
The pitfall of the digital assistant - mistytoe
http://blog.onyxbits.de/the-pitfall-of-the-digital-assistant-683/
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afrancis
I would argue that you are generalising based on looking at a particular model
of how we use digital assistants. How about scenarios where organisations and
individual develop digital assistants that are not financed by an advertising
model? Or for that matter, the underlying NLP is not based on a cloud
computing model?

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mistytoe
That's kinda the problem: there are no non-profit, voice recognition DA's out
there (presumably because voice recognition requires a lot of research and a
ton of audio samples - I think, Mozilla tried to get into this?).

We got Google Now, Alexa, Siri and Cortana. Google Now and Alexa are obviously
tied into an eco system that has one goal: engaging the user till he buys
something. With Siri and Cortana its more like the old "lock the customer in
(so he eventually buys more of our stuff)" thing.

