3 ms·

I'd say the Alexa is more like birth of the personal computer. Computers weren't very good in the mid 1970's. Now that companies realize there's a product her

I'd say the Alexa is more like birth of the personal computer. Computers weren't very good in the mid 1970's. Now that companies realize there's a product here, there will be an arm's race. Look for big improvements in next decade. Lots of people and billions of dollars are about to go into making these products better.

kristianc 8y ago
To take this analogy further, it is interesting that by say 1976, we seem to have already realized that what you need to make voice devices actually useful is a screen and a GUI.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  In 1976 every office had perfectly functional systems that could be controlled with voice alone. They were called "secretaries."
tomc1985 8y ago
It isn't that revolutionary. When they can do all that processing locally, without cloud assistance, then maybe...
- melling 8y ago
  You mean the opposite of networking computers? Like taking the Internet away? At any rate, being connected to the cloud will allow for faster iteration. Once it becomes a solved problem, then you can more easily remove the network.
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    Yup, which is how much of the world still lives. Spotty internet access at best
    - melling 8y ago
      That’s why you don’t see rapid iteration in the rest of the world. Google, Apple, Amazon can update their voice devices continuously without a local software release. If the next generation voice algorithms needs twice as much hardware, your $30 device will still work because the processing is in the cloud. Video games, for example, have been trying to move to the cloud. Put all the code in the cloud and just send the pixels
      - tomc1985 8y ago
        I don't want rapid (rabid?) iteration, I want shit that works. "The cloud" is little more than a hyped-up, glorified business objective; human beings shouldn't have to be connected to the hive mind to enjoy the full benefits of technology. Nothing smacks of SV-style elitism more than the proliferation of "the cloud" And you can pry my locally-installed videogames from my cold-dead hands. I hope every single streaming startup in that sector fails spectacularly.
        melling 8y ago
        I guess you’ll have to wait until someone serves your market niche. Hopefully, with 100 million Amazon devices, and growing fast, you’ll have your product within a decade or two.
        tomc1985 8y ago
        Which is fine, as my life is perfectly great without. I like your assumption that all innovation is supposedly good... And it's 100 million amazon devices because Amazon pushes them relentlessly and has been for some time. Their utility is questionable, even the article mentions that. Did you know over 3 billion devices run Java?
        melling 8y ago
        Yes, I do know. Not sure how that’s relevant.
johnnycab 8y ago
>I'd say the Alexa is more like birth of the personal computer. There were advancements in Text-To-Speech and/or speech recognition, stretching back to the early days of PC/Mac e.g. DragonDictate[1] using Hidden Markov Models, IBM ViaVoice[2], latterly Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking[3]. Although, they were not perfect in their early iterations. However, they got progressively better and fairly impressive once trained properly. I would rather draw comparisons with their current day counterparts like Amazon Polly or Lyrebird[4] et al., than associate voice assistants with a paradigm shift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#1970-1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#1970-1990 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonDictate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonDictate [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking [4]https://lyrebird.ai/ https://lyrebird.ai/

kristianc 8y ago

To take this analogy further, it is interesting that by say 1976, we seem to have already realized that what you need to make voice devices actually useful is a screen and a GUI.

smacktoward 8y ago
In 1976 every office had perfectly functional systems that could be controlled with voice alone. They were called "secretaries."

tomc1985 8y ago

It isn't that revolutionary. When they can do all that processing locally, without cloud assistance, then maybe...

melling 8y ago
You mean the opposite of networking computers? Like taking the Internet away? At any rate, being connected to the cloud will allow for faster iteration. Once it becomes a solved problem, then you can more easily remove the network.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  Yup, which is how much of the world still lives. Spotty internet access at best
  - melling 8y ago
    That’s why you don’t see rapid iteration in the rest of the world. Google, Apple, Amazon can update their voice devices continuously without a local software release. If the next generation voice algorithms needs twice as much hardware, your $30 device will still work because the processing is in the cloud. Video games, for example, have been trying to move to the cloud. Put all the code in the cloud and just send the pixels
    - tomc1985 8y ago
      I don't want rapid (rabid?) iteration, I want shit that works. "The cloud" is little more than a hyped-up, glorified business objective; human beings shouldn't have to be connected to the hive mind to enjoy the full benefits of technology. Nothing smacks of SV-style elitism more than the proliferation of "the cloud" And you can pry my locally-installed videogames from my cold-dead hands. I hope every single streaming startup in that sector fails spectacularly.
      - melling 8y ago
        I guess you’ll have to wait until someone serves your market niche. Hopefully, with 100 million Amazon devices, and growing fast, you’ll have your product within a decade or two.
        tomc1985 8y ago
        Which is fine, as my life is perfectly great without. I like your assumption that all innovation is supposedly good... And it's 100 million amazon devices because Amazon pushes them relentlessly and has been for some time. Their utility is questionable, even the article mentions that. Did you know over 3 billion devices run Java?
        melling 8y ago
        Yes, I do know. Not sure how that’s relevant.

johnnycab 8y ago

>I'd say the Alexa is more like birth of the personal computer. There were advancements in Text-To-Speech and/or speech recognition, stretching back to the early days of PC/Mac e.g. DragonDictate[1] using Hidden Markov Models, IBM ViaVoice[2], latterly Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking[3]. Although, they were not perfect in their early iterations. However, they got progressively better and fairly impressive once trained properly. I would rather draw comparisons with their current day counterparts like Amazon Polly or Lyrebird[4] et al., than associate voice assistants with a paradigm shift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#1970-1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#1970-1990 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonDictate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonDictate [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking [4]https://lyrebird.ai/ https://lyrebird.ai/