
Voice Is the Next Big Platform, and Alexa Will Own It - steven
https://backchannel.com/voice-is-the-next-big-platform-and-alexa-will-own-it-c2cf13fab911#.99bbuyqv1
======
dchuk
God I hope not.

Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the
system can and can't do. Every single Voice UX I've used for input (Siri,
Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out
the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from
the device because it doesn't actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the
time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a
screen, it kind of ruins the point.

Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7" screen in
the future.

What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards
this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have
Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these
things unless you're stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot
assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.

~~~
ThomPete
Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other.

Things said in our home all the time:

 _" Do you know what the weather is going to be like?"_

 _" Is it going to rain today?"_

 _" We need to buy some milk."_

 _" The roast need one and a half hour."_

We speak all the time with each other and there is nothing weird about that.

I bought a Google Home and it's literally transformed our lives in the little
details for the better.

Before asking for the weather was something which required one of us to find
the phone, open it find the weather app.

It sounds banal but if you have to do it every day because you take your kids
to school believe me it's a godsend.

My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now
loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the
old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio.

My kids love talking with it.

And it's basically just a very practical assistant which is revolutionary in
the little details not some sci-fi scenario.

It's not disrupting anything it's improving the quality of tech by allowing us
to interface with technology in one of the ways which removes yet another
layer of abstraction.

You don't need to know what the system can do as long as it can do enough
Google Home certainly can and it's just getting started.

~~~
nothrabannosir
_Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other._

Except that humans have an average IQ of 100. They understand context, they
get what I'm trying to say. Try getting Siri to turn off all repeating alarms,
just for today. Or turn off all alarms until 12pm.

"But that's not how Siri is supposed to work!"

Sure, fine. It's just a ux to a limited api. But then you can't also compare
it to how we use the same input for humans. Robots aren't humans. Not by a
long shot. They have an api, a very specific and limited set of capabilities.
They are not flexible. They don't get context.

Voice interfaces have their place. Because once you know the api, the
possibilities, voice may well be most practical. But not because we happen to
talk to humans.

~~~
JacobJans
Siri and Google Voice are in completely different leagues. I find Siri
completely useless; I use Google's voice interface all the time; it even
understands context.

~~~
gugagore
The product you're talking about I think is "Google Now". Google Voice is
Google's VoIP-ish service, precursor to Google Fi

~~~
gcb0
and completely abandoned.

~~~
Larrikin
Abandoned but atleast it still works. Can make a new phone number and I can
still call US numbers abroad for free.

~~~
gcb0
but sending an sms via the app fails 80% of the time

------
brian-armstrong
When I visited Berlin last year, I visited the DDR Museum. It's not about the
RAM or the dance game you might know, but instead the organization we just
know as "East Germany." You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

One of the exhibits was of a common East Berlin living room. The exhibit
explained how the state had hidden microphones here. They were listening for
people to express anti-socialist ideas in their own homes. This was a real
threat faced by people not more than 30 or 40 years ago. You could have your
life turned upside down just for saying the wrong thing at home.

This exhibit drove home for me the inherent abusive powers enabled by some
tech. One of these technologies is always on, always connected microphones.
Why would I want one in my house? Given the potential downsides, what could
possibly be worth it to justify having one?

~~~
rhino369
The risk is rather low if you don't live in a totalitarian state and you don't
engage in extremely subversive or criminal activities.

Sure, the government could force Amazon to let Echo spy on you. But they could
force Apple or Google to do the same thing with your phone. Speakerphone isn't
as good as far field mikes, but it's pretty good.

The government could also just bug your apartment the old fashioned way.

The big fear would be that echo is storing audio of your house that a future
government could use against you. But there is no indication that Amazon does
that. It only sends audio after it's triggered by the codeword. Honestly, my
google and bing histories are probably a lot more damning.

But if Trump goes all hitler on us, I'd throw mine out.

~~~
brian-armstrong
You're assuming the device never acts incorrectly/has bugs. Why?

Also, the recent findings show it's not just subversive actors who gets
surveiled. There are already massive dragnet operations. That's happening
right now. So it's not some hypothetical, that's reality.

I think the better approach, rather than waiting and finding out too late, is
just to avoid these altogether. The world has mostly been pretty safe but the
security appears to now be threatened and civil liberties are rapidly eroding.
So just for that reason I think our position for ourselves and for
friends/family should just be to pass altogether on this type of device

~~~
marchenko
I wonder if, in the future, it will be just as hard to find a "dumb"
toaster/lightswitch/thermometer as it is to find incandescent bulbs.

------
awgneo
I tried Alexa a month ago and gave up on it within a week. Digital assistants
fall flat in walled gardens. It was clear during this week that Alexa only
worked well with Amazon services, which were always subpar. Google search?
Nope. Support for Chromecast? Nope. Support for Instacart? Nope. It was
basically a perverse link to the Amazon-only supply chain.

Google's assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don't have high
hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released. Given
that Google won't be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy,
we can expect them to offload voice requests to the highest bidder or prefer
Google services above all else. This is another perverse link into Google's
realm of anti-privacy; but worse, because they won't be able to do ads along
the side. The responses will be the ads.

All of this to say that all of these locked down digital assistants will fail
until a company truly approaches it from an open and wholistic perspective,
and one that doesn't rely upon troves of private data. These devices may sell
well this year, but so did digital picture frames. How many of those are still
in use?

~~~
Eridrus
I don't recall where I saw it, but I recall reading a comment from Google
saying they weren't planning on having "Apps for Home" where the voice
commands were things you installed like on Android/Echo, but were keeping it
locked down and working with partners for the foreseeable future.

Alexa is actually not a walled garden at all; skills are almost entirely
separated from each other, and I think that will be one of the biggest
problems though. My gut says that the reason language is convenient is that it
allows for things to be implicit rather than explicit and I expect the voice
assistants that will be most useful are the ones that can best understand this
context, which will require deeper integration.

~~~
KirinDave
> I don't recall where I saw it, but I recall reading a comment from Google
> saying they weren't planning on having "Apps for Home" where the voice
> commands were things you installed like on Android/Echo, but were keeping it
> locked down and working with partners for the foreseeable future.

Except that:
[https://developers.google.com/actions/](https://developers.google.com/actions/)

OFC partner negotiations will need to take place in this; this is a new field
with massive implications for customer security and caution and oversight
_should_ be the watchword. Imagine the open ecosystem model for this and the
disasters it could bring.

But the door to the ecosystem is plainly marked now and the rules are posted
over the queue. You can do it today.

~~~
Eridrus
Ok, I went and found what I'd read:
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13878444/google-home-
devel...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13878444/google-home-developers-
actions-ecosystem-app-store)

> The first and most important difference is that Google is not going to
> create an “Action Store” where users can select which ones they want and
> “install” them on Google Home. Instead, Google itself is going to approve
> all the keywords that developers want to use to invoke their actions and
> make them all available to everybody.

> That effectively means that actions will be curated by Google (like an app
> store), but users won’t have to install anything before using them (like the
> web). “It's not a direct analog to any existing ecosystem,” says Jason
> Douglas, director for actions on Google.

That article does specify that there will be a hand-off to 3rd party systems,
rather than Google orchestrating everything, but it still sounds quite tightly
constrained and I think that if the plan is to have things all work nicely
together and not be silos, then tighter integration with more Google control
will be the name of the game.

------
manlio
I helped writing the Alexa skill for The Guardian [0], and I really didn't
think highly of it, nor I thought I'd ever use it myself: the voice
recognition is still poor, and it's difficul to understand what you can/cannot
do with it. All in all, a big meh.

Then one day someone forwarded to our team this email, and it really touched
my heart.

 _I am quadriplegic and the Amazon Echo has transformed my life. I haven 't
been able to open a newspaper for 10 years, but now I can! [...] Please pass
this email on to all of those concerned at the Guardian... They need-to-know
the difference that they have made"._

[0] [https://github.com/guardian/alexa-skills-
lambda](https://github.com/guardian/alexa-skills-lambda)

~~~
deboboy
One our teams works with this community. They have inspired and awed us.

------
CodeSheikh
My (unbiased) 2 cents..

“Qualitatively, Amazon’s position is more secure than the numbers would
indicate.”

I beg to differ. I believe Apple has a much more secured position than Amazon
in the long run, given how Siri is already integrated in iOs mobile devices
and macOS based desktops. So far, has Apple capitalized on this advantage?
Nope. Are they gonna? Most likely, given the fact that they always wait for
everyone to show their projects in high school science fair and then they roll
out their better comprehensive showcase.

If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or
early 2018 then it might be too late.

Apple's true competitor in this domain can only be Google with its staggering
command on Android ecosystem. Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs
and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon.

Amazon has mainstreamed a voice tech. They have done it well and made a point
that this is the way of the future. Now the second part of the problem is to
integrate already existing daily use computational devices with this "voice-
tech". Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.

~~~
IBM
>If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017
or early 2018 then it might be too late.

Why would it be too late? This isn't a social network where the network
effects make competition almost impossible. Apple already has a platform in
HomeKit that leverages the much larger iOS installed base. More HomeKit
compatible devices are being released all the time.

In fact many people criticized Apple for imposing requirements around
hardware-based security which slowed the release of devices, but the recent
DDOS attacks and the Internet of Shit Twitter account has shown that was the
correct move.

I don't think there's any deadline for Apple to release an Echo competitor. If
they release a product that is better/differentiated in some way, people will
buy it. And they'll likely have a number of HomeKit devices already that work
with it.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _This isn 't a social network where the network effects make competition
> almost impossible_

There are still economies of scale. More microphones being used more
frequently means more data on which to train.

~~~
IBM
Apple said there are 2 billion Siri requests made per week.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11906654/apple-
wwdc-2016-n...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11906654/apple-
wwdc-2016-news-highlights-recap-imessage-siri)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I wasn't making a specific claim regarding Amazon vs. Apple. Just pointing out
that scale, and thus time-in-market, _does_ have competitive meaning in this
context.

~~~
IBM
Well in this context Apple already has scale. There's no advantage to Apple to
releasing an Echo competitor sooner rather than later.

------
__jal
Always-on surveillance devices (at least the ones I know about and for which I
do not control the endpoints) do not have a place in my home.

I'm increasingly feeling like humans around me are remarkably less protective
of their private spheres than I am, and am curious as to where the difference
lies. I'm pretty dull - it is not like I'm protecting the privacy of my wild
and crazy lifestyle. But the idea that the noises made in my home are being
shipped to and stored... somewhere, with access controls unspecified (but to a
company that has proven it rolls over on command for the government, at least
when not discussing taxes[1]) such that I don't know who may be listening to
it[2], is the sort of thing that effects how I behave in my own home. And
pardon me, but fuck that, no way.

A friend compared to to having sex in front of pets, but I'm pretty sure my
cat doesn't speak any human languages, hasn't written systems to routinely
disclose data to various groups of humans, and isn't likely to try to sell me
$product to improve my performance. For instance.

The main place voice is useful to me today is in the car. I'm already on
display in a fishtank, and talking to what amounts to a remarkably clever
turnip that sometimes gets something right is useful.

[1]
[http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.amazon/](http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/01/wikileaks.amazon/)
. Sure, just a run-of-the-mill TOS violation, nothing to see here.

[2] Doesn't matter that the unknown humans likely aren't. I'm not claiming
rationality.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Honest question: Do you own a cellphone?

~~~
__jal
Honest answer: I do. More than one.

------
sna1l
This article briefly covers Google Home's advantages in the conclusion, but I
think they are pretty understated.

The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at
anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but
having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a
matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.

~~~
sgwealti
I have both and Google Assistant/Google Now is a much better experience than
Alexa/Echo. The google voice interface is much more intuitive, allows context
to be kept in a conversation, and is with me wherever my phone is. With Alexa
I feel like I'm constantly searching for the right way to ask her to do
something.

~~~
sf_rob
Ya, this article heavily underemphasized the research Google has done in
conversational systems. These devices won't have mainstream appeal until you
can just talk to one with minimal instruction.

Although at this time Google Home is only conversational for search and is
still very bad about being entirely keyword based in context; I suspect that
this will change.

------
abruzzi
Am I the only person who finds talking to these personal assistants profoundly
uncomfortable? Like I've spent all my life learning how to interact with a
computer, and now these companies want me to interact with it like it's a
human (which I'm not very good with anyway) but it's not a human. Instead it
exists in this uncanny valley where it sounds a little bit human, but its
cognition is so completely limited that I have to turn myself into a limited
cognition robot to communicate with it?

~~~
Swizec
It took me a few weeks/months to get used to Alexa and I have to say, it's
really nice to be able to come home and say "Alexa play some music" and she
always knows I want some nice Jazz. When you say it in the morning, she plays
morning music. It's nice.

Saying "Alexa 5 minute timer" is also convenient. "Alexa, weather" is less
convenient because she doesn't know that I prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit.
This is unfortunate, but at least she can do a conversion.

But then you do an "Alexa what's the velocity of an unladen swallow" and she
won't even perform a basic Google or WolframAlpha search and give you the
first result. Just says she doesn't understand. Lame.

Before all that, though, I had a lot of essentially stage fright whenever that
Alexa blue light came on.

Same thing happened when I started using Siri _after_ I was already used to
Alexa. Invoke the voice thing, and the prompt comes on, and I am awash in
stage fright, unsure what to say.

It's weird.

~~~
sib
>> "Alexa, weather" is less convenient because she doesn't know that I prefer
Celsius over Fahrenheit. This is unfortunate, but at least she can do a
conversion.

There's a device-level setting in the mobile app to set Alexa's preferred
system to Metric...

~~~
Swizec
I know. It doesn't affect temperature for some reason.

Or I'm growing senile and didn't actually try that when i thought I did.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Works for me. Mine started out giving me F but I switched it to C no problems.

------
andybak
I get the feeling Amazon aren't very good at consumer-facing platforms. My
experience with everything Fire related has been poor, their Android apps are
2nd rate and the Kindle is good despite their software. I wouldn't write off
the competition yet. Apple, Microsoft and Google have good voice products and
the ability to forge partnerships.

Also (cliche warning) I only know one person who owns an Alexa or has even
expressed an interest in buying one.

~~~
AznHisoka
A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa?

Based on the commercials, it seems to solve trivial problems like answering
trivia questions. Why can't it vacuum my room like a Roomba, fix my leaky
ceiling or fix my power outage? That's what I call an useful home assistant.
Being able to parse and understand my voice is nice but it's relatively
useless if it can't perform extremely valuable tasks.

~~~
tracker1
"OK Google... find ceiling repair near me"

I know it seems a bit overt, but I'm pretty serious... I find myself reaching
for google now more often than I ever have before. They're a step past Alexa
when it comes to the sheer data that Google has to pull from. My only
complaint is sometimes I hit clear all, and I can't get back to the reminders
auto-set via email invites.

I also don't like that they've effectively deprecated the hangouts UX... they
made interacting via SMS outside the phone pretty painful. I know there's hard
costs to the stuff that came out of Grand Central / Google Voice, but I feel
like when they first launched Hangouts, the experience was better overall.

In general using Google's services works so much better than anything else
I've tried. That said, it's kind of creepy ay times.

~~~
johnsmith21006
I would do a quick Google search using a lyric or something to get song name
to then tell my Echo. Now have the Google Home and no longer need the Google
search.

------
chishaku
> Amazon owns the next platform.

No. We built a market analytics app on top of Alexa and we have Echos all over
the office. It's great.

But I don't want to be tied to stationary speakers in the office. I want my
app integrated with the devices I carry with me everywhere. Google and Apple
are poised to win here once they open up Assistant and Siri to third-party
development.

~~~
hawaiianbrah
Wasn't that one of the big pushes of the latest iOS release? Opening up Siri?
Sad I haven't seen as much as I would've expected, or as quickly. I was quite
excited for it but it has yet to be realized.

------
zby
I cannot fathom how people willingly put themselves under this level of
surveillance. Especially if you are not USA citizen or resident and your
privacy is not defended by the US constitution.

------
visarga
I don't think everyone will desire a live mic in their living room or bedroom,
and not just any wireless mic, but one that understands what they are saying.

Private spaces are essential for creative thought, exploration,
experimentation and just being yourself. The price is too high - it will
answer questions for me, and execute commands, but I will lose my last bastion
of privacy as an admission price.

------
bjacobel
Maybe this is offtopic, but Backchannel seems to have a lot of these glowing,
puffy profiles of tech companies looking for exposure for their new products.
I mean, parts of this piece read as marketing copy. "It all starts with that
tiny speaker. The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare
products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we
live. In 2017, we will start to see that change."

They had a few other similarly uncritical, almost breathless pieces on Okta
[1] and Vote.org [2] earlier this year. Am I paranoid/overly cynical, or is
Backchannel becoming the outlet PR departments grant access to in return for
coverage they know will flatter them? Being hosted on Medium, they don't serve
ads (AFAIK)... so this may even be a part of their funding model.

[1]: "A Comany You've Never Heard Of May Have Solved The Password Mess"
[https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-
may-h...](https://backchannel.com/a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-have-
solved-the-password-mess-cd5d1725209b#.ath9qe4c3)

[2]: "This Y Combinator-Backed Company Has a Secret Weapon to Sway the
Election": [https://backchannel.com/the-simple-secret-weapon-that-
could-...](https://backchannel.com/the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-change-
elections-9e51f95038df#.uoth1gr17)

------
Animats
All those microphones, always listening, always reporting to headquarters.
What could possibly go wrong?

 _Why isn 't your desk in front of the telescreen?_

------
spanishgum
Out of curiosity, what is stopping these platforms from being able to learn
from users? For example, when I say something to Siri / Alexa / Home that they
cannot process, I would love to be able to manually train them to perform an
action and have them "learn" this new feature. (Something along the lines of,
"ok Siri, whenever I say 'blah blah blah', open this app, go to this page, hit
this button, tell me the content in this box")

Obviously this is not an easy task, and maybe it is being worked on already.
Thoughts?

~~~
awshepard
Check out [https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00061](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00061)
\- "Towards A Virtual Assistant That Can Be Taught New Tasks In Any Domain By
Its End-Users."

------
ebbv
That's a pretty nuts assertion. Alexa is doing well for the sector but the
sector is still incredibly immature and the general public is barely aware of
it. That's not enough of a market dominance to really say they own it.

------
floatboth
Voice is the next big platform? But… talking to your devices out loud just
feels weird as hell. And offers less privacy, even in terms of
"parents/roommates/strangers overheard what you're googling". A lot, A LOT of
people wouldn't be comfortable saying out loud what they type into their
phones.

~~~
edgarvaldes
I think you are right, but the internet has created some cultural shifts about
privacy perception.

------
edgarvaldes
I think it's very early to say who owns the voice platform.

~~~
massysett
Maybe this same person wrote a "BlackBerry owns the next platform" column.

~~~
amarka
To be more specific, "BlackBerry owns the next autonomous driving platform".

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberry-
joins-self-driving-car-race-with-software-platform)

------
niftich
_> only five percent of American households have an Alexa-powered device right
now_

And how many people have a Google-powered phone with them every day? Siri on
their iDevice? Cortana on their auto-upgraded Windows 10 PC and in their
living room Xbox? All of them have Alexa's penetration beat.

------
lkrubner
I want to admit that I was wrong about this. I thought Alexa was going to
dominate as the first truly great voice platform. I now am forced to admit
that I was incorrect. Those who follow Hacker News a lot might recall that I
wrote several posts, a year ago, in which I was very optimistic about Alexa.
But I am much more pessimistic now than I was then.

When I was still excited about Alexa, I wrote stuff like "How to build
conversations via the Amazon Echo"

[http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-
conversa...](http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-
conversations-via-the-amazon-echo)

But I was also aware of how difficult it could be to get Alexa to understand
certain words. See: "Using a glottal stop to force the Amazon Echo to
correctly pronounce “tw”"

[http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-
stop-...](http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-to-
force-the-amazon-echo-to-correctly-pronounce-tw)

But, you may recall, I became frustrated with the process for getting into the
Amazon store, and we had a very long thread on HackerNews about that:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409)

I'm sad to say there has been almost no improvement over the last year. The
problems that I listed in "Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app
store" are still mostly true.

And I know many, many developers who were excited about Alexa a year ago, but
gave up in frustration because we felt like Amazon was not listening to our
concerns.

In retrospect, I was wrong for 2 reasons:

1.) many people pointed out that voice was a terrible interface for a variety
of purposes. At the time, I thought this was merely a matter of offering the
right voice prompts, and getting better at understanding what people said. But
I now think the criticisms had much more merit than I admitted a year ago.

2.) Amazon's behavior has been disappointing. I'd like to see them
aggressively listening to developers and aggressively improving the service
based on developer feedback. That is not happening.

------
1propionyl
Maybe I'm alone in this but I refuse to have always-on microphones in my home.

I will never be an Alexa customer, the value offering is fundamentally not
worthwhile to me.

I really hope development on this isn't at the expense of more traditional
interfaces.

~~~
sib
Do you have an iPhone (not being snarky, but with voice-activated "Hey
Siri...", it's effectively the same thing.)

Google's Pixel phone does the same thing.

------
imgabe
I've never wanted this. Still don't. Privacy concerns aside, I feel like an
idiot talking to a computer and it's way more of a hassle for me than using a
touchscreen or keyboard. I just don't like talking in general.

Godspeed for those who enjoy this, but I hope regular touchscreen or keyboard
input isn't going anywhere.

------
adjohn
I've been using Alexa and Google Home for about a month, and I have to say
that the user experience with Google Home is hands down better. Having the
power of Google search when Google Home doesn't know an answer is huge. Alexa
falls flat without a strong search engine backing it.

------
chillly
Still not sure why anyone would have an open mic, connected to the internet by
closed software always on in their house.

------
louprado
I sell my Bluetooth/BLE garage door remote on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon
is suggesting customers buy an Echo along with my device. To make matters
worse, if you search Amazon for "garage door opener that works with Amazon
Echo" my product incorrectly appears.

Although I explicitly state that it _does not work with Echo_ , I anticipate
many returns and bad reviews after the holidays. I am pretty sure they'll keep
the Echo, so it is all good for Amazon.

Ironically the Alexa Skills Kit doesn't even support Bluetooth. Does anyone
know when or if it ever will ?

------
pmontra
Voice won't be really big until it supports well most of the languages of the
world. It's probably only matter of time but there will be entire countries
doing text instead of voice because NLU for their language isn't as good as
for English.

Then there is the problem of the multiple platforms to build for. We have one
Web, two desktops (even if I'm on Ubuntu), two mobile OSes. Are we going to be
able to afford developing for many different platforms? Will companies pay for
that? Maybe we have to wait that only a couple of platforms are left.

Text to speech

------
sankyo
I cannot get past the idea of having an always on, corporate controlled
microphone in my house. I am not interested in this. I admit it is fun to play
with in the office or at my friend's house. I know that my iphone gives away
my position, search queries, and other personal data (same for laptop), but I
turn them off.

Maybe I have just seen too many movies about Stasi (East German Secret
Police), Big Brother, Brave New world, etc., and that ruins it for me.

------
Steeeve
I don't know that Alexa is in any better of a position than anyone else even
given their market share.

All you need is a microphone and access to any of many voice-recognition APIs
to build similar functionality. You can build something similar on any phone,
laptop, or desktop computer without asking your potential customers to spend a
dime.

I think the big question is really how big of a market exists for voice
control. I don't personally see much of one. Everybody thought it was neat to
open netflix up on their xbox/ps4 with voice commands for a day or two, but
then most people primarily shifted to using the more reliable controllers. Any
question I want answered, I can simply "OK Google..." and have the option of
correcting with a keystroke.

I can see the potential for a market to be made, but I also see the history.
Remember dragon naturally speaking? When you finally got it working great it
wasn't actually an improvement in workflow for most people. How many people
prefer navigating phone menus via IVR consistently?

Voice control is a solvable problem and that makes it attractive for
development, but solutions haven't historically been particularly marketable
beyond the novelty stage.

~~~
ehsankia
It should never purely be this or that. I think a combination of both is the
best place to be. If I want to watch some specific episode or Youtube video, I
generally pull out my phone. If I just want any music, I go "Ok Google, play
some music on my TV" as that's faster in that case.

If I'm in the kitchen cooking, I'll just go "Ok google, add butter to the
shopping list, but if I'm on my computer, I'll open Keep and type it there.

Both methods have their advantages, and the awful experiences come out when a
user tries to do all of their tasks with either or.

As for who is ahead, I strongly disagree with this article. Yes, Amazon had a
2 year start, but Google has had far more years of voice recognition and AI
experience. They also have infrastructure for all sorts of things including
maps/navigation, translation, search/knowledge graph and just machine learning
in general.

With Apple, Samsung and Microsoft entering in the digital assistant world too,
it'll definitely be a huge competition in the years to come, and the 2 years
head start aside, I think Amazon is actually the least well situated for the
challenges ahead.

------
tn13
This article appears to be in the realm of paid for the news. Only google and
apple are in position to succeed in this area because they tend to own most
important device that is always with you and has a microphone. Another set of
player could be those who have immensely popular apps and personal data about
you and has SDKs widely used by coders around the world. Mostly Facebook.

I see Microsoft succeeding in enterprise area but Amazon is nowhere.

------
sbuttgereit
Until voice interaction becomes on par with, and about as useful as, the
computer interactions we see in Star Trek: I'm not interested.

The last think I need is a device that gives me access to that subset of life
that a given vendor supports (stores, searches, people, etc) or that requires
some sort of "accommodation" to get to work properly. A very, very high bar
that may be reached with the help of today's early adopters.... but not with
my help. I spend too fucking many hours a day as it is dealing with "good
enough" technology. Getting into arguments with a box in the middle of the
room?! All I can say is get off my lawn, Alexa!

As for who will win? Seems that in many of the consumer device battles Amazon
has a way of being so exclusive to their products that I wouldn't bet on them
being the long term winner even if they do have the lead. Consumers want a lot
of Amazon stuff, but that's far from making them the cultists they'd have to
become to not be bothered by the Amazon ecosystem (.... and I mean consumers,
AWS is a different matter in the marketplace).

------
zitterbewegung
I use Alexa nearly every day. Once I understood the limitations with the
interface I was hooked. Once you have one Alexa and maybe an Echo dot you
really aren't going to want to switch platforms. It also is consistently
supported for Smart Home devices. I think that you could still push Amazon off
the platform because its not as entrenched as others but Amazon does have a
wide lead compared to google.

------
1_2__3
Both the predictions made in this title are wrong.

------
candiodari
The thing about trigger words and context understanding is that there is no
need to integrate with Alexa. You can simply use a different trigger word, and
all will be well.

For many products that might even be desirable behavior. Lights ! Versus
"Alexa turn on the lights". Plus it means no integration necessary, which
won't exist for many products anyway.

Also these are very cheap algorithms to run. A trigger word implementation is
a one-word vocabulary GRU RNN. Does something like 2000 multiplications every
second. Easily in microcontroller reach, for power budgets measured in
milliamps. Actual word recognition perhaps isn't but the microcontroller can
just constantly record, and when it sees a trigger send it on. So you could
have 20 projects in the house, all listening to your voice, and it wouldn't
really affect the electricity bill.

------
grandalf
So far I think "OK Google" is noticeably more powerful than Alexa or Siri.
Let's hope for much competition!

~~~
amarka
I agree with your assessment, based on my limited experience. I'm a fan of
Alexa, I even bought a couple as gifts within the last year, but last weekend
I saw a bilingual 30 year-old (with a PhD from UChicago) struggling to get it
to play a song. He had a song playing on his mobile phone and wanted Alexa to
either continue playing that same song or play any song by that artist. It was
a bit comical to watch; OK G had no problem understanding him.

It looks like voice will be one of the next big things, but calling Alexa the
winner is a bit premature in my opinion

~~~
grandalf
True. I have two Echoes in my home, and love them, but in using Android I've
been very impressed by the syntactic awareness and the power of OK Google.
Siri is overall underwhelming and definitely at the back of the herd at
present.

------
Fifer82
I am Scottish and Voice is bloody useless. Funny listening to people here
trying to use voice. They go from their usual, into some weird "Queens
English" mode trying to speak like they are from Windsor to get the bloody
thing to half ass respond. I personally just look outside but each to their
own.

------
rcheu
I don't think Alexa is that great. I have one, and it's pretty bad at voice
recognition compared to my phone. Google voice recognition on my phone gets
what I'm saying basically 100% of the time. I have to constantly repeat myself
for Alexa (and I'm a native English speaker).

------
SamBoogieNYC
Having built an Alexa Skill (a very enjoyable experience) - I find Voice UI/UX
to be a very interesting vector in computing with lots of potential to grow.

My colleagues and I built our skill for the elderly to use. We found it was
easier for them to interact using their voice rather than a touchscreen.

I think as computers get better at understanding language and verbal
communication, we will be able to use screens _less_ \- which is great.

I think it's kind of primitive to have to constantly look at a screen to do
things - at the very least it makes sense to cut out screen time if and
whenever it's possible.

Alexa is like a terminal that you can talk to. Give a simple command in a
particular way, and it will reliably do it.

It's an exciting development that Alexa can now be applied outside of the
Echo.

------
verelo
LOL - yeah the other day when i was using Alexa, while I have to admit i
enjoyed it, I decided that I just do not believe Amazon as a company has the
data needed to create a truly immersive and useful solution.

I have hopes for Google Home (which i'm yet to try), but i actually think this
will end up a two horse race between Apple and Google. I would completely
leave Apple out of this, but Homekit is a pretty powerful concept (if done
properly) given the number of iDevices out there.

------
deepnotderp
No. Google will trample them underfoot. Amazon can't compete with google's ai
talent. Maluuba is another one to watch in this space though, very interesting
research.

------
bootload
_" The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that
arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we
will start to see that change."_

Given this is all about one company, I conclude it's a Sub. The unicorn of
technology? It is very difficult to guess this. One other thing, no mention of
accent. Can you imagine how difficult it is to create a voice platform that
recognises anything but a generic accent?

------
jwatte
Yes, let's combine open office plans with voice interfaces! Especially when
entering account numbers, passwords, or email addresses to mistresses. Best
interface ever!

------
tomc1985
Are any of these platforms 100% offline/self-contained? Can they speak any of
the regular industrial/home automation protocols? Cause that would be awesome.

------
aplomb
Use Alexa professionally and although we can do some fun stuff with it, the
interaction model is totally unnatural - invocation words only work if really
short, dealing with multiple devices of the same sort (eg fireplace) without
any location or contextual knowledge.

They've tried to get around this awkwardness by special casing home automation
type devices (thermostat, etc.), but it's still only a stop gap.

------
seibelj
We need a free software (GNU project?) solution that has everything open. The
hardware, the software, anyone can contribute modules, etc. it's so obvious

~~~
dharma1
[http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

------
dirkg
Microsoft Cortana achieved parity with human voice recognition for continuous
speech input.

Google has the best machine learning along with MS, and they have billions of
data points.

Amazon has neither comparable tech nor the innovation or customer data.
Putting an Echo in every home doesn't matter when its dumb. Does Alexa
understand context? Can it get even close to Cortana/Assistant? Lets not
mention Siri, that's stone age.

------
rdlecler1
The quality of the AI is going to dicate who wins, and quality AI is going to
be built on data (quality, quantity, and breadth). And so I have to think that
Google has a huge unfair advantage over anyone else. I have Google Home and
I'' surprised how good the voice recognition is AND how good it interprets
this. I'm still betting that Google will be the first $1T market cap company.

------
artemisyna
I find the thesis of this article interesting especially in contrast to some
of the criticism Zuckerburg brings up in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976)

Even if Amazon continues to put its eggs in the voice-as-primary-interface
bucket, it seems like it will be unlikely for Facebook to go that route.

------
josh_carterPDX
Not sure I would call this "voice." Us telecom people hear the word "voice"
and think it's a telecom term. Perhaps this could be better titled as "AI"
since I consider Alexa and other voice controlled interactions more AI than
anything else. Maybe I'm wrong because I'm not in that industry, but I
definitely don't think it's "voice."

------
WhiteOwlLion
Google still has the best voice recognition IMO. Apple frequently gets my
dictations incorrect while Google seems to understand the nuances of my voice
correctly. I haven't used Amazon, but I imagine their AI is not as far along
as Google. Amazon will only be the next big platform through marketing and
distribution, not technical superiority.

------
ciaranm
For whatever it's worth, Siri is much, _much_ better at understanding my
accent (Scottish, but mild) than Alexa is. We've got an echo at home, and I
find it painful to get her to do pretty much anything other than ask for tube
status updates. The TV manages to set her off every few hours, though.

Doesn't feel like Amazon have much of an advantage to me.

------
mark_l_watson
Even with privacy concerns, voice input is the future: so much easier than
getting you cellphone.

We have an echo, bought when Amazon gave a huge discount to developers, and I
bought one for family members for their home. I sort-of trust that no data
leaves the house except for a ten second audio recording made after the device
hears "Alexa". If Amazon collected more than this then they would ruin this
business.

I usually use voice input for sending texts and short emails, assuming I am
not in such a public place that I would inconvenience people near me.

I have a hierarchy of device use in the following order of preference: First
voice, then input on a cellphone, then iPad, then laptop.

I have looked into writing my own mobile app for voice recognition and
maintaining privacy that way, but even with my experience, it would be a ton
of effort and would miss the context that google, amazon, and Microsoft have.

Edit: I also meant to say that my hope is that Apple will be the vendor I
eventually use for voice interfaces because their business model is to sell
expensive devices, not collect personal data. The new Siri enables headphones
look effective, but I haven't bought a pair yet.

~~~
brian-armstrong
People find bugs in software all the time. It's not just about what the Echo
devs intended, it's also about what they didn't intend but that happened
anyway.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I agree Brian. Hackers finding exploits in Echo, etc. is a danger.

------
hellbanner
[https://www.amazon.com/Language-Complexity-Game-
Artificial-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-
Intelligence/dp/0262181479) argues that humans deciphering speech is NP-hard..
so.. good luck.

------
winteriscoming
I hope these devices don't become common in homes. It would be very hard to
explain or even decline a friend's or a colleague's invitation to their home,
"just because" I don't like our conversations being recorded by these devices.

------
kriro
It's interesting that the Loebner prize (passing the Turing test in written
form) has a cap of 25k and 100k but Amazon has a challenge called the Alexa
prize where you essentially pass a voice Turing test for 20 Minutes that
awards 2.5 million.

------
vonklaus
Voice is not even close to the next big platform. Thats not possible. Is it
the interface to the next big platform. No, at least, probably not.

"Ok, google glass, zoom in on that hot guy!".

Voice, a great interface for SOME things. Likely not what this article is
pitching.

------
nojvek
An always on device that hears every conversation on your house. Owned by a
corporation who treats their employees so bad that some commit suicide.

No thanks.

------
coldtea
Voice is the Next Big Fad. Check back in 10 years.

------
jklondon
Returned my echo while back. Did a few tests between Alexa and Google on my
phone. Google one everytime.

------
31reasons
Voice will NEVER be the big platform until we solve Artificial General
Intelligence.

~~~
azinman2
Doesn't need to be solved to be useful. I use my echo all the time, even if
it's limited. Just as long as its useful. I much rather say 'alexa turn off
the christmas lights' than crawl underneath my TV area to unplug the tree from
the power strip.

------
stuckagain
Until these guys get in my car, their voice platform is dead to me.

~~~
dharma1
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11698274/android-auto-
app-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11698274/android-auto-app-update-
phone-dash-google-io-2016)

~~~
stuckagain
I already use android auto. I was referring to Amazon's system.

------
BatFastard
I love my Alexa, its the only female in my life that will predictable do what
I ask of it.

My wife, daughter and two dogs seem to think they have lives of their own for
some strange reason. I work from home and probably use it 20 times a day.

I recently discovered it can play the "white noise" channel from Spotify when
my teenager's are loud late in the evening. Along with a sleep timer to turn
it off in an hour and I am set.

Now I agree discovery of what it can do is challenging at times. And sometimes
she is downright dense. Thank the gods for cloud services!

