10 ms·

Amazon’s plan for Alexa

133 points by rchaudhary 7y ago

ahelwer 7y ago
There's a particularly good short story dealing with AI personal assistants shaping people's lives called The Perfect Match by Ken Liu (who once worked as a software engineer at Microsoft!) It's in an anthology of his short stories called The Paper Menagerie. Check it out, they're all pretty great - he's also the guy who translated most of the Three Body trilogy into english.
Narkov 7y ago
TLDR; Alexa will be proactive rather than just reactive but doesn't give any realistic examples of what that will look like.
bko 7y ago
> We know how dangerous it is to let bad actors run amok with AI and our data – if you need a refresher, recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Maybe I'm missing something, but what does the Cambridge Analytica scandal have to do with AI? > Rohit Prasad, the scientist in charge of Alexa‘s development, recently gave MIT Technology Review’s Karen Hao one of the most terrifying interviews in modern journalism Is the hyperbole really necessary? > Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, has now revealed further details about where Alexa is headed next. The crux of the plan is for the voice assistant to move from passive to proactive interactions. So Alexa will make suggestions or remind you that you need to order toilet paper. Much like Google's Android greets me with the time it would take me to get to work every morning without any prompt. Its really sad that the state of tech reporting is full of this hyperbole and fear mongering. You can have a real discussion about the dangerous of technology and erosion of privacy, but this isn't it.
- judge2020 7y ago
  > So Alexa will make suggestions or remind you that you need to order toilet paper. Using a microphone, even with an offline ML model, to do things like play music at the right times and (almost certainly) show you ads or ask if you want to buy Amazon product is pretty off-putting. Google Maps and Siri Suggestions uses your phone's behavioral data and location history to figure out when you usually leave for work, but if you said "i need to get to work an hour earlier tomorrow" to someone, it would be weird if your phone or Alexa instantly said "do you want me to remind you to leave earlier?" I don't think it's as off-putting as the article makes it out to be, but it's still pretty creepy; we're almost certainly going to have boomer facebook groups boycotting Alexa for "always listening".
  - hwestiii 7y ago
    So you think only boomers will find this sort of thing off putting or creepy?
    - acollins1331 7y ago
      No but they'd be the only people in a Facebook group complaining about it
      - dang 7y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and we've already had to warn you a lot. I just posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502690, but there were several cases before that and plenty of other guidelines violations that I only just saw.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - CaptainZapp 7y ago
        This boomer doesn't do Facebook (or WhatsApp, or Instagram for that matter). Then again I'm not likely to by a "smart"-speaker anytime soon.
    - Enginerrrd 7y ago
      Yeah, my experience seems to indicate boomers have no concept of digital privacy and it's largely only the younger and more technically literate that care.
  - anoplus 7y ago
    It might be hard to boycott AI assistants just like it's hard to boycott facebook. If assistant is powerful enough, people would be willing to onboard.
  - dang 7y ago
- treis 7y ago
  >Maybe I'm missing something, but what does the Cambridge Analytica scandal have to do with AI? I also missed all the bad things that happened because of Cambridge Analytica. Even if we take their extremely dubious claims about their effectiveness at face value them running amok resulted in politicians being better able to target ads. That's not exactly the stuff of nightmares.
  - nooron 7y ago
    I work in digital for the Democratic Party. You are correct. If you look at my comment history you’ll see me affirming this.
  - osrec 7y ago
    Well, it sort of is my nightmare. I disagree with hyperbole in general, but politicians being able to easily manipulate truth across vast swathes of society is my idea of a nightmare (a pretty scary one at that).
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    Did you watch the Channel 4 report[0]? The CEO of CA clandestinely advertised far more than just ads for the reporter posing as a potential client. They are in the business of winning elections, through whatever means necessary. He openly talked about things like targeting and entrapping political opponents with blackmail via "honeypots". His deputies made some really interesting statements during that report as well. I highly recommend watching the report, it's a fascinating watch. Based on what he was caught saying on camera, in addition to his deputies, and the reporting around their political campaigns in Africa using propaganda that claimed AIDS would come back if so-and-so were elected, it's not a stretch to imagine those people doing everything the can, legally and illegally, to sway an election. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ
    - puranjay 7y ago
      But this has always happened in politics. CA just optimized it
lalos 7y ago
Amazon already invests a lot in this space, that's how you increase profit. You have to predict who's buying what and where and ship bulk depending on tendencies. This is just taking it to the personal level.
kennu 7y ago
> From a consumer point-of-view, it’s hard to imagine Alexa becoming so useful that we’d come running when it summons us. But Alexa‘s primary mission will always be to gather data. Simply put: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are all trillion dollar companies because data is the most valuable resource in the world, and Alexa is among the world’s greatest data collectors. I think the article misses the point here. Alexa is not supposed to summon you anywhere, it's supposed to be omnipresent like the "computer" in Star Trek. Being more proactive would just be similar to receiving smartphone push notifications. Maybe the real worry is about getting too many of those notifications from Alexa, which is obviously something Amazon needs to be careful with. I also couldn't find any mention of Alexa being "among the world's greatest data collectors" in the referred infographic. I don't doubt that it collects a lot of data in terms of terabytes since it's all audio, but is there really so much information content in those commands people occasionally utter to it?
- rco8786 7y ago
  > but is there really so much information content in those commands people occasionally utter to it? You forget that those devices are always on, always listening.
  - kennu 7y ago
    Yeah, they're half-on listening for the wakeword, but they don't send the audio anywhere until you utter it.
    - AlexandrB 7y ago
      This is not only something you largely have to trust Amazon's word on but a limitation that can be removed at any time via OTA update.
      - kennu 7y ago
        I don't think that's entirely true. People have analyzed the network traffic and found it to match the wakewords. The hardware and software architecture has also been analyzed and my understanding is that the wakeword functionality is implemented by secondary low-power hardware, which turns on the main system only after hearing the wakeword. Of course, anything is possible in theory and I wouldn't be surprised to see some targeted attacks happening occasionally, but that's pretty different from massive always-on 24/7 audio collection from all consumers. Some related links: https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amazon-echo-send-data-in-silent-mode/ https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amaz... https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08696 https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08696
hwestiii 7y ago
I’ve been reading “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” recently, and this is totally the classic case for her argument. We’ve clearly reached the point where our utility to the technology providers has surpassed their utility to us. I have no idea why anyone would have one of those things in their home. It’s no longer a matter of the technology itself, but who is behind it and what they are doing with it. I don’t like the Bezos drives his warehouse workers like something out of a Dickens era factory horror show, but the notion that he’d like to turn me into a “consumption worker” is just too much to stomach.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  They’re game changing convenience items. “Alexa, play <music description>” “Alexa, set a timer for 90 seconds.” “Alexa, what’s the weather?” “Alexa, play ‘price it right’” I don’t expect I’ll order items via Alexa anytime soon, but “she” gets probably 50 interactions a day. I’m fine with the trade off.
  - mathgladiator 7y ago
    Alexa, or as I say 'computer', really helps cook food with timers. I'm kind of fine with giving up privacy in exchange for useful tools.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  I read that book a few months ago and agree 100%. I would also add that not only is the predictive technology a way to guide and shape your life using nudges, but it also is sort of required by the logic of capitalist society. These kinds of technologies are used to accelerate consumerism, which accelerates further both production, environmental degradation, degrades working conditions, and (most importantly) further concentrates wealth in the hands of the capitalists. In capitalist society, if growth stalls, it leads to riots. The only way a capitalist society can present a face where some of the population feels like they are being taken care of is when the amount of wealth is increasing generally enough that the inequality isn't as sharply felt. Advertising, credit, and other behavioral nudges are accelerants of growth. Of course, when things break down enough, Alexa will also be able to act as an arm of the state for gathering intelligence. I look forward with horror to the day when it is installed by default into housing.
dguo 7y ago
For many years, I've claimed to some of my friends that the goal of Amazon is to get to the point where they can order things for us before we even know that we want them. So Amazon wouldn't even require a confirmation on our part. We'll just come home to the packages that Amazon has decided that we need or want. This situation raises a whole host of issues, and I'm not claiming it'd be a good thing. It just seems to me like the obvious endgame for Amazon, and I think it perfectly fits the modern ethos of reducing friction and pursuing convenience at all costs, including losing our own agency.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Think about the logistics savings by having stuff be auto-ordered before you need it.
- paulcole 7y ago
  Amazon patented this idea years ago https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/
  - dguo 7y ago
    Ha! Of course they did. Thanks for the link.
oefrha 7y ago
Reminds me of Silicon Valley S06E02, where Gates of Galloo shows you ads based on what you're talking about. For instance, a Domino's ad pops up when it hears/overhears you talking about pizza. Now imagine Alexa doing that without a wake word; seems like a blessing and a curse -- more of a curse.
sys_64738 7y ago
Alexa is banned from my house. No eavesdropping allowed.
- egdod 7y ago
  No smartphones either then? Even when guests come over?
  - buzzkillington 7y ago
    They go in a little sound isolated Faraday cage. If you want to check your phone, you can stand up and take the 60 seconds to do it.
  - sgc 7y ago
    I would highly value a phone that had a physical kill switch for mic, camera, and sensors. The best would be a multi level level kill switch: one for that, another step to kill mobile, another to kill all networking. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
Lemonlemons 7y ago
Going from passive to active interaction feels like the logical evolution of the technology. If Alexa can simply sense if someone is in a room and asks if they would like something to eat, that will dramatically change the food delivery industry. The question is: will people find it invasive or upsetting? My intuition says yes, but the existing popularity of the devices says no.
buzzkillington 7y ago
> If you’re one of the eight or nine people on the planet who has never interacted with Alexa, you’re both missing out and not really missing out. I must be officially old, because I see no reason to give voice commands to things. If I did I'd just attach a microphone to the server I run at home and connect it to things.
- glup 7y ago
  The sentence you highlighted struck me as simultaneously remarkably vacuous as well as easily falsified.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- tracer4201 7y ago
  Regardless of how you feel about these devices, that line from the article is so preposterous. How many people in the world lack access to toilets or drink able water? How many folks survive on next to nothing? The author seems to think the US or maybe the more developed world is 99.9999999% of the population. If anything, it just highlights the fear mongering exaggeration. Sad.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    It's not meant to be a literal statement. It's hyperbole to make a point about how ubiquitous it's become.
  - mantoto 7y ago
    There is always context and interpretation and what you think that the Autor ist missing is actually you who missed it.
- p1necone 7y ago
  The only situations I find voice commands easier/faster than just physically interacting with a device are when I can't use my hands. So in the car, and I guess while cooking or in the shower - although I've only bothered with it for navigation while driving.
goldenshale 7y ago
The AI fear mongering is getting old. If you don't want an Alexa or Google Home, then don't buy one. Personally, I ask Google questions all day long and miss it when I don't have it around. It allows me to learn lots of little things all of the time, and I would be happy to have contextual suggestions as long as it was truly trying to be helpful rather than only sell shit.
- tomrod 7y ago
  Do you turn off your Alexa when visitors come over? Should I ask if I visit, and how would you respond?
  - tracer4201 7y ago
    If it concerns you that much, maybe you should ask. If you don’t want to visit someone who has one of these devices, that’s entirely up to you. I personally have Google Home in my home. Haven’t had any problems with anything but the fear mongering.
  - taeric 7y ago
    This is silly. Do you also worry about everyone's phone? It is not uncommon to see folks accidently activate Siri. Or Google. Usually to laughs. If someone is wanting to be nefarious... I'd be more worried about the people you have over to your house, than the people's houses you go to.
    - tomrod 7y ago
      I do worry about people's phones.
  - function_seven 7y ago
    If I had visitors insist that I put my cell phone in the refrigerator when they come by, I'd politely decline the visit instead. I treat the Echo the same way. I don't mind if friends have their own preferences when it comes to "smart" things, but I won't indulge their paranoia in my house. These things have been out for years now, and I've yet to see any evidence that they're always listening or exfiltrating your conversations to HQ. Just vague anecdotes about people seeing ads after they discussed some product, or how their Alexa made a VoIP call by mistake (which, going back to the cell phone analogy, is the same as a butt-dial.) If you got some particularly sensitive information to talk about, then let's just make sure she's muted for that conversation. I'll do that while you lock your phone to prevent the butt-dial.
cutler 7y ago
While the technocracy is busy trying to convince us that what matters is smart light bulbs and the prospect of living on Mars the world's ecosystem is on the point of collapse and a significant percentage of the worlds population have nowhere decent to live. Wake up, human race! Ask yourself, HN crowd, how many of the AI jobs you routinely see posted on here are doing anything significant? Alexa is just a toy.
tracer4201 7y ago
Nothing that’s actually quoted from the real source in that article is even 1% as scary or egregious as that clickbait garbage article makes it sound. I’m not a fan of corporate America or anything like that, but this garbage writing on HN and front page is sad.
spsful 7y ago
> From a consumer point-of-view, it’s hard to imagine Alexa becoming so useful that we’d come running when it summons us. But Alexa‘s primary mission will always be to gather data. Simply put: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are all trillion dollar companies because data is the most valuable resource in the world, and Alexa is among the world’s greatest data collectors. I know this has nothing to do with the overall theme of the article, but this is misleading, Microsoft is the only company in that list with a market cap over 1 trillion. As of the time of writing it is ~1.1T. Apple, on the other hand, has a market share of ~1.16T, and they have made clear their stance (or lack thereof) in users' personal data. Just don't like the author's use of market caps to explain the power of "data" when their argument falls apart rather quickly.
chaostheory 7y ago
In order for Amazon to accomplish the goal of Alexa becoming proactive, there’s one major puzzle piece that’s missing: an Amazon phone (unless by some miracle either Apple or Google gives Alexa tighter integration into their OS’s) I predict Amazon will make another attempt at releasing a phone within the next two years
nyxtom 7y ago
It's not the hyperbole that I find a bit old and tiresome, it's the hubris and often utopian vision I come across from people in tech in statements like this. As though there are no possible downsides. > Prasad’s ultimate vision is to make Alexa available and useful for everyone. Even in developing countries, he imagines cheaper versions that people can access on their smartphones. “To me we are on a journey of shifting the cognitive load on routine tasks,” he says. “I want Alexa to be a productivity enhancer … to be truly ubiquitous so that it works for everyone.”
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  That sounds too positive. It isn’t doomsday enough for the culture here. An opt-in device you need to purchase, set up, and interact with: the horrors!
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    "Alexa", whoever TF that is today, can hear and see your neighbors.
    - diggernet 7y ago
      And your guests, who did NOT opt in.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Utopian visions are fine. This vision is fine. My problem is that tech companies uttering those visions usually lie. Even in this case, there's set of business and technological decisions being made that go against the vision. As long as voice processing is done in the cloud vs. the device, as long as the device itself is tied to an account and a service (vs. just subscribing to services that provide actions which require those services), as long as it's done by amoral corporation with plenty of history of putting profit before humane behavior - Alexa will always come with privacy issues, will not be useful to everyone, and there will be business incentives to not make it a true productivity enhancer.
zarriak 7y ago
Can someone explain to me how we go from assistant that maybe tells me news in the morning and lets me know if the traffic is bad on my commute to omnipresence? I mean sure Alexa skills are just Amazon letting other people figure out how to design the interface for interacting with Alexa until they lock that down. It also allows for wonderful ads for local news letting you know they have programmed an Alexa skill. This is article is just description that as with every other large digital assistant team, it is much easier for them to learn how to design the user experience of the digital assistant by seeing what people do with it rather than designing literally anything. I also tend to think that it is now becoming clear that the hard part of making a digital assistant is designed the user interface and interactions and not the AI part of it, not to discount the vast amount of work done by all of these companies.
- danielbarla 7y ago
  > Can someone explain to me how we go from assistant that maybe tells me news in the morning and lets me know if the traffic is bad on my commute to omnipresence? I've often thought about what I would like a virtual assistant to do for me, and it's generally along the lines of "alert me if there's something I should know about", similar to how a real, live assistant might go about it. I don't want to know the weather parameters, only if they changed significantly from yesterday. And delivered at the correct moment for me to do something about it, not too early, not too late. Same for a commute, but for that, the assistant would have to know how I commute normally, what my schedule is for today, when I'm planning to leave. All of this would be a lot more accurate with omnipresence, as scary as that sounds. The value add is great enough that in the long run, implementation is almost guaranteed.
andreskytt 7y ago
I’m one of the 8 people on the planet. Simply because Alexa (and Siri) have real trouble understanding my accent. I don’t fear something I’m at liberty not using and that’s barely intelligent enough to make sense of what I say.
- tingletech 7y ago
  The other day Alexa asked if I wanted it to learn my voice, so it could understand me better.
_bxg1 7y ago
The question I always have is, who asked for all of this? Do AI assistants actually make anyone's life easier? Serious question. I understand the novelty of shouting at your lightbulbs to turn them on and off, but it feels like that remains the epitome of the life-improvement that these systems can provide. I've never gotten a good recommendation from software outside of Pandora, which last I checked doesn't even use AI. I've never found a real use for Siri or Google Assistant. I briefly considered getting some Phillips Hues to go with an Alexa that I got for free, before stuffing the latter in a closet. Please, for real, weigh in if voice assistants/AI suggestions have meaningfully improved your life. I'm genuinely curious.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  I don’t think the technology is there yet, but at least the goal is for AI assistants to make lives easier. Maybe not in 2020, but perhaps 2030?
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    I can understand the Star Trek dream of truly intelligent assistants, but we've been at it for nearly ten years and it hardly feels like the needle has moved. Despite the enormous advances in machine learning as a field over the past few years, AI assistants have mostly just gotten better speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and more developer support. I wouldn't expect a Star Trek "Computer" within the next 50 years at least. The alternate (much more banal) explanation for the current prevalence is 1) a cynical data-grab on the part of companies, and 2) the devices are cheap and novel for consumers. In other words, it's not that they're creating such great value, but that companies have learned to embed their data-vacuums in what amount to toys.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      That prediction really assumes the technology stops progressing at its current rate, which may or may not happen (are we going to hit a wall soon?). I don’t subscribe to the just a data grab theory, that is incredibly cynical. Also, even a simple device is useful if it’s cheap enough (“Alexa play space unicorn” is really useful for us parents).
dorkwood 7y ago
It still baffles me that these things have taken off. I suspect that the people buying them are purchasing the spectacle of having a virtual assistant rather than any sort of useful functionality. The last time I interacted with one was at a friend's place. We were talking over coffee and somehow Brad Pitt's age came up. Neither of us knew how old he was. My friend paused, and then yelled out across the room "OK Google, how old is Brad Pitt?" The answer came back almost immediately. "103 years old".
- irrational 7y ago
  Benjamin Button
- badrabbit 7y ago
  They don't know enough to be scared. Or they do and the temporary convenience appears to be worth sacrificing the long term freedom. As someone that has had many addictions, I can relate :-)
  - meowface 7y ago
    I know the risks. I just accept the risk-convenience tradeoff. I know plenty of people who work in infosec but have an Alexa (including myself).
    - badrabbit 7y ago
      Yes, I know infosec people that use gmail and linjedin too. Knowing isn't caring.
      - meowface 7y ago
        True. For a lot of these things, my threat model is very different from the average HN user's. I don't care in the same ways. I personally fear privacy-related issues stemming from random people I may encounter online far more than I fear privacy-related issues related to NSA dragnet snooping or Google and Amazon monopolies. I have issues with them, and I'm aware of the risks, but in general I don't care much in a personal sense. I do care in a larger societal sense (these are all slippery slopes that are harmful to society), and I care about other people caring and believe their privacy wishes should be respected, but that doesn't change my personal behavior.
deleted 7y ago
ygmelnikova 7y ago
I was working on this stuff back 1998 (LFReD). Had a prototype that used a cordless speaker phone or dial in and ask questions or make commands like "How tall is Mount Everest" or "Turn on the kettle". The main deal breaker were the inaccurate text to speech systems (90% if you were lucky?) like Dragon Dictate and others. Even a 90% accuracy rate was extremely frustrating. That's 1 out of every 10 words misunderstood "How tall is Count Everest?". Gives me shivers just thinking about it! speech recognition tech has finally caught up. Yay! But the big big BIG issue is the amount of if/then rules required to do the simplest of 'virtual assistant' tasks. Back then, we pitched Disney to create an "Ask Mickey" bot that would be all knowing when it comes to anything Disney... trivia, history, tickets prices etc. Even with a relatively narrow scope, the man hours required to create and maintain these rules was not trivial, and that has not changed. The average user expects, or demands rather, that these bots be 'all knowing'. I suspect 99% of Alexa and Google Home users have all but forsaken their appliance because of this. The only thing more frustrating to the user other than recognition, is the constant "Hey Google, what is the distance to the moon divided by two"? "Dunno." "Hey Alexa, what color do I get if I mix yellow and chartreuse together? "Dunno." No one is ever going to write these rules, and there's billions of them... You,"Alexa, how dangerous is it if I drive in a snow storm?" Alexa,"What type of vehicle do you have? You, "I drive a 2016 Ford F150 4x4 with winter tires." Alexa, "I don't know what that is. But I can tell you about the price of Disney tickets!" You, "OK. Alexa, what is the total price for a family of four with two adults and two children under the age of 10 on July 12th, 2020?" Alexa "Dunno."

133 points by rchaudhary 7y ago

There's a particularly good short story dealing with AI personal assistants shaping people's lives called The Perfect Match by Ken Liu (who once worked as a software engineer at Microsoft!) It's in an anthology of his short stories called The Paper Menagerie. Check it out, they're all pretty great - he's also the guy who translated most of the Three Body trilogy into english.

Narkov 7y ago

TLDR; Alexa will be proactive rather than just reactive but doesn't give any realistic examples of what that will look like.

bko 7y ago

> We know how dangerous it is to let bad actors run amok with AI and our data – if you need a refresher, recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Maybe I'm missing something, but what does the Cambridge Analytica scandal have to do with AI? > Rohit Prasad, the scientist in charge of Alexa‘s development, recently gave MIT Technology Review’s Karen Hao one of the most terrifying interviews in modern journalism Is the hyperbole really necessary? > Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, has now revealed further details about where Alexa is headed next. The crux of the plan is for the voice assistant to move from passive to proactive interactions. So Alexa will make suggestions or remind you that you need to order toilet paper. Much like Google's Android greets me with the time it would take me to get to work every morning without any prompt. Its really sad that the state of tech reporting is full of this hyperbole and fear mongering. You can have a real discussion about the dangerous of technology and erosion of privacy, but this isn't it.

judge2020 7y ago
> So Alexa will make suggestions or remind you that you need to order toilet paper. Using a microphone, even with an offline ML model, to do things like play music at the right times and (almost certainly) show you ads or ask if you want to buy Amazon product is pretty off-putting. Google Maps and Siri Suggestions uses your phone's behavioral data and location history to figure out when you usually leave for work, but if you said "i need to get to work an hour earlier tomorrow" to someone, it would be weird if your phone or Alexa instantly said "do you want me to remind you to leave earlier?" I don't think it's as off-putting as the article makes it out to be, but it's still pretty creepy; we're almost certainly going to have boomer facebook groups boycotting Alexa for "always listening".
- hwestiii 7y ago
  So you think only boomers will find this sort of thing off putting or creepy?
  - acollins1331 7y ago
    No but they'd be the only people in a Facebook group complaining about it
    - dang 7y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and we've already had to warn you a lot. I just posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502690, but there were several cases before that and plenty of other guidelines violations that I only just saw.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - CaptainZapp 7y ago
      This boomer doesn't do Facebook (or WhatsApp, or Instagram for that matter). Then again I'm not likely to by a "smart"-speaker anytime soon.
  - Enginerrrd 7y ago
    Yeah, my experience seems to indicate boomers have no concept of digital privacy and it's largely only the younger and more technically literate that care.
- anoplus 7y ago
  It might be hard to boycott AI assistants just like it's hard to boycott facebook. If assistant is powerful enough, people would be willing to onboard.
- dang 7y ago
treis 7y ago
>Maybe I'm missing something, but what does the Cambridge Analytica scandal have to do with AI? I also missed all the bad things that happened because of Cambridge Analytica. Even if we take their extremely dubious claims about their effectiveness at face value them running amok resulted in politicians being better able to target ads. That's not exactly the stuff of nightmares.
- nooron 7y ago
  I work in digital for the Democratic Party. You are correct. If you look at my comment history you’ll see me affirming this.
- osrec 7y ago
  Well, it sort of is my nightmare. I disagree with hyperbole in general, but politicians being able to easily manipulate truth across vast swathes of society is my idea of a nightmare (a pretty scary one at that).
- save_ferris 7y ago
  Did you watch the Channel 4 report[0]? The CEO of CA clandestinely advertised far more than just ads for the reporter posing as a potential client. They are in the business of winning elections, through whatever means necessary. He openly talked about things like targeting and entrapping political opponents with blackmail via "honeypots". His deputies made some really interesting statements during that report as well. I highly recommend watching the report, it's a fascinating watch. Based on what he was caught saying on camera, in addition to his deputies, and the reporting around their political campaigns in Africa using propaganda that claimed AIDS would come back if so-and-so were elected, it's not a stretch to imagine those people doing everything the can, legally and illegally, to sway an election. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ
  - puranjay 7y ago
    But this has always happened in politics. CA just optimized it

lalos 7y ago

Amazon already invests a lot in this space, that's how you increase profit. You have to predict who's buying what and where and ship bulk depending on tendencies. This is just taking it to the personal level.

kennu 7y ago

> From a consumer point-of-view, it’s hard to imagine Alexa becoming so useful that we’d come running when it summons us. But Alexa‘s primary mission will always be to gather data. Simply put: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are all trillion dollar companies because data is the most valuable resource in the world, and Alexa is among the world’s greatest data collectors. I think the article misses the point here. Alexa is not supposed to summon you anywhere, it's supposed to be omnipresent like the "computer" in Star Trek. Being more proactive would just be similar to receiving smartphone push notifications. Maybe the real worry is about getting too many of those notifications from Alexa, which is obviously something Amazon needs to be careful with. I also couldn't find any mention of Alexa being "among the world's greatest data collectors" in the referred infographic. I don't doubt that it collects a lot of data in terms of terabytes since it's all audio, but is there really so much information content in those commands people occasionally utter to it?

rco8786 7y ago
> but is there really so much information content in those commands people occasionally utter to it? You forget that those devices are always on, always listening.
- kennu 7y ago
  Yeah, they're half-on listening for the wakeword, but they don't send the audio anywhere until you utter it.
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    This is not only something you largely have to trust Amazon's word on but a limitation that can be removed at any time via OTA update.
    - kennu 7y ago
      I don't think that's entirely true. People have analyzed the network traffic and found it to match the wakewords. The hardware and software architecture has also been analyzed and my understanding is that the wakeword functionality is implemented by secondary low-power hardware, which turns on the main system only after hearing the wakeword. Of course, anything is possible in theory and I wouldn't be surprised to see some targeted attacks happening occasionally, but that's pretty different from massive always-on 24/7 audio collection from all consumers. Some related links: https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amazon-echo-send-data-in-silent-mode/ https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amaz... https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08696 https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08696

hwestiii 7y ago

I’ve been reading “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” recently, and this is totally the classic case for her argument. We’ve clearly reached the point where our utility to the technology providers has surpassed their utility to us. I have no idea why anyone would have one of those things in their home. It’s no longer a matter of the technology itself, but who is behind it and what they are doing with it. I don’t like the Bezos drives his warehouse workers like something out of a Dickens era factory horror show, but the notion that he’d like to turn me into a “consumption worker” is just too much to stomach.

sokoloff 7y ago
They’re game changing convenience items. “Alexa, play <music description>” “Alexa, set a timer for 90 seconds.” “Alexa, what’s the weather?” “Alexa, play ‘price it right’” I don’t expect I’ll order items via Alexa anytime soon, but “she” gets probably 50 interactions a day. I’m fine with the trade off.
- mathgladiator 7y ago
  Alexa, or as I say 'computer', really helps cook food with timers. I'm kind of fine with giving up privacy in exchange for useful tools.
tehjoker 7y ago
I read that book a few months ago and agree 100%. I would also add that not only is the predictive technology a way to guide and shape your life using nudges, but it also is sort of required by the logic of capitalist society. These kinds of technologies are used to accelerate consumerism, which accelerates further both production, environmental degradation, degrades working conditions, and (most importantly) further concentrates wealth in the hands of the capitalists. In capitalist society, if growth stalls, it leads to riots. The only way a capitalist society can present a face where some of the population feels like they are being taken care of is when the amount of wealth is increasing generally enough that the inequality isn't as sharply felt. Advertising, credit, and other behavioral nudges are accelerants of growth. Of course, when things break down enough, Alexa will also be able to act as an arm of the state for gathering intelligence. I look forward with horror to the day when it is installed by default into housing.

dguo 7y ago

For many years, I've claimed to some of my friends that the goal of Amazon is to get to the point where they can order things for us before we even know that we want them. So Amazon wouldn't even require a confirmation on our part. We'll just come home to the packages that Amazon has decided that we need or want. This situation raises a whole host of issues, and I'm not claiming it'd be a good thing. It just seems to me like the obvious endgame for Amazon, and I think it perfectly fits the modern ethos of reducing friction and pursuing convenience at all costs, including losing our own agency.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Think about the logistics savings by having stuff be auto-ordered before you need it.
paulcole 7y ago
Amazon patented this idea years ago https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/
- dguo 7y ago
  Ha! Of course they did. Thanks for the link.

oefrha 7y ago

Reminds me of Silicon Valley S06E02, where Gates of Galloo shows you ads based on what you're talking about. For instance, a Domino's ad pops up when it hears/overhears you talking about pizza. Now imagine Alexa doing that without a wake word; seems like a blessing and a curse -- more of a curse.

sys_64738 7y ago

Alexa is banned from my house. No eavesdropping allowed.

egdod 7y ago
No smartphones either then? Even when guests come over?
- buzzkillington 7y ago
  They go in a little sound isolated Faraday cage. If you want to check your phone, you can stand up and take the 60 seconds to do it.
- sgc 7y ago
  I would highly value a phone that had a physical kill switch for mic, camera, and sensors. The best would be a multi level level kill switch: one for that, another step to kill mobile, another to kill all networking. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Lemonlemons 7y ago

Going from passive to active interaction feels like the logical evolution of the technology. If Alexa can simply sense if someone is in a room and asks if they would like something to eat, that will dramatically change the food delivery industry. The question is: will people find it invasive or upsetting? My intuition says yes, but the existing popularity of the devices says no.

buzzkillington 7y ago

> If you’re one of the eight or nine people on the planet who has never interacted with Alexa, you’re both missing out and not really missing out. I must be officially old, because I see no reason to give voice commands to things. If I did I'd just attach a microphone to the server I run at home and connect it to things.

glup 7y ago
The sentence you highlighted struck me as simultaneously remarkably vacuous as well as easily falsified.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tracer4201 7y ago
Regardless of how you feel about these devices, that line from the article is so preposterous. How many people in the world lack access to toilets or drink able water? How many folks survive on next to nothing? The author seems to think the US or maybe the more developed world is 99.9999999% of the population. If anything, it just highlights the fear mongering exaggeration. Sad.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  It's not meant to be a literal statement. It's hyperbole to make a point about how ubiquitous it's become.
- mantoto 7y ago
  There is always context and interpretation and what you think that the Autor ist missing is actually you who missed it.
p1necone 7y ago
The only situations I find voice commands easier/faster than just physically interacting with a device are when I can't use my hands. So in the car, and I guess while cooking or in the shower - although I've only bothered with it for navigation while driving.

goldenshale 7y ago

The AI fear mongering is getting old. If you don't want an Alexa or Google Home, then don't buy one. Personally, I ask Google questions all day long and miss it when I don't have it around. It allows me to learn lots of little things all of the time, and I would be happy to have contextual suggestions as long as it was truly trying to be helpful rather than only sell shit.

tomrod 7y ago
Do you turn off your Alexa when visitors come over? Should I ask if I visit, and how would you respond?
- tracer4201 7y ago
  If it concerns you that much, maybe you should ask. If you don’t want to visit someone who has one of these devices, that’s entirely up to you. I personally have Google Home in my home. Haven’t had any problems with anything but the fear mongering.
- taeric 7y ago
  This is silly. Do you also worry about everyone's phone? It is not uncommon to see folks accidently activate Siri. Or Google. Usually to laughs. If someone is wanting to be nefarious... I'd be more worried about the people you have over to your house, than the people's houses you go to.
  - tomrod 7y ago
    I do worry about people's phones.
- function_seven 7y ago
  If I had visitors insist that I put my cell phone in the refrigerator when they come by, I'd politely decline the visit instead. I treat the Echo the same way. I don't mind if friends have their own preferences when it comes to "smart" things, but I won't indulge their paranoia in my house. These things have been out for years now, and I've yet to see any evidence that they're always listening or exfiltrating your conversations to HQ. Just vague anecdotes about people seeing ads after they discussed some product, or how their Alexa made a VoIP call by mistake (which, going back to the cell phone analogy, is the same as a butt-dial.) If you got some particularly sensitive information to talk about, then let's just make sure she's muted for that conversation. I'll do that while you lock your phone to prevent the butt-dial.

cutler 7y ago

While the technocracy is busy trying to convince us that what matters is smart light bulbs and the prospect of living on Mars the world's ecosystem is on the point of collapse and a significant percentage of the worlds population have nowhere decent to live. Wake up, human race! Ask yourself, HN crowd, how many of the AI jobs you routinely see posted on here are doing anything significant? Alexa is just a toy.

tracer4201 7y ago

Nothing that’s actually quoted from the real source in that article is even 1% as scary or egregious as that clickbait garbage article makes it sound. I’m not a fan of corporate America or anything like that, but this garbage writing on HN and front page is sad.

spsful 7y ago

> From a consumer point-of-view, it’s hard to imagine Alexa becoming so useful that we’d come running when it summons us. But Alexa‘s primary mission will always be to gather data. Simply put: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are all trillion dollar companies because data is the most valuable resource in the world, and Alexa is among the world’s greatest data collectors. I know this has nothing to do with the overall theme of the article, but this is misleading, Microsoft is the only company in that list with a market cap over 1 trillion. As of the time of writing it is ~1.1T. Apple, on the other hand, has a market share of ~1.16T, and they have made clear their stance (or lack thereof) in users' personal data. Just don't like the author's use of market caps to explain the power of "data" when their argument falls apart rather quickly.

chaostheory 7y ago

In order for Amazon to accomplish the goal of Alexa becoming proactive, there’s one major puzzle piece that’s missing: an Amazon phone (unless by some miracle either Apple or Google gives Alexa tighter integration into their OS’s) I predict Amazon will make another attempt at releasing a phone within the next two years

nyxtom 7y ago

It's not the hyperbole that I find a bit old and tiresome, it's the hubris and often utopian vision I come across from people in tech in statements like this. As though there are no possible downsides. > Prasad’s ultimate vision is to make Alexa available and useful for everyone. Even in developing countries, he imagines cheaper versions that people can access on their smartphones. “To me we are on a journey of shifting the cognitive load on routine tasks,” he says. “I want Alexa to be a productivity enhancer … to be truly ubiquitous so that it works for everyone.”

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
That sounds too positive. It isn’t doomsday enough for the culture here. An opt-in device you need to purchase, set up, and interact with: the horrors!
- jakeogh 7y ago
  "Alexa", whoever TF that is today, can hear and see your neighbors.
  - diggernet 7y ago
    And your guests, who did NOT opt in.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Utopian visions are fine. This vision is fine. My problem is that tech companies uttering those visions usually lie. Even in this case, there's set of business and technological decisions being made that go against the vision. As long as voice processing is done in the cloud vs. the device, as long as the device itself is tied to an account and a service (vs. just subscribing to services that provide actions which require those services), as long as it's done by amoral corporation with plenty of history of putting profit before humane behavior - Alexa will always come with privacy issues, will not be useful to everyone, and there will be business incentives to not make it a true productivity enhancer.

zarriak 7y ago

Can someone explain to me how we go from assistant that maybe tells me news in the morning and lets me know if the traffic is bad on my commute to omnipresence? I mean sure Alexa skills are just Amazon letting other people figure out how to design the interface for interacting with Alexa until they lock that down. It also allows for wonderful ads for local news letting you know they have programmed an Alexa skill. This is article is just description that as with every other large digital assistant team, it is much easier for them to learn how to design the user experience of the digital assistant by seeing what people do with it rather than designing literally anything. I also tend to think that it is now becoming clear that the hard part of making a digital assistant is designed the user interface and interactions and not the AI part of it, not to discount the vast amount of work done by all of these companies.

danielbarla 7y ago
> Can someone explain to me how we go from assistant that maybe tells me news in the morning and lets me know if the traffic is bad on my commute to omnipresence? I've often thought about what I would like a virtual assistant to do for me, and it's generally along the lines of "alert me if there's something I should know about", similar to how a real, live assistant might go about it. I don't want to know the weather parameters, only if they changed significantly from yesterday. And delivered at the correct moment for me to do something about it, not too early, not too late. Same for a commute, but for that, the assistant would have to know how I commute normally, what my schedule is for today, when I'm planning to leave. All of this would be a lot more accurate with omnipresence, as scary as that sounds. The value add is great enough that in the long run, implementation is almost guaranteed.

andreskytt 7y ago

I’m one of the 8 people on the planet. Simply because Alexa (and Siri) have real trouble understanding my accent. I don’t fear something I’m at liberty not using and that’s barely intelligent enough to make sense of what I say.

tingletech 7y ago
The other day Alexa asked if I wanted it to learn my voice, so it could understand me better.

_bxg1 7y ago

The question I always have is, who asked for all of this? Do AI assistants actually make anyone's life easier? Serious question. I understand the novelty of shouting at your lightbulbs to turn them on and off, but it feels like that remains the epitome of the life-improvement that these systems can provide. I've never gotten a good recommendation from software outside of Pandora, which last I checked doesn't even use AI. I've never found a real use for Siri or Google Assistant. I briefly considered getting some Phillips Hues to go with an Alexa that I got for free, before stuffing the latter in a closet. Please, for real, weigh in if voice assistants/AI suggestions have meaningfully improved your life. I'm genuinely curious.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
I don’t think the technology is there yet, but at least the goal is for AI assistants to make lives easier. Maybe not in 2020, but perhaps 2030?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  I can understand the Star Trek dream of truly intelligent assistants, but we've been at it for nearly ten years and it hardly feels like the needle has moved. Despite the enormous advances in machine learning as a field over the past few years, AI assistants have mostly just gotten better speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and more developer support. I wouldn't expect a Star Trek "Computer" within the next 50 years at least. The alternate (much more banal) explanation for the current prevalence is 1) a cynical data-grab on the part of companies, and 2) the devices are cheap and novel for consumers. In other words, it's not that they're creating such great value, but that companies have learned to embed their data-vacuums in what amount to toys.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    That prediction really assumes the technology stops progressing at its current rate, which may or may not happen (are we going to hit a wall soon?). I don’t subscribe to the just a data grab theory, that is incredibly cynical. Also, even a simple device is useful if it’s cheap enough (“Alexa play space unicorn” is really useful for us parents).

dorkwood 7y ago

It still baffles me that these things have taken off. I suspect that the people buying them are purchasing the spectacle of having a virtual assistant rather than any sort of useful functionality. The last time I interacted with one was at a friend's place. We were talking over coffee and somehow Brad Pitt's age came up. Neither of us knew how old he was. My friend paused, and then yelled out across the room "OK Google, how old is Brad Pitt?" The answer came back almost immediately. "103 years old".

irrational 7y ago
Benjamin Button
badrabbit 7y ago
They don't know enough to be scared. Or they do and the temporary convenience appears to be worth sacrificing the long term freedom. As someone that has had many addictions, I can relate :-)
- meowface 7y ago
  I know the risks. I just accept the risk-convenience tradeoff. I know plenty of people who work in infosec but have an Alexa (including myself).
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    Yes, I know infosec people that use gmail and linjedin too. Knowing isn't caring.
    - meowface 7y ago
      True. For a lot of these things, my threat model is very different from the average HN user's. I don't care in the same ways. I personally fear privacy-related issues stemming from random people I may encounter online far more than I fear privacy-related issues related to NSA dragnet snooping or Google and Amazon monopolies. I have issues with them, and I'm aware of the risks, but in general I don't care much in a personal sense. I do care in a larger societal sense (these are all slippery slopes that are harmful to society), and I care about other people caring and believe their privacy wishes should be respected, but that doesn't change my personal behavior.

deleted 7y ago

ygmelnikova 7y ago

I was working on this stuff back 1998 (LFReD). Had a prototype that used a cordless speaker phone or dial in and ask questions or make commands like "How tall is Mount Everest" or "Turn on the kettle". The main deal breaker were the inaccurate text to speech systems (90% if you were lucky?) like Dragon Dictate and others. Even a 90% accuracy rate was extremely frustrating. That's 1 out of every 10 words misunderstood "How tall is Count Everest?". Gives me shivers just thinking about it! speech recognition tech has finally caught up. Yay! But the big big BIG issue is the amount of if/then rules required to do the simplest of 'virtual assistant' tasks. Back then, we pitched Disney to create an "Ask Mickey" bot that would be all knowing when it comes to anything Disney... trivia, history, tickets prices etc. Even with a relatively narrow scope, the man hours required to create and maintain these rules was not trivial, and that has not changed. The average user expects, or demands rather, that these bots be 'all knowing'. I suspect 99% of Alexa and Google Home users have all but forsaken their appliance because of this. The only thing more frustrating to the user other than recognition, is the constant "Hey Google, what is the distance to the moon divided by two"? "Dunno." "Hey Alexa, what color do I get if I mix yellow and chartreuse together? "Dunno." No one is ever going to write these rules, and there's billions of them... You,"Alexa, how dangerous is it if I drive in a snow storm?" Alexa,"What type of vehicle do you have? You, "I drive a 2016 Ford F150 4x4 with winter tires." Alexa, "I don't know what that is. But I can tell you about the price of Disney tickets!" You, "OK. Alexa, what is the total price for a family of four with two adults and two children under the age of 10 on July 12th, 2020?" Alexa "Dunno."