12 ms·

Why We May Soon Be Living in Alexa’s World

29 points by timdavila 9y ago

tostitos1979 9y ago
Doesn't say why the Echo device was wailing. Kind of annoying.
- timdavila 9y ago
  Yeah, that was a pretty creepy story with no resolution. My baby monitor is the only device that wails at me at night :)
tyingq 9y ago
I totally buy the story from a personal perspective, but it does seem like the general cloud marketshare case across Google, Azure, and AWS is starting to normalize. I'm excited about the possibilities of the big 3 competing on a more level playing field. Am I being naive here, or not? It feels like a new marketplace is opening up.
- hashkb 9y ago
  I've just moved into a new house and have spent quite a few hours smartifying it. What I'll say is that, though there will be competition, once a user chooses an ecosystem, they are locking themselves into one side of a 1990's Mac vs PC-esque death race. Using Home Assistant and jumping through some hoops, I've been able to force onto the same system some devices that really put up a massive fight to play nicely together; and I have even more manual work before I'll be able to use Google Assistant to control it all with my voice. The competition, though... it's really, really bad for most users.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    Well, from my first impression Alexa is rubbish. Went round a friend on Friday who has one, people started throwing songs at it. It's slow and only roughly 20% of the time it managed to understand us. We figured out some trick of song then artist (or maybe artist than song) which made it work a little better. Worse still when it did understand us most of the time it was only able to play a sample. "prime". Do not buy.
PuffinBlue 9y ago
Pretty sure I should be the target market for this, and I bought one. But I don't use it and it sits unplugged on the shelf. I'm going to sell it while the going is good. It's just so pointless. You have to speak to it in some weird specific way to get it to integrate with other stuff and it feels so completely invasive. My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie, absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far. I'm a 'millennial' (if that matters) but this just doesn't have a place in my home. Even my kids, who loved shouting at it to play music, got bored of it and went back to selecting music on their devices. Maybe I'm getting old but it just feels like Alexa and other voice assistants are just getting shoved into stuff because it is a 'tech spec' and they hope that will sell their device. It's 3D all over again.
- erickhill 9y ago
  > My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie, absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far. I live and breathe in the tech world, and this is exactly how my family and I use Alexa. Almost entirely for timers and alarms (kids use it every day to set a timer for when they practice piano). I use it as an alarm to help me wakeup in the AM. And we'll use it to turn lights on/off while on vacation. That's about it. The rest of our interactions are generally, "Alexa, STOP!"
- timdavila 9y ago
  Maybe it's not for everyone. We were given an Echo Dot for Christmas. By itself, it's at best a toy, I agree. I didn't use it after the first couple days. A couple weeks ago my perception changed when I got a Fire TV Stick, and paired it with Alexa. It feels really futuristic to be able to say "Alexa, play Psych" and see the TV change and start where we left off. I can control Netflix and Amazon streaming with only my voice. Now I'm looking for ways to be able to turn on/off the TV, and volume with Alexa. I think integrating with real world items is where Alexa shines. And as far as your comment on syntax, I've found it very intuitive, and it's only getting better every day.
Numberwang 9y ago
My prediction is these devises will start becoming worthwhile when Alexa et al reach actual human intelligence. Voice interfaces does nothing for anyone unless you are handicapped in some way.
- timdavila 9y ago
  I imagine by the time voice assistants reach human intelligence we will be able to ask Alexa to clean the floors and put the food away :)
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  Hands free multiple kitchen timer and radio/music player has been worth the cost of entry and I find useful on a daily basis.
- sf_rob 9y ago
  While I rarely use my Home, Android Auto is incredible. (Although it's still infuriating 5% of the time, it seems to like to make best guesses more than asking for clarification which is super annoying)
lifeformed 9y ago
So does anyone have any insight on the screaming thing? That seems kind of brushed over for something so nightmarish and surreal.
- vhold 9y ago
  The Alexa App shows every interaction, including the recorded sound that triggered it, and how "Alexa" interpreted it, so it would be possible for the author to investigate it.
FeepingCreature 9y ago
Is there a foss alternative for command-style speech recognition? I'd love to control my lamps this way.
- ThinkingGuy 9y ago
  I've longed for this as well. In theory it can be done. The individual ingredients are all available in the universe of FOSS software... speech to text (CMU Sphinx, etc), language parsing (NTLK, etc), IoT integration, etc. But assembling all these components and frameworks into an integrated, reliably-working system takes a great deal of time and effort, even if you're a skilled programmer (which I'm not).
- bonsai80 9y ago
  I haven't kept up with their progress, but looking today I see they're on the 2nd rev of the hardware now, which I take as a positive sign that they're still plugging away. https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ You can even go grab a docker image to try it out before buying the hardware. I'd love to buy one as I love the idea of a device like this that serves me, not the manufacturer. The main thing stopping me is in line with other comments in general: After a few days, when the novelty wears off, I'll have no use for it.
ams6110 9y ago
These kinds of devices are things I will never own. If they start coming as built-in non-optional features on televisions or other home electronics, I won't buy those either.
rfdub 9y ago
I'm only interested in owning one of these devices when I actually own it. That is when the device is actually working for me, not the corporation who sold it to me. I'd be very interested in a personal assistant/ daemon that wasn't part of some walled-garden ecosystem and would actually put the benefit of its user ahead of the profits of corporation. If I ask my daemon to find me a product, I want it to compare prices across all online vendors to find the best deal for me, not just default to purchasing from Amazon. I also want complete control over the information it shares with third-parties, and I want to directly benefit from any information sharing as my data is valuable and if folks want it they're going to have to provide me some benefit in exchange.
- richjdsmith 9y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly. I'd love to see an open source project or even the Mozilla Foundation or Canonical take on this challenge. Either way, until that happens, I will not be having such a pervasive data collecting device in my home.
zamalek 9y ago
I really hope it's not Alexa. My brother's Alexa will say stuff like "Sorry, I don't understand 'turn living room light off'" even though the "turn living room light on" command worked five minutes prior. Repeating back exactly what Alexa didn't understand works the second or third time. "Unpolished" doesn't do the platform justice. My Google Home is accurate, even though open doors and with the TV on. The Pixel 2 seems to yield control to Home just fine (which was a problem with my Pixel 1). The voice itself sounds slightly more natural and friendly - I sometimes find myself holding back a "thank you." Has anyone had any contradictory experiences to my own?
- WrtCdEvrydy 9y ago
  I always thank the AIs when I do a command... I hope skynet takes that as a positive when deciding how to get rid of me.
  - FreakyT 9y ago
    So do I! I'm always disappointed that my Google Home isn't capable of acknowledging a "thank you". I feel like it should be possible for it to achieve something like this (with a "no problem" response) without requiring additional communication with the cloud.
- lgleason 9y ago
  I have both. Honestly they both have strengths and weaknesses. There are devices on my smart home that Google Home has trouble with with voice commands and there are devices that Alexa is not good with. I personally like the Google cast functionality with the Google devices vs Alexa which can control music, but has no tone controls and no way to readily get digital audio out of it, but the failures of the Google devices are frequent enough to need to the Alexa as a backup.
sk1pper 9y ago
Can someone explain why I need one of these things instead of using Siri or Google Assistant on my phone?

29 points by timdavila 9y ago

tostitos1979 9y ago

Doesn't say why the Echo device was wailing. Kind of annoying.

timdavila 9y ago
Yeah, that was a pretty creepy story with no resolution. My baby monitor is the only device that wails at me at night :)

tyingq 9y ago

I totally buy the story from a personal perspective, but it does seem like the general cloud marketshare case across Google, Azure, and AWS is starting to normalize. I'm excited about the possibilities of the big 3 competing on a more level playing field. Am I being naive here, or not? It feels like a new marketplace is opening up.

hashkb 9y ago
I've just moved into a new house and have spent quite a few hours smartifying it. What I'll say is that, though there will be competition, once a user chooses an ecosystem, they are locking themselves into one side of a 1990's Mac vs PC-esque death race. Using Home Assistant and jumping through some hoops, I've been able to force onto the same system some devices that really put up a massive fight to play nicely together; and I have even more manual work before I'll be able to use Google Assistant to control it all with my voice. The competition, though... it's really, really bad for most users.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Well, from my first impression Alexa is rubbish. Went round a friend on Friday who has one, people started throwing songs at it. It's slow and only roughly 20% of the time it managed to understand us. We figured out some trick of song then artist (or maybe artist than song) which made it work a little better. Worse still when it did understand us most of the time it was only able to play a sample. "prime". Do not buy.

PuffinBlue 9y ago

Pretty sure I should be the target market for this, and I bought one. But I don't use it and it sits unplugged on the shelf. I'm going to sell it while the going is good. It's just so pointless. You have to speak to it in some weird specific way to get it to integrate with other stuff and it feels so completely invasive. My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie, absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far. I'm a 'millennial' (if that matters) but this just doesn't have a place in my home. Even my kids, who loved shouting at it to play music, got bored of it and went back to selecting music on their devices. Maybe I'm getting old but it just feels like Alexa and other voice assistants are just getting shoved into stuff because it is a 'tech spec' and they hope that will sell their device. It's 3D all over again.

erickhill 9y ago
> My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie, absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far. I live and breathe in the tech world, and this is exactly how my family and I use Alexa. Almost entirely for timers and alarms (kids use it every day to set a timer for when they practice piano). I use it as an alarm to help me wakeup in the AM. And we'll use it to turn lights on/off while on vacation. That's about it. The rest of our interactions are generally, "Alexa, STOP!"
timdavila 9y ago
Maybe it's not for everyone. We were given an Echo Dot for Christmas. By itself, it's at best a toy, I agree. I didn't use it after the first couple days. A couple weeks ago my perception changed when I got a Fire TV Stick, and paired it with Alexa. It feels really futuristic to be able to say "Alexa, play Psych" and see the TV change and start where we left off. I can control Netflix and Amazon streaming with only my voice. Now I'm looking for ways to be able to turn on/off the TV, and volume with Alexa. I think integrating with real world items is where Alexa shines. And as far as your comment on syntax, I've found it very intuitive, and it's only getting better every day.

Numberwang 9y ago

My prediction is these devises will start becoming worthwhile when Alexa et al reach actual human intelligence. Voice interfaces does nothing for anyone unless you are handicapped in some way.

timdavila 9y ago
I imagine by the time voice assistants reach human intelligence we will be able to ask Alexa to clean the floors and put the food away :)
yellow_postit 9y ago
Hands free multiple kitchen timer and radio/music player has been worth the cost of entry and I find useful on a daily basis.
sf_rob 9y ago
While I rarely use my Home, Android Auto is incredible. (Although it's still infuriating 5% of the time, it seems to like to make best guesses more than asking for clarification which is super annoying)

lifeformed 9y ago

So does anyone have any insight on the screaming thing? That seems kind of brushed over for something so nightmarish and surreal.

vhold 9y ago
The Alexa App shows every interaction, including the recorded sound that triggered it, and how "Alexa" interpreted it, so it would be possible for the author to investigate it.

FeepingCreature 9y ago

Is there a foss alternative for command-style speech recognition? I'd love to control my lamps this way.

ThinkingGuy 9y ago
I've longed for this as well. In theory it can be done. The individual ingredients are all available in the universe of FOSS software... speech to text (CMU Sphinx, etc), language parsing (NTLK, etc), IoT integration, etc. But assembling all these components and frameworks into an integrated, reliably-working system takes a great deal of time and effort, even if you're a skilled programmer (which I'm not).
bonsai80 9y ago
I haven't kept up with their progress, but looking today I see they're on the 2nd rev of the hardware now, which I take as a positive sign that they're still plugging away. https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ You can even go grab a docker image to try it out before buying the hardware. I'd love to buy one as I love the idea of a device like this that serves me, not the manufacturer. The main thing stopping me is in line with other comments in general: After a few days, when the novelty wears off, I'll have no use for it.

ams6110 9y ago

These kinds of devices are things I will never own. If they start coming as built-in non-optional features on televisions or other home electronics, I won't buy those either.

rfdub 9y ago

I'm only interested in owning one of these devices when I actually own it. That is when the device is actually working for me, not the corporation who sold it to me. I'd be very interested in a personal assistant/ daemon that wasn't part of some walled-garden ecosystem and would actually put the benefit of its user ahead of the profits of corporation. If I ask my daemon to find me a product, I want it to compare prices across all online vendors to find the best deal for me, not just default to purchasing from Amazon. I also want complete control over the information it shares with third-parties, and I want to directly benefit from any information sharing as my data is valuable and if folks want it they're going to have to provide me some benefit in exchange.

richjdsmith 9y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. I'd love to see an open source project or even the Mozilla Foundation or Canonical take on this challenge. Either way, until that happens, I will not be having such a pervasive data collecting device in my home.

zamalek 9y ago

I really hope it's not Alexa. My brother's Alexa will say stuff like "Sorry, I don't understand 'turn living room light off'" even though the "turn living room light on" command worked five minutes prior. Repeating back exactly what Alexa didn't understand works the second or third time. "Unpolished" doesn't do the platform justice. My Google Home is accurate, even though open doors and with the TV on. The Pixel 2 seems to yield control to Home just fine (which was a problem with my Pixel 1). The voice itself sounds slightly more natural and friendly - I sometimes find myself holding back a "thank you." Has anyone had any contradictory experiences to my own?

WrtCdEvrydy 9y ago
I always thank the AIs when I do a command... I hope skynet takes that as a positive when deciding how to get rid of me.
- FreakyT 9y ago
  So do I! I'm always disappointed that my Google Home isn't capable of acknowledging a "thank you". I feel like it should be possible for it to achieve something like this (with a "no problem" response) without requiring additional communication with the cloud.
lgleason 9y ago
I have both. Honestly they both have strengths and weaknesses. There are devices on my smart home that Google Home has trouble with with voice commands and there are devices that Alexa is not good with. I personally like the Google cast functionality with the Google devices vs Alexa which can control music, but has no tone controls and no way to readily get digital audio out of it, but the failures of the Google devices are frequent enough to need to the Alexa as a backup.

sk1pper 9y ago

Can someone explain why I need one of these things instead of using Siri or Google Assistant on my phone?