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Voice assistants which are trying to force engagement to squeeze money out of you are dying. Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks,

Voice assistants which are trying to force engagement to squeeze money out of you are dying. Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. It is, however, very, very bad for Amazon and Google, because those tasks don't make them money. That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute speech on all the easily monetizable tasks I can do instead" People like the idea of voice assistants, but by and large they don't like all the problems associated with a voice assistant run by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

horsawlarway 4y ago
Yup - I think this is the truth. I'm willing to spend several hundred dollars right this second for a simple voice assistant for things like weather, time, timers, unit conversion, alarms, and home assistant control (mainly lights). I've actually pre-ordered the Mycroft Mark 2, although no chance to evaluate it yet. I'm very interested in devices that can do this locally. I'm not interested in Alexa/Google home anymore AT ALL - I've gone that route, they both work, but they want my dollars all the time, and it's become increasingly clear that if they can't get me making purchases through those devices - they will kill them off, or become ever more scummy in the attempt (Alexa is now including ads in the "did you know" section - "did you know" was already a fucking terrible decision to include, since it's going to marginally increase interaction at the expense of huge user dissatisfaction. But putting ads there has made me leave.) So basically - I think if anything, we're seeing a speed run of 90s/2000s tech company boom/bust. A huge amount of money poured into the space with no real idea of how to sustainably profit, but the space itself doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. It's really, really compelling to allow voice control in all sorts of interactions - but it needs to be very clearly working with me, and not trying to subvert my intent for profit. That might even mean it needs to fall back to something like "if this command, then that action" style usage. No more changing commands, no more bullshit ads, no more subversion of what I'm asking it to do. It needs to obey me, not google or amazon. Otherwise it's a sales rep and not a digital assistant.
- cupofpython 4y ago
  >they both work, I got an echo (alexa) for free and use it for home assistant. It only works when I have an internet connection. So when my internet is out, I cannot turn my lights on/off with it. I understand why, but i too would REALLY like to just have all functionality dependencies for home automation to be local.
  - LVDOVICVS 4y ago
    I use Mycroft with the home assistant vm running on Proxmox. I’m surprised how easily they integrate. And when the internet goes out I can locally control things from a laptop.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      > And when the internet goes out I can locally control things from a laptop. While an improvement I don't want a cloud-dependent system except where it's unavoidable: like having it read me news.
    - cupofpython 4y ago
      I'll have to check out the specifics - but your full setup does not seem like an improvement for me. If alexa is down, I can open up the app on my phone for each smart device manufacturer and manually control things that way. They only need my local wifi network to be functional, internet access not needed. Can a raspberry pi handle the server functionality I wonder?
- kuberlog 4y ago
  I worked on a project in 2016 that told me all I needed to know about the space. It was an online voice assistant and I couldn't find myself wanting to interact with it. Even though I spent a lot of time on the project, I scrapped it, because it was just lame. It looked kind of cool, but was lame. I personally don't think there is enough cybernetica to control with voice. At some point there may be, but right now, the internet is just one giant consumption stream with a few searches and purchases now and then. That digital daemon experience taught me that I care more about physical intelligence than verbal intelligence when it comes to my technology. I'm verbally intelligent myself, I don't need an AI who can't even speak correctly, let alone understand me, be my verbal interface to the world.
smoldesu 4y ago
> That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute speech on all the easily monetizable tasks I can do instead" This is a word-for-word description of how Siri originally functioned. "You asked for the top 5 romantic resturaunts nearby; here are the top results from Google Search:"
- zamadatix 4y ago
  GP isn't talking about bad fallback answers where it punts you to a search page more like when you ask "Hey Alexa, what is the time" and it says "The time is 5:45 PM. By the way did you know you can buy ribbons for the holidays on Amazon by saying..." i.e. things that are blatantly unrelated to answering your question and often trying to sell you something.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It’s annoying because I kind of understand advertising the capabilities- but for Siri for example I cannot find a documented list of all the commands it can “understand” and so I can’t learn how best to use it. I just have to guess and hope I get close enough.
shagie 4y ago
> Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. I'll certainly grant that... but the price point where Mycroft is, is certainly not near what I'd pay for doing those few simple tasks. Apple is at the upper end of what I'd spend for such a device (the HomePod mini is $99) - and that's because I'm fairly invested into the Apple ecosystem and thus it can make use of the iTunes library, home automation, calendar items, etc... If I wasn't invested in Apple, then none of the home assistants other than Amazon (because of the price point for the echo) would be particularly interesting. I've got a echo show - because its a very nice simple clock/weather interface (that's got Alexa behind it) too (I really liked the Ambient 7 day weather clock when it was available). I've got an echo wall clock that is paired with the echo in the kitchen - it makes timers nicely visible (a sibling of mine has an echo wall clock because its an analog dial that doesn't have any sound with it). The problems with Alexa of suggesting by the way ("Alexa, stop by the way" - give it a try and yes, it is routineable) are tolerable for how much I'm paying for them and the functionality that I use it for.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > The problems with Alexa of suggesting by the way ("Alexa, stop by the way" - give it a try and yes, it is routineable) are tolerable for how much I'm paying for them and the functionality that I use it for. So cold comfort since it’s annoying as hell, but it slowly learns you don’t like it and will back off its frequency. Amazon unsurprisingly tracks “dissatisfaction” responses and adapts rate of things (globally and individually) so you do actually have to cuss out Alexa to change it. It’s slow because obviously it’s profitable but it does happen.
- dublin 4y ago
  The Ars article on Alexa's financial crash-and-burn inside Amazon missed a lot of the reason people aren't willing to engage with Alexa as much as they could or would, if things were different. First, the privacy aspects are significant. Secondly, the value proposition is just not there - worse, Amazon has deliberately broken one of the most useful things you could do with Echo products: using them for distributed networked audio, a la Sonos: The new generation Echo Show products ELIMINATED the audio output jack, so you can't even plug the output into a stereo or speaker now! On top of that, the Echo products are just not well built, not well thought out, and have NOT been upgraded to make them better: They update, but with NO visible benefit to the owner. One example: The Echo Show 8 Cannot and will not keep its display off all night, even if you explicitly command "display off" before going to bed (yes, it does understand and temporarily obey this command!) But sometime during the night, something will wake it up, and the damn thing turns into a lighthouse in your bedroom, waking one of us up. I'd really like to find Alexa more useful, but like most folks I know with one, it's mostly just useful as a glorified voice-controlled radio - I'd use it more to control lights and such, if I could get the damn thing to actually realize waht lights are in what rooms, and that dimmer switches and smart lights can indeed share a location that should be controlled together. (Yes, this is supposed to work, but it doesn't...) I would pay $500 to outfit the house with a central voice recognition processor that would be capable of supporting a dozen or so very secure listeners on the local LAN. Mycroft isn't that solution.

horsawlarway 4y ago

Yup - I think this is the truth. I'm willing to spend several hundred dollars right this second for a simple voice assistant for things like weather, time, timers, unit conversion, alarms, and home assistant control (mainly lights). I've actually pre-ordered the Mycroft Mark 2, although no chance to evaluate it yet. I'm very interested in devices that can do this locally. I'm not interested in Alexa/Google home anymore AT ALL - I've gone that route, they both work, but they want my dollars all the time, and it's become increasingly clear that if they can't get me making purchases through those devices - they will kill them off, or become ever more scummy in the attempt (Alexa is now including ads in the "did you know" section - "did you know" was already a fucking terrible decision to include, since it's going to marginally increase interaction at the expense of huge user dissatisfaction. But putting ads there has made me leave.) So basically - I think if anything, we're seeing a speed run of 90s/2000s tech company boom/bust. A huge amount of money poured into the space with no real idea of how to sustainably profit, but the space itself doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. It's really, really compelling to allow voice control in all sorts of interactions - but it needs to be very clearly working with me, and not trying to subvert my intent for profit. That might even mean it needs to fall back to something like "if this command, then that action" style usage. No more changing commands, no more bullshit ads, no more subversion of what I'm asking it to do. It needs to obey me, not google or amazon. Otherwise it's a sales rep and not a digital assistant.

cupofpython 4y ago
>they both work, I got an echo (alexa) for free and use it for home assistant. It only works when I have an internet connection. So when my internet is out, I cannot turn my lights on/off with it. I understand why, but i too would REALLY like to just have all functionality dependencies for home automation to be local.
- LVDOVICVS 4y ago
  I use Mycroft with the home assistant vm running on Proxmox. I’m surprised how easily they integrate. And when the internet goes out I can locally control things from a laptop.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    > And when the internet goes out I can locally control things from a laptop. While an improvement I don't want a cloud-dependent system except where it's unavoidable: like having it read me news.
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    I'll have to check out the specifics - but your full setup does not seem like an improvement for me. If alexa is down, I can open up the app on my phone for each smart device manufacturer and manually control things that way. They only need my local wifi network to be functional, internet access not needed. Can a raspberry pi handle the server functionality I wonder?
kuberlog 4y ago
I worked on a project in 2016 that told me all I needed to know about the space. It was an online voice assistant and I couldn't find myself wanting to interact with it. Even though I spent a lot of time on the project, I scrapped it, because it was just lame. It looked kind of cool, but was lame. I personally don't think there is enough cybernetica to control with voice. At some point there may be, but right now, the internet is just one giant consumption stream with a few searches and purchases now and then. That digital daemon experience taught me that I care more about physical intelligence than verbal intelligence when it comes to my technology. I'm verbally intelligent myself, I don't need an AI who can't even speak correctly, let alone understand me, be my verbal interface to the world.

smoldesu 4y ago

> That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute speech on all the easily monetizable tasks I can do instead" This is a word-for-word description of how Siri originally functioned. "You asked for the top 5 romantic resturaunts nearby; here are the top results from Google Search:"

zamadatix 4y ago
GP isn't talking about bad fallback answers where it punts you to a search page more like when you ask "Hey Alexa, what is the time" and it says "The time is 5:45 PM. By the way did you know you can buy ribbons for the holidays on Amazon by saying..." i.e. things that are blatantly unrelated to answering your question and often trying to sell you something.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s annoying because I kind of understand advertising the capabilities- but for Siri for example I cannot find a documented list of all the commands it can “understand” and so I can’t learn how best to use it. I just have to guess and hope I get close enough.

shagie 4y ago

> Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like mycroft. I'll certainly grant that... but the price point where Mycroft is, is certainly not near what I'd pay for doing those few simple tasks. Apple is at the upper end of what I'd spend for such a device (the HomePod mini is $99) - and that's because I'm fairly invested into the Apple ecosystem and thus it can make use of the iTunes library, home automation, calendar items, etc... If I wasn't invested in Apple, then none of the home assistants other than Amazon (because of the price point for the echo) would be particularly interesting. I've got a echo show - because its a very nice simple clock/weather interface (that's got Alexa behind it) too (I really liked the Ambient 7 day weather clock when it was available). I've got an echo wall clock that is paired with the echo in the kitchen - it makes timers nicely visible (a sibling of mine has an echo wall clock because its an analog dial that doesn't have any sound with it). The problems with Alexa of suggesting by the way ("Alexa, stop by the way" - give it a try and yes, it is routineable) are tolerable for how much I'm paying for them and the functionality that I use it for.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> The problems with Alexa of suggesting by the way ("Alexa, stop by the way" - give it a try and yes, it is routineable) are tolerable for how much I'm paying for them and the functionality that I use it for. So cold comfort since it’s annoying as hell, but it slowly learns you don’t like it and will back off its frequency. Amazon unsurprisingly tracks “dissatisfaction” responses and adapts rate of things (globally and individually) so you do actually have to cuss out Alexa to change it. It’s slow because obviously it’s profitable but it does happen.
dublin 4y ago
The Ars article on Alexa's financial crash-and-burn inside Amazon missed a lot of the reason people aren't willing to engage with Alexa as much as they could or would, if things were different. First, the privacy aspects are significant. Secondly, the value proposition is just not there - worse, Amazon has deliberately broken one of the most useful things you could do with Echo products: using them for distributed networked audio, a la Sonos: The new generation Echo Show products ELIMINATED the audio output jack, so you can't even plug the output into a stereo or speaker now! On top of that, the Echo products are just not well built, not well thought out, and have NOT been upgraded to make them better: They update, but with NO visible benefit to the owner. One example: The Echo Show 8 Cannot and will not keep its display off all night, even if you explicitly command "display off" before going to bed (yes, it does understand and temporarily obey this command!) But sometime during the night, something will wake it up, and the damn thing turns into a lighthouse in your bedroom, waking one of us up. I'd really like to find Alexa more useful, but like most folks I know with one, it's mostly just useful as a glorified voice-controlled radio - I'd use it more to control lights and such, if I could get the damn thing to actually realize waht lights are in what rooms, and that dimmer switches and smart lights can indeed share a location that should be controlled together. (Yes, this is supposed to work, but it doesn't...) I would pay $500 to outfit the house with a central voice recognition processor that would be capable of supporting a dozen or so very secure listeners on the local LAN. Mycroft isn't that solution.