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I used to find my Alexa devices useful, until they took the widely-discussed quality nosedive and started understanding less than half of what they used to. I c

I used to find my Alexa devices useful, until they took the widely-discussed quality nosedive and started understanding less than half of what they used to. I can't think of anything else I've purchased that became so markedly worse of a thing after I bought it. 1 experience of misunderstanding stomps out 10 of it working perfectly. I'd read a book on the inside story of the failure of this product. From cute, moderately useful novelty to glitchy, nagging revenue grab that takes it upon itself to come into your home with "offers". Eroding goodwill, missing the boat on AI you're naturally leveraged to integrate with your large installed base, it's shiny object middle management bingo.

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spaceman_2020 3y ago
Why are Siri and Alexa so bad at understanding instructions? I have to be precise and clear if I want anything done. Meanwhile with VoiceGPT, I can fill my instructions with awkward pauses, unclear language, and it still gets what I’m trying to say.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  Makes sense to me. We already have a term for mishearing something: eggcorn. Now multiply by many languages, dialects, accents. Unless they had regional interpreters down to the accent level, why would it understand anything? Humans don’t understand each other with different accents even if the language is the same.
  - dymk 3y ago
    No, for it to only be an accent, humans kind of have to understand each other - mutual intelligibility and all that. We’re pretty good at interpreting imperfect input.
  - Zandikar 3y ago
    That doesn't make any sense at all. Doesn't matter how many languages or accents there are. The problem is that there was an established, large subset of those that it once understood and could comprehend, and now, that allegedly same technology - with several years of opportunities to mature and improve - is now struggling to understand those same people that it once could. That as nothing to do with accents. Now, while I acknowledge and agree that Siri, Alexa, and the other pre-AI voice activated assistance have declined in apparent comprehension, I'm not convinced it's entirely a degradation of the tech itself, but a significant increase in expectations and a subsequent decrease in articulation and diction thanks to VoiceGPT being able to handle it. As a result, we talk more naturally, with "uh"s, "um"s, pauses, bad grammar, slang, etc. Let's also acknowledge there's probably a statistically significant number of people (if for no other reason than them aging up into being able to afford/have said devices) that never used that "old" tech "Back in the day" of 2-3 years ago, who's only experience with it is using VoiceGPT first, then trying Siri or what have you and coming to the conclusion that the other voice assistant sucks. That's obviously not a "Fair" comparison, but it's one that gets made in the real all the time regardless when it comes to the court of public opinion, and informs pubic perception at large anyway. Truthfully I think it's both, but regardless, it's failing to perform in an area where it once did. How much of that is the people changing, and how much of that is the technology, I'm not sure. But I doubt the cause is because we all suddenly switched accents on it.
sliken 3y ago
Man alexa is bad. I got the high end one with a display. It was impressively stupid, didn't seem to "know" anything. It would either fail, or just return search results. Would annoying display something interesting on the display and ask you to inquire about it, only to profess it knew nothing when asked. I ended up unplugging it. Google Assistant on the other hand "knew" things. List movies from a director, verify if an actor was in a movie, pull random facts like the wheelbase of a 2004 subaru WRX. When having a discussion with friends/family I'd rather ask google to verify something then the annoying habit of checking out the conversation to check my phone. Last thing I want is to hang out with people who mostly end up looking at their phones. GA does seem stupider than it was, seems like they are using a smaller model for cheaper inference. But GA still pretty good at random facts, weather, timers, alarm clock, playing music, broadcasting to the household, and related.

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spaceman_2020 3y ago

Why are Siri and Alexa so bad at understanding instructions? I have to be precise and clear if I want anything done. Meanwhile with VoiceGPT, I can fill my instructions with awkward pauses, unclear language, and it still gets what I’m trying to say.

2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
Makes sense to me. We already have a term for mishearing something: eggcorn. Now multiply by many languages, dialects, accents. Unless they had regional interpreters down to the accent level, why would it understand anything? Humans don’t understand each other with different accents even if the language is the same.
- dymk 3y ago
  No, for it to only be an accent, humans kind of have to understand each other - mutual intelligibility and all that. We’re pretty good at interpreting imperfect input.
- Zandikar 3y ago
  That doesn't make any sense at all. Doesn't matter how many languages or accents there are. The problem is that there was an established, large subset of those that it once understood and could comprehend, and now, that allegedly same technology - with several years of opportunities to mature and improve - is now struggling to understand those same people that it once could. That as nothing to do with accents. Now, while I acknowledge and agree that Siri, Alexa, and the other pre-AI voice activated assistance have declined in apparent comprehension, I'm not convinced it's entirely a degradation of the tech itself, but a significant increase in expectations and a subsequent decrease in articulation and diction thanks to VoiceGPT being able to handle it. As a result, we talk more naturally, with "uh"s, "um"s, pauses, bad grammar, slang, etc. Let's also acknowledge there's probably a statistically significant number of people (if for no other reason than them aging up into being able to afford/have said devices) that never used that "old" tech "Back in the day" of 2-3 years ago, who's only experience with it is using VoiceGPT first, then trying Siri or what have you and coming to the conclusion that the other voice assistant sucks. That's obviously not a "Fair" comparison, but it's one that gets made in the real all the time regardless when it comes to the court of public opinion, and informs pubic perception at large anyway. Truthfully I think it's both, but regardless, it's failing to perform in an area where it once did. How much of that is the people changing, and how much of that is the technology, I'm not sure. But I doubt the cause is because we all suddenly switched accents on it.

sliken 3y ago

Man alexa is bad. I got the high end one with a display. It was impressively stupid, didn't seem to "know" anything. It would either fail, or just return search results. Would annoying display something interesting on the display and ask you to inquire about it, only to profess it knew nothing when asked. I ended up unplugging it. Google Assistant on the other hand "knew" things. List movies from a director, verify if an actor was in a movie, pull random facts like the wheelbase of a 2004 subaru WRX. When having a discussion with friends/family I'd rather ask google to verify something then the annoying habit of checking out the conversation to check my phone. Last thing I want is to hang out with people who mostly end up looking at their phones. GA does seem stupider than it was, seems like they are using a smaller model for cheaper inference. But GA still pretty good at random facts, weather, timers, alarm clock, playing music, broadcasting to the household, and related.