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I think that's rather a case of hindsight as we now realise and agree that Alexa, Siri etc won't evolve past this crude monetization scheme. They began as very

I think that's rather a case of hindsight as we now realise and agree that Alexa, Siri etc won't evolve past this crude monetization scheme. They began as very much what you describe though, to generate pr and make their underlying ecosystems seem more attractive and advanced.

ignoramous 4y ago
Not really. Amazon has already started working on "generalizable intelligence" [0] for Alexa inspired by GPT-3 (as they say so themselves) and released to production at least one model (viz Alexa Teacher Model) based on that effort: https://archive.is/gItZq https://archive.is/gItZq / https://www.amazon.science/blog/scaling-multilingual-virtual-assistants-to-1-000-languages https://www.amazon.science/blog/scaling-multilingual-virtual... [0] https://archive.is/UlCpM https://archive.is/UlCpM / https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexas-head-scientist-on-conversational-exploration-ambient-ai https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexas-head-scientist-on-con...
- Karunamon 4y ago
  Worth mentioning that article is from last June, but in December Amazon laid off 10,000 people, most of which were in the Alexa division. https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/06/amazon-stock-news-amazon-alexa-layoffs-jeff-bezos-updates/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/06/amazon-stock-new...
  - jldugger 4y ago
    > in December Amazon laid off 10,000 people, most of which were in the Alexa division Maybe the new tech worked _really well_.
shagie 4y ago
The question is what are the respective companies trying to get it to do. Apple appears to try to make Siri an well defined interface to specific apps that offer specific services. Looking at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit you can see specific intents and workflows that Siri can hook into. This makes it rather limited but for the things that it can do, it does. To that end, Apple isn't trying to monetize Siri - its trying to be a hands free interface to specific tasks that apps can do. Amazon was trying to make Alexa a general tool (and they've reduced those capabilities over the years) running on AWS with additional goals of providing additional monetization routes. Things like "A book by an author you follow was released, would you like to add it to your cart?" Personally, I never found the chat more than a curiosity and even less so now that there is no knowledge engine backing the general knowledge questions.

ignoramous 4y ago

Not really. Amazon has already started working on "generalizable intelligence" [0] for Alexa inspired by GPT-3 (as they say so themselves) and released to production at least one model (viz Alexa Teacher Model) based on that effort: https://archive.is/gItZq https://archive.is/gItZq / https://www.amazon.science/blog/scaling-multilingual-virtual-assistants-to-1-000-languages https://www.amazon.science/blog/scaling-multilingual-virtual... [0] https://archive.is/UlCpM https://archive.is/UlCpM / https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexas-head-scientist-on-conversational-exploration-ambient-ai https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexas-head-scientist-on-con...

Karunamon 4y ago
Worth mentioning that article is from last June, but in December Amazon laid off 10,000 people, most of which were in the Alexa division. https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/06/amazon-stock-news-amazon-alexa-layoffs-jeff-bezos-updates/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/06/amazon-stock-new...
- jldugger 4y ago
  > in December Amazon laid off 10,000 people, most of which were in the Alexa division Maybe the new tech worked _really well_.

shagie 4y ago

The question is what are the respective companies trying to get it to do. Apple appears to try to make Siri an well defined interface to specific apps that offer specific services. Looking at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit you can see specific intents and workflows that Siri can hook into. This makes it rather limited but for the things that it can do, it does. To that end, Apple isn't trying to monetize Siri - its trying to be a hands free interface to specific tasks that apps can do. Amazon was trying to make Alexa a general tool (and they've reduced those capabilities over the years) running on AWS with additional goals of providing additional monetization routes. Things like "A book by an author you follow was released, would you like to add it to your cart?" Personally, I never found the chat more than a curiosity and even less so now that there is no knowledge engine backing the general knowledge questions.