3 ms·

All of that could as easily be done locally. The Echo speaker is likely the hub for the IoT device controlling the kitchen light. None of the context you spea

All of that could as easily be done locally. The Echo speaker is likely the hub for the IoT device controlling the kitchen light. None of the context you speak of requires "cloud".

jedberg 2y ago
> All of that could as easily be done locally It cannot. Keep in mind that the Alexa devices are built to be as cheap as possible, so they have minimum amounts of RAM and CPU. The tiniest of models can barely fit on the device. > The Echo speaker is likely the hub for the IoT device controlling the kitchen light. Generally the devices that are controlled by Alexa are done via Wifi from the provider of the device using their own APIs. Very few "Works with Alexa" devices can be controlled locally. But yes, some of them can. However, the Alexa device doesn't know it is called "kitchen". > None of the context you speak of requires "cloud". I just gave you a simple example. Here is a better one that I used down below: Say you live in San Francisco: "Alexa, I'm thinking of going to New York, how many flights are there each day?" This is a hard question, and one that will go to the cloud. "Alexa, what's the weather" This seems like an easy question. But with local only processing, you'd get the weather in San Francisco. But with the LLM, it will probably give you the weather in New York, which is most likely what you wanted if you asked these things just a few seconds apart.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Funny that Home Assistant seems to manage. Every point you made is a choice that was engineered into the system to impose dependence.
  - jedberg 2y ago
    You must have missed the very first thing I said. The Alexa has very weak hardware. The home assistant is basically a Mac mini. And the costs of each reflect that.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      Far from being a Mac Mini, the reference home assistant hardware is spec-for-spec a 4Gb Orange Pi 3B: https://www.home-assistant.io/green/ https://www.home-assistant.io/green/ A far cry from your claim of "it cannot be done". And the $40 retail sticker for that board doesn't seem to match up with your claim about pricing. Even low cost modern SoCs have NPUs in the double-digit TOPs, and memory densities being what they are, there's very little excuse not to run a special purpose language processing model on device. A 128gbit (8GB) memory module goes for as little as $0.04 ea on digikey: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/memory/774?s=N4IgjCBcpgLATFUBjKAzAhgGwM4FMAaEAeygG0QA2WABgGYAOAdhAF0iAHAFyhAGUuAJwCWAOwDmIAL5EAnJQjQQqSJlyES5EHVoBWJnTacekfkLGSpMkIkgUAJoIwBbI1SQhh93gFowNCGNeECIuAE8OPF4MHFQrIA https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/memory/774?s=N4Ig...
acchow 2y ago
How would it be aware of everything else I have and do online? Calendar, emails, YouTube history, current audiobook, etc?

All of that could as easily be done locally. The Echo speaker is likely the hub for the IoT device controlling the kitchen light. None of the context you speak of requires "cloud".

jedberg 2y ago

> All of that could as easily be done locally It cannot. Keep in mind that the Alexa devices are built to be as cheap as possible, so they have minimum amounts of RAM and CPU. The tiniest of models can barely fit on the device. > The Echo speaker is likely the hub for the IoT device controlling the kitchen light. Generally the devices that are controlled by Alexa are done via Wifi from the provider of the device using their own APIs. Very few "Works with Alexa" devices can be controlled locally. But yes, some of them can. However, the Alexa device doesn't know it is called "kitchen". > None of the context you speak of requires "cloud". I just gave you a simple example. Here is a better one that I used down below: Say you live in San Francisco: "Alexa, I'm thinking of going to New York, how many flights are there each day?" This is a hard question, and one that will go to the cloud. "Alexa, what's the weather" This seems like an easy question. But with local only processing, you'd get the weather in San Francisco. But with the LLM, it will probably give you the weather in New York, which is most likely what you wanted if you asked these things just a few seconds apart.

timschmidt 2y ago
Funny that Home Assistant seems to manage. Every point you made is a choice that was engineered into the system to impose dependence.
- jedberg 2y ago
  You must have missed the very first thing I said. The Alexa has very weak hardware. The home assistant is basically a Mac mini. And the costs of each reflect that.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    Far from being a Mac Mini, the reference home assistant hardware is spec-for-spec a 4Gb Orange Pi 3B: https://www.home-assistant.io/green/ https://www.home-assistant.io/green/ A far cry from your claim of "it cannot be done". And the $40 retail sticker for that board doesn't seem to match up with your claim about pricing. Even low cost modern SoCs have NPUs in the double-digit TOPs, and memory densities being what they are, there's very little excuse not to run a special purpose language processing model on device. A 128gbit (8GB) memory module goes for as little as $0.04 ea on digikey: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/memory/774?s=N4IgjCBcpgLATFUBjKAzAhgGwM4FMAaEAeygG0QA2WABgGYAOAdhAF0iAHAFyhAGUuAJwCWAOwDmIAL5EAnJQjQQqSJlyES5EHVoBWJnTacekfkLGSpMkIkgUAJoIwBbI1SQhh93gFowNCGNeECIuAE8OPF4MHFQrIA https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/memory/774?s=N4Ig...

acchow 2y ago

How would it be aware of everything else I have and do online? Calendar, emails, YouTube history, current audiobook, etc?