
Why We May Soon Be Living in Alexa’s World - timdavila
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/technology/amazon-alexa-world.html
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PuffinBlue
Pretty sure I should be the target market for this, and I bought one. But I
don't use it and it sits unplugged on the shelf. I'm going to sell it while
the going is good.

It's just so _pointless_. You have to speak to it in some weird specific way
to get it to integrate with other stuff and it feels so completely invasive.

My wife is the other end of the scale of target market. Complete non-techie,
absolute ease of use consumer. She used it as a glorified egg timer, bluetooth
speaker and occasionally to play some radio (when it didn't cut out). IT did
nothing else for her and adding skills herself was a PITA step too far.

I'm a 'millennial' (if that matters) but this just doesn't have a place in my
home. Even my kids, who loved shouting at it to play music, got bored of it
and went back to selecting music on their devices.

Maybe I'm getting old but it just feels like Alexa and other voice assistants
are just getting shoved into stuff because it is a 'tech spec' and they hope
that will sell their device.

It's 3D all over again.

~~~
timdavila
Maybe it's not for everyone. We were given an Echo Dot for Christmas. By
itself, it's at best a toy, I agree. I didn't use it after the first couple
days.

A couple weeks ago my perception changed when I got a Fire TV Stick, and
paired it with Alexa. It feels really futuristic to be able to say "Alexa,
play Psych" and see the TV change and start where we left off. I can control
Netflix and Amazon streaming with only my voice. Now I'm looking for ways to
be able to turn on/off the TV, and volume with Alexa.

I think integrating with real world items is where Alexa shines. And as far as
your comment on syntax, I've found it very intuitive, and it's only getting
better every day.

~~~
iamdave
I would love all of that, but I don't want it connecting back to the cloud.
And understanding some of the inherent necessities these things have _with_
the cloud, I understand I am not the target market.

Which is a shame. If there's another HA device out there that in convenient
form factor that communicates with my LAN and gives me greater granular
control over what it talks to, I'd be buying three right now.

 _That 's a hint to anyone who may be working on a product, or know of a
product that fits the niche of the perpetually paranoid :P_

~~~
bonsai80
[https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

It has features that will use the internet, but I don't think it's required to
be given internet access.

...and they even sell a 3-pack ;)

~~~
hanklazard
This looks great! I’ve been interested in playing with a voice assistant but
prefer not to give my data to amazon. Will definitely be giving this a try.

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zamalek
I really hope it's not Alexa.

My brother's Alexa will say stuff like "Sorry, I don't understand 'turn living
room light off'" even though the "turn living room light on" command worked
five minutes prior. Repeating back _exactly_ what Alexa didn't understand
works the second or third time. "Unpolished" doesn't do the platform justice.

My Google Home is accurate, even though open doors and with the TV on. The
Pixel 2 seems to yield control to Home just fine (which was a problem with my
Pixel 1). The voice itself sounds slightly more natural and friendly - I
sometimes find myself holding back a "thank you."

Has anyone had any contradictory experiences to my own?

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
I always thank the AIs when I do a command... I hope skynet takes that as a
positive when deciding how to get rid of me.

~~~
FreakyT
So do I! I'm always disappointed that my Google Home isn't capable of
acknowledging a "thank you". I feel like it should be possible for it to
achieve something like this (with a "no problem" response) without requiring
additional communication with the cloud.

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rfdub
I'm only interested in owning one of these devices when I actually own it.
That is when the device is actually working for me, not the corporation who
sold it to me. I'd be very interested in a personal assistant/ daemon that
wasn't part of some walled-garden ecosystem and would actually put the benefit
of its user ahead of the profits of corporation. If I ask my daemon to find me
a product, I want it to compare prices across all online vendors to find the
best deal for me, not just default to purchasing from Amazon. I also want
complete control over the information it shares with third-parties, and I want
to directly benefit from any information sharing as my data is valuable and if
folks want it they're going to have to provide me some benefit in exchange.

~~~
richjdsmith
I agree wholeheartedly. I'd love to see an open source project or even the
Mozilla Foundation or Canonical take on this challenge.

Either way, until that happens, I will not be having such a pervasive data
collecting device in my home.

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ams6110
These kinds of devices are things I will never own. If they start coming as
built-in non-optional features on televisions or other home electronics, I
won't buy those either.

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lifeformed
So does anyone have any insight on the screaming thing? That seems kind of
brushed over for something so nightmarish and surreal.

~~~
vhold
The Alexa App shows every interaction, including the recorded sound that
triggered it, and how "Alexa" interpreted it, so it would be possible for the
author to investigate it.

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tostitos1979
Doesn't say why the Echo device was wailing. Kind of annoying.

~~~
timdavila
Yeah, that was a pretty creepy story with no resolution. My baby monitor is
the only device that wails at me at night :)

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tyingq
I totally buy the story from a personal perspective, but it does seem like the
general cloud marketshare case across Google, Azure, and AWS is starting to
normalize.

I'm excited about the possibilities of the big 3 competing on a more level
playing field.

Am I being naive here, or not? It feels like a new marketplace is opening up.

~~~
hashkb
I've just moved into a new house and have spent quite a few hours smartifying
it. What I'll say is that, though there will be competition, once a user
chooses an ecosystem, they are locking themselves into one side of a 1990's
Mac vs PC-esque death race.

Using Home Assistant and jumping through some hoops, I've been able to force
onto the same system some devices that really put up a massive fight to play
nicely together; and I have even more manual work before I'll be able to use
Google Assistant to control it all with my voice.

The competition, though... it's really, really bad for most users.

~~~
mattmanser
Well, from my first impression Alexa is rubbish.

Went round a friend on Friday who has one, people started throwing songs at
it. It's slow and only roughly 20% of the time it managed to understand us. We
figured out some trick of song then artist (or maybe artist than song) which
made it work a little better.

Worse still when it did understand us most of the time it was only able to
play a sample. "prime".

Do not buy.

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FeepingCreature
Is there a foss alternative for command-style speech recognition? I'd love to
control my lamps this way.

~~~
ThinkingGuy
I've longed for this as well. In theory it can be done. The individual
ingredients are all available in the universe of FOSS software... speech to
text (CMU Sphinx, etc), language parsing (NTLK, etc), IoT integration, etc.
But assembling all these components and frameworks into an integrated,
reliably-working system takes a great deal of time and effort, even if you're
a skilled programmer (which I'm not).

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Numberwang
My prediction is these devises will start becoming worthwhile when Alexa et al
reach actual human intelligence. Voice interfaces does nothing for anyone
unless you are handicapped in some way.

~~~
timdavila
I imagine by the time voice assistants reach human intelligence we will be
able to ask Alexa to clean the floors and put the food away :)

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sk1pper
Can someone explain why I need one of these things instead of using Siri or
Google Assistant on my phone?

