5 ms·

This is fascinating, thanks for sharing! I wonder why amazon/google/apple didn't hop on the voice assistant/agent train in the last few years. All 3 have existi

This is fascinating, thanks for sharing! I wonder why amazon/google/apple didn't hop on the voice assistant/agent train in the last few years. All 3 have existing products with existing users and can pretty much define and capture the category with a single over-the-air update.

jedberg 7mo ago
Two main reasons: 1. Compute. It's easy to make a voice assistant for a few people. But it takes a hell of a lot of GPU to serve millions. 2. Guard Rails. All of those assistants have the ability to affect the real world. With Alexa you can close a garage or turn on the stove. It would be real bad if you told it to close the garage as you went to bed for the night and instead it turned on the stove and burned down the house while you slept. So you need so really strong guard rails for those popular assistants. 3 And a bonus reason: Money. Voice assistants aren't all the profitable. There isn't a lot of money in "what time is it" and "what's the weather". :)
- mcbits 7mo ago
  > There isn't a lot of money in "what time is it" and "what's the weather". :) - Alexa, what time is it? - Current time is 5:35 P.M. - the perfect time to crack open a can of ice cold Budweiser! A fresh 12-pack can be delivered within one hour if you order now!
  - jedberg 7mo ago
    If your Alexa did that, how quickly would you box it up and send it to me. :) I am serious though about having it sent to me: if anyone has an Alexa they no longer want, I'm happy to take it off your hands. I have eight and have never bought one. Having worked there I actually trust the security more than before I worked there. It was basically impossible for me, even as a Principle Engineer, to get copies of the Text to Speech of a customer and I literally never heard a customer voice recording.
    - alexastoplying 7mo ago
      What a way to throwaway good will. I also worked there and to get access to text you simply had to grab the DSN of your device, attest that it’s yours and it gets put in a “pool” of devices that are tracked until removed. On each end you are basically waved through with no checks. This was usually done when debugging tricky UI bugs or new features as the request followed through several micro services. I do not believe the a PE would not know this. And one with patents.
      - jedberg 7mo ago
        That was your own device. Not other customers.
        argee 7mo ago
        Don't feed the trolls, Jeremy.
        jedberg 7mo ago
        But they're hungry!
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
    - stavros 7mo ago
      I'm puzzled by this conversation, because Amazon did get on the agent bandwagon with Alexa Plus (I have it, it's buggier than regular Alexa and it's all making me throw my Echos away since they can't even play Spotify reliably). Also, my Alexa does advertise stuff to me when I talk to it. It's not Budweiser, but it'll try to upsell me on Amazon services all the time.
      - jedberg 7mo ago
        > because Amazon did get on the agent bandwagon with Alexa Plus Which just launched last year, about four years after ChatGPT had AI voice chat. And it costs extra money to cover the costs. And as you aptly point out, all the guardrails they had to put in made the experience less than ideal. > Also, my Alexa does advertise stuff to me when I talk to it. Yes, that is how they try to make money. And it's gotten worse. But how many times does it get you to buy something?
aabdi 7mo ago
it was too hard~, they all tried real hard and the models just kept failing. The models only got good enough -1.5 years ago~. I mean its deployed now (Alexa+/gemini). but its expensive as hell. and also kinda useless. Claude cowork/clawbot form factors are better. Wrong form factor/use case really. People really wanna buy stuff using clawbot.

jedberg 7mo ago

Two main reasons: 1. Compute. It's easy to make a voice assistant for a few people. But it takes a hell of a lot of GPU to serve millions. 2. Guard Rails. All of those assistants have the ability to affect the real world. With Alexa you can close a garage or turn on the stove. It would be real bad if you told it to close the garage as you went to bed for the night and instead it turned on the stove and burned down the house while you slept. So you need so really strong guard rails for those popular assistants. 3 And a bonus reason: Money. Voice assistants aren't all the profitable. There isn't a lot of money in "what time is it" and "what's the weather". :)

mcbits 7mo ago
> There isn't a lot of money in "what time is it" and "what's the weather". :) - Alexa, what time is it? - Current time is 5:35 P.M. - the perfect time to crack open a can of ice cold Budweiser! A fresh 12-pack can be delivered within one hour if you order now!
- jedberg 7mo ago
  If your Alexa did that, how quickly would you box it up and send it to me. :) I am serious though about having it sent to me: if anyone has an Alexa they no longer want, I'm happy to take it off your hands. I have eight and have never bought one. Having worked there I actually trust the security more than before I worked there. It was basically impossible for me, even as a Principle Engineer, to get copies of the Text to Speech of a customer and I literally never heard a customer voice recording.
  - alexastoplying 7mo ago
    What a way to throwaway good will. I also worked there and to get access to text you simply had to grab the DSN of your device, attest that it’s yours and it gets put in a “pool” of devices that are tracked until removed. On each end you are basically waved through with no checks. This was usually done when debugging tricky UI bugs or new features as the request followed through several micro services. I do not believe the a PE would not know this. And one with patents.
    - jedberg 7mo ago
      That was your own device. Not other customers.
      - argee 7mo ago
        Don't feed the trolls, Jeremy.
        jedberg 7mo ago
        But they're hungry!
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - stavros 7mo ago
    I'm puzzled by this conversation, because Amazon did get on the agent bandwagon with Alexa Plus (I have it, it's buggier than regular Alexa and it's all making me throw my Echos away since they can't even play Spotify reliably). Also, my Alexa does advertise stuff to me when I talk to it. It's not Budweiser, but it'll try to upsell me on Amazon services all the time.
    - jedberg 7mo ago
      > because Amazon did get on the agent bandwagon with Alexa Plus Which just launched last year, about four years after ChatGPT had AI voice chat. And it costs extra money to cover the costs. And as you aptly point out, all the guardrails they had to put in made the experience less than ideal. > Also, my Alexa does advertise stuff to me when I talk to it. Yes, that is how they try to make money. And it's gotten worse. But how many times does it get you to buy something?

aabdi 7mo ago

it was too hard~, they all tried real hard and the models just kept failing. The models only got good enough -1.5 years ago~. I mean its deployed now (Alexa+/gemini). but its expensive as hell. and also kinda useless. Claude cowork/clawbot form factors are better. Wrong form factor/use case really. People really wanna buy stuff using clawbot.