the best response is. Were it a human, one wouldn't say they were dumb, just that they had differing taste or ideas. In particular what did you expect from "I hate Selena Gomez"? Have you seen any other music player that handles that kind of ambiguous "command"?

aaronbrethorst 9y ago
A natural language interface should adapt to you as opposed to requiring you to adapt to it. The part where it comes across as being "dumb" is where it Requires. The. Human. Being. To. Conform. To. Its. Very. Strict. And. Narrow. Language. Processing. Abilities.
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  I mean, does “Play something else” work? That’s one step removed from expecting Alexa to understand human emotions but still a rather natural interaction
  - derefr 9y ago
    If phone trees can jump straight to a representative when you swear at them, Alexa should be able to treat an angry tone of voice as a generic undo.
    - BoorishBears 9y ago
      If phone trees can jump to an option in a tree whose options you could probably map out by hand in a few minutes... NLP should recognize your tone of voice and undo actions that have an uncounterable number of subtle interactions with different systems? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? And generic undo of playing a station is... playing a different station? Not stopping the music altogether? The concept of generic undo would be hard for people to come to a consensus on, let alone an NLP system.
    - lozenge 9y ago
      "Alexa, play I'm going crazy" "Sorry. Turning off".
  - kraig911 9y ago
    I tried that. It did not work.
    - BoorishBears 9y ago
      Looks like a bug: https://www.reddit.com/r/alexa/comments/6s7tgp/play_something_else_command_no_longer_working/ https://www.reddit.com/r/alexa/comments/6s7tgp/play_somethin...
tehwebguy 9y ago
I would agree with OP that if it can't understand "I hate $musical_artist" it is almost worthlessly dumb
rdtsc 9y ago
> it would help to understand which parts of your interaction you think of as dumb. All of them were dumb. That's the problem with AI conversational interfaces. Once people talk to an "assistant" they intuitively expect the level of intelligence of a human. Because of that, mistakes are not tolerated much and conversation quickly goes from "ah this is so awesome we are living in the future" to "this is the dumbest thing ever, just give me a search box and I'll type what I need or I'll click with the mouse". Usually irritation gets amplified because with each mistake, the AI forces the human to repeat or explain things, which just makes it worse. > Have you seen any other music player that handles that kind of ambiguous "command"? Other music players are not anthropomorphized AI assistants. So people don't expect that from them. Once it has a human sounding name, and you are addressing it by that name, the expectation is that it would act and perform like a human. > Were it a human, one wouldn't say they were dumb, just that they had differing taste or ideas. That's interesting solution perhaps, what if it responded with "I don't know much about music, so I can't decide or pick what to play". I think some people would have preferred that instead of Selena Gomez. Even further maybe start a dialog about "can you give me some example of the artists or songs you like, I'll find some similar ones". That might be less irritating than simply playing Selena Gomez. > In particular what did you expect from "I hate Selena Gomez"? No OP, but I would expect it to never pick or play Selena Gomez again, unless explicitly asked.
- vadimberman 9y ago
  The phrase can and should be handled as a synonym of "stop" in the current context.
arkades 9y ago
> Have you seen any other music player that handles that kind of ambiguous "command"? Siri does sorta; I just tested it now. I said “I hate this song,” and I got the feedback “I’ll remember you hate that song,” and a different song from another artist immediately began. “I hate this artist” immediately transitioned to a song by a different artist. “I hate (artist name)” didn’t work, but the framework is clearly there. This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable functionality to expect at all. It’s already mostly there. In Siri.