3 ms·

Amazon's Alexa is in trouble after layoffs

6 points by axiomdata316 4y ago

atomicnumber3 4y ago
I wonder if it would help if we developed some kind of standard grammar for constructing commands. I think what I always found comforting about "Alexa what temperature is it outside right now" is that there's very little ability to misconstrue it. If we tried to reach people a "command language" in the same way we train people to recognize three horizontal lines as a menu-open button maybe we could get somewhere. But now we're reneging on the whole basis of "oh just ask Alexa" since now you have to speak a non-native language (well, grammar) to her. Hrm. But I think another problem is how low-bandwidth human speech is. A picture is worth a thousand words and a written word is probably worth at least 2 or 3 spoken. Combine that with how noise-polluted many homes are (kids) and how relatively bad speech processing is at picking up on some of the finer nuances of speech and you've got a really bad "connection" that's underpinning a really slow communication protocol. So with that... how would you ever shop online by voice? Maybe you could easily reorder common things - "Alexa please reorder baby wipes like I always do" but amazons listings churn "brand" names and such so often that might be hard. And shipping Prime members 10 free of those button things would probably be more likely to get this to work than by executing really well on voice. Music seems like a simple idea but TFA said that didn't seem to really work. So where is voice supposed to go? Any ideas? Honestly the most intrigued I've ever been by my Echo Touch 2 or whatever it's called - it's the 8" display thingy - was to do the "Alexa - intruder alert!" meme at funny times as a joke to my wife. Completely unrelated the device in question is currently unplugged. Was the whole thing supposed to be "locally parse speech and sell ads on it" and that ended up not working without sending the speech home to AMZN, which they seemed too reputationally risky to do? I digress.
- fargle 4y ago
  grammar: hey fucking alexa, fucking fuck yerself. Yah you. fuck you you wee fucking peice of fucking kit. Fuck you, you fucking ad spaming fuck ball. fucking fuck you! now fucking turn on the fucking patio lights, thank you. FUCK you.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
When I worked at Amazon all our best hires were given to Alexa for right of first refusal. I lost several good candidates to that mandate. Glad to see it was all worth it considering the business I built had a high double digit margin and could be observed in the least significant digit of the annual filings. Meh! Still bitter.

6 points by axiomdata316 4y ago

I wonder if it would help if we developed some kind of standard grammar for constructing commands. I think what I always found comforting about "Alexa what temperature is it outside right now" is that there's very little ability to misconstrue it. If we tried to reach people a "command language" in the same way we train people to recognize three horizontal lines as a menu-open button maybe we could get somewhere. But now we're reneging on the whole basis of "oh just ask Alexa" since now you have to speak a non-native language (well, grammar) to her. Hrm. But I think another problem is how low-bandwidth human speech is. A picture is worth a thousand words and a written word is probably worth at least 2 or 3 spoken. Combine that with how noise-polluted many homes are (kids) and how relatively bad speech processing is at picking up on some of the finer nuances of speech and you've got a really bad "connection" that's underpinning a really slow communication protocol. So with that... how would you ever shop online by voice? Maybe you could easily reorder common things - "Alexa please reorder baby wipes like I always do" but amazons listings churn "brand" names and such so often that might be hard. And shipping Prime members 10 free of those button things would probably be more likely to get this to work than by executing really well on voice. Music seems like a simple idea but TFA said that didn't seem to really work. So where is voice supposed to go? Any ideas? Honestly the most intrigued I've ever been by my Echo Touch 2 or whatever it's called - it's the 8" display thingy - was to do the "Alexa - intruder alert!" meme at funny times as a joke to my wife. Completely unrelated the device in question is currently unplugged. Was the whole thing supposed to be "locally parse speech and sell ads on it" and that ended up not working without sending the speech home to AMZN, which they seemed too reputationally risky to do? I digress.

fargle 4y ago
grammar: hey fucking alexa, fucking fuck yerself. Yah you. fuck you you wee fucking peice of fucking kit. Fuck you, you fucking ad spaming fuck ball. fucking fuck you! now fucking turn on the fucking patio lights, thank you. FUCK you.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

When I worked at Amazon all our best hires were given to Alexa for right of first refusal. I lost several good candidates to that mandate. Glad to see it was all worth it considering the business I built had a high double digit margin and could be observed in the least significant digit of the annual filings. Meh! Still bitter.