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Years ago, my wife did some contracting work for a team responsible for the voice assistant at one of the major tech companies. Her role required her to work wi

Years ago, my wife did some contracting work for a team responsible for the voice assistant at one of the major tech companies. Her role required her to work with the directors and VPs and she came home one day to tell me how one of them laid out their grand vision for the product and was talking about how, not only will people use these things to buy every day items, but one day people will be making major purchases like cars with these things. I can't speak for the Alexa team, but if the execs at Amazon are anywhere close to that delusional, it's no wonder these things are falling short of expectations. The problem IMO is trust. These devices get simple commands like, "turn off the lights" wrong on a semi-regular basis. No one is going to trust Alexa to buy the right thing until they're confident that it consistently understands them correctly and currently the error rate is just too high. Even if it does understand me, I don't trust Amazon to send me a quality product.

fantasybuilder 2y ago
I think the issue of trust is a part of it, but not the most crippling when it comes to purchases. It's not that I don't trust Alexa is that I have no idea how to communicate what I need. There are thousands of options for any product - so which one should Alexa pick? How can I tell what sliced bread I want it to order without seeing the available options and prices?..
- superfrank 2y ago
  That's fair. For me at least, I see those as two sides of the same coin. If I tell my wife, "buy me toilet paper", I trust that she knows enough about me to pick a quality product. I don't need to specify details because I trust her. If I tell Amazon, "buy me toilet paper", I wouldn't be at all surprised if I got some garbage product from a brand I've never heard of and like you said, it isn't clear what I could do to get Amazon to do something different.
matrix87 2y ago
I think another problem is just a general lack of value. Why should the average person care about a 1% gain in convenience and adjust just to appease some C-suite delusion? It's like they all want to be Steve Jobs without offering any significant value to back it up

fantasybuilder 2y ago

I think the issue of trust is a part of it, but not the most crippling when it comes to purchases. It's not that I don't trust Alexa is that I have no idea how to communicate what I need. There are thousands of options for any product - so which one should Alexa pick? How can I tell what sliced bread I want it to order without seeing the available options and prices?..

superfrank 2y ago
That's fair. For me at least, I see those as two sides of the same coin. If I tell my wife, "buy me toilet paper", I trust that she knows enough about me to pick a quality product. I don't need to specify details because I trust her. If I tell Amazon, "buy me toilet paper", I wouldn't be at all surprised if I got some garbage product from a brand I've never heard of and like you said, it isn't clear what I could do to get Amazon to do something different.

matrix87 2y ago

I think another problem is just a general lack of value. Why should the average person care about a 1% gain in convenience and adjust just to appease some C-suite delusion? It's like they all want to be Steve Jobs without offering any significant value to back it up