
The women behind Amazon Alexa - coolswan
http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/a27908/alexa-creator-toni-reid/
======
throwaway_amzn
This article overstates Toni's role. Though she does own a good portion of the
Alexa ecosystem, there were/are several other directors/VPs that ran/run
different portions of the system.

I am not saying that Toni's contributions are negligible, rather that her and
her team are part of a bigger organization that built and improves Alexa.

Source: work there

~~~
ErikVandeWater
Yeah the intent of the article is obvious based on the title.

~~~
throwaway_amzn
I clicked through hoping to see a piece on the female engineers who work on
Alexa, but it was an executive profile. You are right that executive profiles
generally overstate the contributions of their subject.

------
MayeulC
I would love to use such a device, and explore the possibilities.

However, it concerns me that every major player out there tries to create a
locked playing field with their devices ("amazon home" vs "google home").

I really don't like the idea of buying home automation devices that are meant
for one specific solution. Moreover, I also fear that I could become dependent
on a corporate-owned device/service, with no direct alternatives (or with
convoluted migration paths).

And that's not even mentioning the privacy issues, or (ok, I touched that a
bit) the freedom to hack a bit the API (what if I would like to add a
completely custom command, change the detection keyword, etc...)

There are some open solutions such as Mycroft, but I must confess I haven't
looked much at it. I won't consider this technology mature or ready for use
until those concerns are addressed, which could take some time: it also seems
to me that those "personal assistants" are more suited to a central
architecture (which raises the question: did this architecture influence their
design, or is it the only possible solution for a reliable "personal
assistant"?).

~~~
manyxcxi
With regards to locking in to home automation, Alexa has many integrations
with the major home automation brands and hardware. For instance, my house is
nearly all Z-Wave and I use a Wink Hub to tie them together. It took possibly
30 seconds to integrate Wink to Alexa and now I can control my entire house
through voice commands such as "turn downstairs off" or "turn master bedroom
on".

Even though I have iPhone and many HomeKit enabled devices, the fact that Wink
and Alexa support so many integrations keeps me from even attempting to buy
into a very locked in ecosystem like Apple or Google are attempting.

Finally, in the absence of a pre-existing integration, you can always write
your own, which can't really be said for any of the other major players that
aren't completely roll your own.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the flexibility the Alexa platform has
shown, and it's becoming increasingly part of our home workflow because of how
well it plays with other things.

------
didibus
As an aside, I don't know what to think of the fact that all AI assistant are
made to appear female.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Likely a design choice that stems from how humans react to the voices of each
gender. Female voices are generally better for voice communications which
convey details, information, and other non-commands. Male voices are generally
used to communicate from a sense of authority.

Take for instance the NYC subway system. The female voice announces the stop
the train has just arrived at, while the male voice instructs customers to
'stand clear of the closing doors' and to 'be aware of pickpockets, take care
to ensure the safety of your personal property.'

This is quite intentional. We simply react better when certain types of voices
are used to convey certain things.

Source: former audiobook, VO, and podcast casting director.

~~~
DanBC
"Bitching Betty" / 'Nagging Nora" show that command voices in safety critical
situations can often be female voices.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty)

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Yes, but using that type of female voice for your consumer product would be a
very bad design decision.

------
kmbabson
According to independent reviews, Alexa came in dead-last when compared to
Siri and Google Home.

See comparison here: [http://bgr.com/2017/05/18/google-home-vs-amazon-alexa-
vs-sir...](http://bgr.com/2017/05/18/google-home-vs-amazon-alexa-vs-siri-
comparison/)

