
Alexa for Business - res0nat0r
https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/
======
atonse
So now we're putting always-on amazon microphones everywhere in our companies
too?

How exactly are companies going to be ok with private, trade-secret
conversations? How about confidential meetings? How about Amazon competitors?
How about employee law about potentially being eavesdropped on, all day?

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burger_moon
Isn't Siri and Google's 'Ok google' thing basically the same? Everyone in the
room has that running all day everywhere they go.

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Spooks
If you allow cellphones and don't use a noise generator like rabbler, your
meeting isn't secretive enough

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lostboys67
so do opsec like tony in the sopranos and leave all you mobiles out side the
room

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jagermo
You mean, where someone can easily get to them to install a sniffer/ copy all
content?

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flgr
That image next to "Alexa helps you at your desk" is 17.5 MB as of now at at a
resolution of 5720 x 3240. Pretty impressive to see an image loading line by
line like back in the days.

It will be interesting to see what WeWork ends up using this for.

~~~
dEnigma
Jesus, it's the same size when I view the page on my smartphone. It doesn't
even look as good as you'd think for 17.5 MB.

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matthoiland
It would be nice if the Alexa team actually cared about people building
business skills for the platform and treated them different than people
submitting fart apps.

Disclaimer: I build business tools for voice with actual paid users. Looking
to abandon Alexa for Google Assistant and Cortana. Apple, please do Siri right
when you open it up properly.

~~~
euyyn
I'm curious, what's the difference you're seeing between those three platforms
for your use case?

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matthoiland
The biggest is invocations – as more skills crowd the platform, getting Alexa
to recognize our invocation is getting unusable.

Training for our specific pronunciation isn't available on Alexa. Our app is
called Tali, pronounced "tally", and to get it to work now you have to say
"Tay-lie". Whereas Google Actions can be trained with custom pronunciations.

I should also say that Dialogflow is magnificent.

~~~
GFischer
Have you written up your experiences in a blog post or talk or something?

I'm on the same boat right now, was asked to build a POC in Amazon Lex, an
Alexa Skill, Microsoft LUIS, Wit.ai and Dialogflow.

So far I've gotten to LUIS and Lex/Alexa, I'm glad to read Dialogflow is
better :) (had high hopes for it)

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falcolas
Alexa, deploy project aardvark.

OK, deploying project aardvark, now on version 5

Alexa, roll back project aardvark.

OK, rolling back project arc, now on version 21.

Alexa, I said roll back aardvark!

OK. Rolling back project arc, now on version 20.

Alexa, stop everything!

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This is why no company has dared to choose HAL as the name for their digital
voice assistant yet.

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RegBarclay
They're missing out. I would buy HAL as a system or a personality for any
existing system.

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azinman2
This is actually quite brilliant. Something that started off as a pure
consumer in-home device makes total sense for conference rooms and hotels (as
long as they know what they can ask it to do). Much better than trying to find
remotes or switches.

Not sure about Alexa at our desk — it’ll have to do speaker separation and
still it sounds quite annoying to everyone around.

~~~
bitwize
It makes total sense until a human named Alexa joins your team.

There are humans named Siri too (it's a diminuitive of Sigrid) and, given the
peculiar conventions of Thai nicknames, it's doubtless there's more than one
human named Google.

You really can't win, short of being able to change your voice assistant's
name (the humans won't change for a damn machine!).

~~~
azinman2
You can change it to answer with “amazon.”

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Negative1
So with most companies employing an open floor plan isn't there a tremendous
amount of audio overlap. Are all the devices linked and Alexa now smart enough
to differentiate between multiple users?

What kind of work is really practical when done via voice vs secure
authenticated terminal access? I talk to my co-workers to exchange ideas and
come up with new ones. Talking to my computer or my office space seems awkward
and aurally intrusive since people are trying to work and not hear you asking
Alexa to, I don't know, make you a coffee?

~~~
nine_k
I suppose it's not for offices where people are sitting next to keyboards
anyway.

* A conference room (no remote controls in sight): "Alexa, turn on the projector".

* A hotel room (from a coach): "Alexa, turn the air conditioning off."

* A workshop (everybody's hands are busy and greasy): "Alexa, mark order 2348 completed, bill ten dollars extra for urgency."

This makes certain sense.

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ChicagoBoy11
I couldn't find it, but I wonder if there is any way that you can ask it ONLY
to run the skills which have been deployed/approved by the company. Can think
of plenty of use-cases where I work, but I know it'd be a non-starter if it
could, just like at home, be used to order products,tell jokes, play jeopardy,
etc.

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nhangen
The sign up flow is confusing. I clicked the button, but was sent to AWS.
Finally signed in there, and was taken to a support level sign-up flow. Went
back to the original link whilst logged in, and kept getting redirected to AWS
when I clicked the button.

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therealmarv
Could be helpful at work: "Alexa, open the pod bay doors"

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HeyLaughingBoy
I tried. She replies in a pissy voice that she's not HAL9000 :-)

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hallman76
_Alexa for Business lets you build your own private custom skills for your
workplace, your employees, or your customers to use. You can make these skills
available only to your shared Alexa devices, and your enrolled users. Alexa
for Business provides an additional set of APIs that provide information about
device location, which lets you add context to your skills._

This is huge! This is the corner we needed to turn to be able to make really
useful skills for the enterprise.

I'm pumped for this!

~~~
bllguo
I'm half interested in what capabilities Alexa for Business offers you, and
half suspicious that this is sarcasm.

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iloveluce
Brings to mind Will.i.am's startups pivot to enterprise voice controls[0]
which they call Omega [1]

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/will-i-ams-start-up-i-am-
rai...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/will-i-ams-start-up-i-am-
raises-117-million-in-enterprise-pivot.html)

[1][https://iamplus.com/enterprise/](https://iamplus.com/enterprise/)

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659087
My clients would stop doing business with me if I had these in my office, and
I wouldn't blame them.

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chinathrow
Is noone afraid of the vendor locki-in with these always-on listening devices
these days?

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nrclark
What's the revenue model for Alexa? I see all these companies designing Alexa
integration into their IoT farting widget, often for uses that don't involve
buying stuff from Amazon. Do manufacturers pay a license fee or something?

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jayd16
Seems like catch up to what Google has available through the assistant APIs.

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funkythingss
Putting the privacy aspect aside, this is gonna be hilarious with people
"abusing" Alexa for jokes etc. As far as I now, Alexa can't be restricted to
the voice of a single/some people.

~~~
coolanymous
except that it does
[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16460120/...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16460120/amazon-
echo-multi-user-voice-new-feature)

~~~
funkythingss
wow. That's not easy stuff

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jakozaur
Sounds useful, but so scary from privacy point of view.

All of your sounds can be recorded by hacker, even if you decide not to buy
Alexa you still may ended up in staying in hotel with Alexa for business.
reply

~~~
tensor
You can already be recorded by a hacker. Your phone can be hacked, it's always
on you. In a meeting room, the phone of any individual is enough. The
conference computer can be hacked. Any individuals laptop can be hacked.

This is just one more item in an already long list. It's not particularly
special.

~~~
659087
Increasing your attack surface is never a good idea, even when you're already
potentially at risk.

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gallerdude
The anthem of our future dystopia will be the annoying music that plays in
every Google/Amazon/Facebook product showcase.

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rdslw
The only unanswered question is how many of them are needed per square meter.

p.s. first hand impression: one per small or medium room.

