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The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#71

Post by lgas »

kuschku wrote: post #54
gervase wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Cortana, but I have personal experience with Siri, Now, and Alexa. In terms of the actions that I do day-to-day (I would never ask for a dirty joke, for example, but I ask for the weather daily), I would rank them Now, Alexa, and distant third, Siri. There are two axes that I care about - how many useful commands are available, and how well they can understand me. Google Now has a pretty wide range…

> Google Now has a pretty wide range of behaviors, but it's the spooky-accurate voice recognition that sets it clearly ahead. In the last year, Google Now has only misunderstood me ONCE. > She also mishears me 25-45% of the time, AND she seems to be getting worse over time. I assume this is because they are trying to widen her audience beyond a standard California accent, but it's incredibly frustrating for a product…

Well, until then, Google's speech recognition API is available (https://cloud.google.com/speech/) so it seems like it should be possible to at least compete at Google levels of SR without even having to understand what training data is.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#72

Post by 6stringmerc »

spdustin wrote: post #50

I have the remote as an early adopter. It's fun to hide in another room and say into the remote "Simon says, hey kids, Kraft no longer makes Mac and cheese and now just makes carrots and ranch dressing." A moment passes. "Dad, Alexa just told us...!" My geek dad game is strong.

Relevant Calvin & Hobbes: http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cal...

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#73

Post by galistoca »

madelinecameron wrote: post #57
zoidb wrote: post #2

I wonder what conversation at bloomberg resulted in adding all of those extremely distracting (and annoying) animated gifs..

I got yelled at and downvoted on Reddit because I said their "What is Code" article was a horrific disaster of design http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-cod... CW: REALLY BRIGHT COLORS, LARGE TEXT AND ANNOYING GIFS.

Congrats, here's one person who agrees with you. It's like Bloomberg has given some hipster interns full access to design the website. They probably think it's so awesome that they're using all the dynamic components

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#75

Post by shostack »

PascalsMugger wrote: post #63
spdustin wrote: post #50

I have the remote as an early adopter. It's fun to hide in another room and say into the remote "Simon says, hey kids, Kraft no longer makes Mac and cheese and now just makes carrots and ranch dressing." A moment passes. "Dad, Alexa just told us...!" My geek dad game is strong.

It's amazing to think about kids growing up with a wonder box in their house that tells them the answer to any question when they yell at it. It's like straight out of the fables or science fiction of the past. I hope this result in people generally having better bullshit detectors in the next generation, and not some other unintended side effect like making them enthralled to said wonder box.

What I've wondered is how much non-verbal context will be lost through such an interface. Today, when I'm trying to verify the authenticity or quality of something, it is a game that goes something like this:

1. Google it and click least spammy looking link (gauged by the URL, although that's no guarantee). I also see what sort of JS they try to load, if it is absolutely bloated with ad tags, etc.

2. Try to gauge from the design and other content of the site how genuine the answer might be. Are there affiliate links for anything they recommend peppered throughout? That's a signal it might not be unbiased info. Unfortunately, this is where judging a book by its cover comes into play as well. Some poorly designed sites buck the trend, but they are also prominent with spammy sites.

3. Find other sources to see if there is any consistent logic with said answer/product review/etc.

4. Make a decision hopefully.

So many of those pieces of the puzzle just aren't available when you limit your input/output to a system like this. There are obvious tradeoffs here--I just hope we don't lose the ability to make more informed decisions. Already I hate things like Apple obfuscating the full URL in the URL bar.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#76

Post by shostack »

kuschku wrote: post #54
gervase wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Cortana, but I have personal experience with Siri, Now, and Alexa. In terms of the actions that I do day-to-day (I would never ask for a dirty joke, for example, but I ask for the weather daily), I would rank them Now, Alexa, and distant third, Siri. There are two axes that I care about - how many useful commands are available, and how well they can understand me. Google Now has a pretty wide range…

> Google Now has a pretty wide range of behaviors, but it's the spooky-accurate voice recognition that sets it clearly ahead. In the last year, Google Now has only misunderstood me ONCE. > She also mishears me 25-45% of the time, AND she seems to be getting worse over time. I assume this is because they are trying to widen her audience beyond a standard California accent, but it's incredibly frustrating for a product…

"You’d have to practically use all of YouTube as training set. Which Google did."

Didn't they use Google Voice as well?

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#77

Post by extra88 »

delecti wrote: post #17
post_break wrote: post #13

I really want an Echo, I just can't justify the cost. And the cheaper options don't have the listening mode which nerfs the whole appeal.

The full echo happens to be on sale today, and the Echo Dot (which doesn't include the full speaker, only a smaller one, and you can plug it into your own) is about half the price, and does still have the always-on listening mode.

The Echo Dot is ~$90 but my understanding is to buy it you must A) be an Amazon Prime member and B) use the voice interface on an existing Amazon product to place the order (the Echo itself being an obvious example but I guess also the Fire Stick).

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#78

Post by cbhl »

goshx wrote: post #59

I am waiting for the day when someone will sneak in those magic words into a TV commercial to wake up Echo, Siri, etc. Imagine like a DDoS caused by a TV commercial on Super Bowl. I have the Echo and sometimes it scares the * out of me when something on my TV sounds similar to "Alexa", like "a lexus".

Already happened on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2016/03/06/469383361/listen-up-your-ai-as...

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#79

Post by Karunamon »

Rooksu wrote: post #24
amelius wrote: post #16

> You can use Alexa to turn off the lights, ask it how much gas is left in your car, or order a pizza. I'm getting a bit tired of these examples. Is there a comprehensive list of things Alexa can do?

No. It's an API that connects to every other API. The list of things it can do would just be a list of all the things that can be done.

A list of the APIs would be a good starting point. "Controls your lights" isn't helpful. "Talks to Hue and IFTTT" is.

Just saying it can do anything because internet is misleading and doesn't tell me where the walls are. Unless there already exists a "skill" that can give me load average, player count and tick rate on my Minecraft server.. :)

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