4 ms·

It's ironic that a few months ago Amazon laid off parts of the Alexa team and 'conversational' was considered failed. Then ChatGPT, etc happened. What Alexa wan

It's ironic that a few months ago Amazon laid off parts of the Alexa team and 'conversational' was considered failed. Then ChatGPT, etc happened. What Alexa wanted to build with Alexa skills, ChatGPT does much more effortlessly. It's also an interesting case study. Alexa foundationally never changed. Whereas OpenAI is a deeply invested, basically skunkworks, project with backers that were willing to sink significant cash into before seeing any returns, Alexa got stuck on a type of tech that 'seemed like' AI but never fundamentally innovated. Instead the sunk cost went to monetizing it ASAP. Amazon was also willing to sink cash before seeing returns, but they sunk it into very different areas... It reminds me of that dinner scene in Social Network. Where Justin Timberlake says "you know what's f'ing cool, a billion dollars" where he lectures Zuck on not messing up with the party before you know what it is yet. Alexa / Amazon did a classic business play. Microsoft / OpenAI were just willing to figure it all out after the disruption happened where they held all the cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5fJmkv02is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5fJmkv02is

sunsunsunsun 4y ago
I have never used Alexa, hey google or whatever flavour you choose for more then "set a timer for x minutes" and other very basic tasks. It's amazing how terrible the voice assistant products are compared to chatgpt.
- summarity 4y ago
  Experimenting with and/or reading about ChatGPT and then interacting with Siri feels almost offensive now. All of the assistants still suck - get on it AmaGooPple!
- pms 4y ago
  However, is ChatGPT a solution to virtual assistant? I'm not sure, because virtual assistants work with huge databases of entities, e.g., songs or movies, and it's not really clear that ChatGPT can handle this. A couple of days ago I asked it whether it knows Dream of You by Camila Cabello, a song with hundreds of millions of plays, and it didn't... Furthermore, that database is constantly updated... It sounds like LLMs solve neither of these problems well, although they may be an improvement over current wave of virtual assistants.
  - aiappreciator 4y ago
    That's because you used ChatGPT. Rather than GPT-4. GPT-4 has more parameters, so can remember much more obscure facts. I had GPT-4 analyze the ethics of some obscure japanese visual novel from the perspective of multiple characters in that story. It did so flawlessly. ChatGPT would have started making up stuff in the second paragraph because it couldn't remember what actually happened.
    - pms 4y ago
      Have you provided the visual novel as a prompt or just asked about it? ChatGPT does seem to know more about books than songs, maybe because they are more often described in texts, while songs not, not sure. I wished more parameters gave a generalizable solution, but research suggests that's not the case [1, 2, 3]. OpenAI won't tell you this, cause they have a product to sell. [1] http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.08411 http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.08411 [2] http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03395 http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03395 [3] http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04345 http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04345
  - infoseek12 4y ago
    I think ChatGPT plugins may be what solves this problems. Does IMDB have an API?
    - wernst 4y ago
      Sites like IMDB feel like they might be in a pickle. What happens to their ad revenue if they expose their API and no one navigates to their site anymore?
      - n3rv 4y ago
        API access as a service here we come!
      - pbronez 4y ago
        Could be a good thing. Maybe this is the push the world needs to create a business model around providing useful information without surveillance capitalism smeared on top.
letitgo12345 4y ago
They sank it in "customer obsessed research" lol

sunsunsunsun 4y ago

I have never used Alexa, hey google or whatever flavour you choose for more then "set a timer for x minutes" and other very basic tasks. It's amazing how terrible the voice assistant products are compared to chatgpt.

summarity 4y ago
Experimenting with and/or reading about ChatGPT and then interacting with Siri feels almost offensive now. All of the assistants still suck - get on it AmaGooPple!
pms 4y ago
However, is ChatGPT a solution to virtual assistant? I'm not sure, because virtual assistants work with huge databases of entities, e.g., songs or movies, and it's not really clear that ChatGPT can handle this. A couple of days ago I asked it whether it knows Dream of You by Camila Cabello, a song with hundreds of millions of plays, and it didn't... Furthermore, that database is constantly updated... It sounds like LLMs solve neither of these problems well, although they may be an improvement over current wave of virtual assistants.
- aiappreciator 4y ago
  That's because you used ChatGPT. Rather than GPT-4. GPT-4 has more parameters, so can remember much more obscure facts. I had GPT-4 analyze the ethics of some obscure japanese visual novel from the perspective of multiple characters in that story. It did so flawlessly. ChatGPT would have started making up stuff in the second paragraph because it couldn't remember what actually happened.
  - pms 4y ago
    Have you provided the visual novel as a prompt or just asked about it? ChatGPT does seem to know more about books than songs, maybe because they are more often described in texts, while songs not, not sure. I wished more parameters gave a generalizable solution, but research suggests that's not the case [1, 2, 3]. OpenAI won't tell you this, cause they have a product to sell. [1] http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.08411 http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.08411 [2] http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03395 http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03395 [3] http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04345 http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04345
- infoseek12 4y ago
  I think ChatGPT plugins may be what solves this problems. Does IMDB have an API?
  - wernst 4y ago
    Sites like IMDB feel like they might be in a pickle. What happens to their ad revenue if they expose their API and no one navigates to their site anymore?
    - n3rv 4y ago
      API access as a service here we come!
    - pbronez 4y ago
      Could be a good thing. Maybe this is the push the world needs to create a business model around providing useful information without surveillance capitalism smeared on top.

letitgo12345 4y ago

They sank it in "customer obsessed research" lol