4 ms·

Stanford Team Aims at Alexa and Siri with a Privacy-Minded Alternative

9 points by marban 7y ago

physicsyogi 7y ago
The title of the article suggests that Siri is not privacy-minded, but that is definitely not true. Having more choice in virtual assistants would be great though. And, if it's good, hopefully it will not go the way of Viv.
snthd 7y ago
>Almond >The Open, Privacy-Preserving Virtual Assistant https://almond.stanford.edu/ https://almond.stanford.edu/
pixelbath 7y ago
I can't see myself needing most of the commands on this list because I simply don't use those services: https://almond.stanford.edu/thingpedia/cheatsheet https://almond.stanford.edu/thingpedia/cheatsheet I can see that some of these are "wanted to scratch an itch" but then there's things like "when matrix67 publishes something new." Since the service relies on Thingpedia, can I choose which Things to include? Does this namespace run the risk of becoming cluttered (if I search for "matrix" is that going to give me Matrix films, or posts from Matrix67)? I see that a one of the trigger keywords for ArXiv is "paper". This causes Almond to fail for fairly trivial searches like "how is paper made?" When I try things I'm fairly certain won't be recognized because it's not a Thing, I get completely random results: "wikipedia article about paper" -> YouTube Category ____ if the title contains "paper" "wikipedia" -> Dropbox (demo only message) "play a random video" -> Spotify gets "YouTube videos matching ____ and then play the artist the result" (saying Yes transfers control to YouTube Thing) "random facts" / "random fox" -> No problem, surely. "news about Kanye West" -> random fact about Kanye West (because that's all that Thing does) And a few other searches which will need some love before they're ready for broad release: (any search for "price of ____ on Steam" must be an exact title match) "what is the price of "the witcher 3" on steam" -> not found "what is the price of "the witcher 3: wild hunt" on steam" -> The current price of the witcher 3: wild hunt is $11.99. (correct, but GotY edition is $14.99 right now) "how much is "THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT - GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION" on steam" -> Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'price_overview' in undefined. I'm not sure what my overall point is with this post; I'm very likely going to contribute, but I can see there's still a ways to go before it compares with the commercial products.

9 points by marban 7y ago

The title of the article suggests that Siri is not privacy-minded, but that is definitely not true. Having more choice in virtual assistants would be great though. And, if it's good, hopefully it will not go the way of Viv.

snthd 7y ago

>Almond >The Open, Privacy-Preserving Virtual Assistant https://almond.stanford.edu/ https://almond.stanford.edu/

pixelbath 7y ago

I can't see myself needing most of the commands on this list because I simply don't use those services: https://almond.stanford.edu/thingpedia/cheatsheet https://almond.stanford.edu/thingpedia/cheatsheet I can see that some of these are "wanted to scratch an itch" but then there's things like "when matrix67 publishes something new." Since the service relies on Thingpedia, can I choose which Things to include? Does this namespace run the risk of becoming cluttered (if I search for "matrix" is that going to give me Matrix films, or posts from Matrix67)? I see that a one of the trigger keywords for ArXiv is "paper". This causes Almond to fail for fairly trivial searches like "how is paper made?" When I try things I'm fairly certain won't be recognized because it's not a Thing, I get completely random results: "wikipedia article about paper" -> YouTube Category ____ if the title contains "paper" "wikipedia" -> Dropbox (demo only message) "play a random video" -> Spotify gets "YouTube videos matching ____ and then play the artist the result" (saying Yes transfers control to YouTube Thing) "random facts" / "random fox" -> No problem, surely. "news about Kanye West" -> random fact about Kanye West (because that's all that Thing does) And a few other searches which will need some love before they're ready for broad release: (any search for "price of ____ on Steam" must be an exact title match) "what is the price of "the witcher 3" on steam" -> not found "what is the price of "the witcher 3: wild hunt" on steam" -> The current price of the witcher 3: wild hunt is $11.99. (correct, but GotY edition is $14.99 right now) "how much is "THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT - GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION" on steam" -> Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'price_overview' in undefined. I'm not sure what my overall point is with this post; I'm very likely going to contribute, but I can see there's still a ways to go before it compares with the commercial products.