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Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

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Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#151

Post by mrlala »

zwkrt wrote: post #136

I was taking with a friend who said ,"people use Alexa like a toaster, we haven't found what this interface will be really good at" But what if it /is/ just a toaster? Tech people tend to have high hopes for technology but technology must serve a purpose and it will go the way of the dodo if the purpose of not strong or clear. For me, having a voice interface for music and calls is enough justification for such a dev…

I agree, why does it have to do a billion things?

I use it for, in this order

* Music

* Kitchen timers while cooking

* Setting simple reminders without having to go into a phone app or some crap (alexa, remind me to do X at 10am)

* Kids asking random questions (alexa, how many moons does jupiter have)

Other random stuff like weather maybe, when a sports game is on...

But this is all just pretty basic stuff you would expect from a voice interface... to me, it has all the "killer apps" built in with the above.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#152

Post by gumby »

abakker wrote: post #87

The problem is that Alexa is just a consumer voice command line. UI discoverability is impossible, and everything that you can do is just a utility that does something else. There are no native apps because everything that it can do is just an IO to something else. If they actually get conversational, this will change, but until then, it’s just a command line with no man page.

> The problem is that Alexa is just a consumer voice command line. UI discoverability is impossible, and everything that you can do is just a utility that does something else

This is a really important point, and both a strength and a weakness.

The iPhone began as essentially a front end to existing services (with visual discovery, which a voice interface inherently lacks). I used to name mine "FEP" (as in Front End Processor) -- a front end to a subset of "real" computing or as I think of it these days: multiple windows into a shared computing space.

A watch (like the apple one) is really a crappy general UI device; discoverability is pretty bad because of the limited area and speed. But it's great in the role the phone had: subsetted interface to a limited number of "real" computing tasks (yes, it has a few of its own tricks too but mainly as data collection for apps on your phone).

Thompson captured this issue by talking about devices and software in terms of "the task it was hired to to". The problem is the voice assistants haven't figured that out yet.

The thing about this approach is it creates pressure to make more functionality available at the edge.

Alexa and google home tried to jump right to the edge in one go, which skips too much phylogeny.

Apple seems to understand this, but gets it wrong in the opposite direction: the iPad hasn't moved far beyond being "most of an iPhone but with a larger screen". And if you have an apple speaker, a phone, and iPad and call out "hey Siri, set an alarm for 10 minutes" you may get three devices chiming in 10 minutes. They don't act like a single device.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#153

Post by Cyph0n »

wvenable wrote: post #100
StevePerkins wrote: post #18

My Echo was an interesting novelty at first. But a couple years in now, it is essentially (in order of usefulness): 1. An alarm clock / kitchen timer 2. A thing that tells me the weather report during morning coffee, so I know what to wear 3. A DJ that my kids yell at to play pop music If it died tomorrow, I'd probably just go back to using my phone for these 3 things rather than buy a new one. I can't imagine gettin…

For me add: 4. Shopping List. And that's a killer feature for me; it's so damn convenient to use a voice interface to add items to the shopping list as you run out of item that I'd probably replace it just for that.

Same here. One feature I would like is to be able to change where your shopping list goes as I do not particularly enjoy using the Alexa app.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#154

Post by sp332 »

hanoz wrote: post #30

Despite often seeming like a thin veneer of natural language processing on top of a search engine, I'm sure most users think of their voice assistants, or are willing them to be, a general AI agent. They don't want to have to care what app/skill/web-scrape is involved in enabling a response. The whole skills ecosystem feels like an awkward stopgap on the path to AI. The language required to invoke them feels particul…

Yeah, that's a good point. People are good at mentally compartmentalizing behaviors with personalities. If Alexa doesn't allow each agent to have a personality, people are going to have a hard time keeping the behaviors straight.

Kinda reminds me of Neuromancer, where a superintelligent AI was broken into two pieces to avoid detection. One part was good at personality, and the other part had to mimic people in order to communicate. It was very unnerving for people to talk to an AI that was copying the personality of someone they knew.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#155

Post by walterbell »

gtsteve wrote: post #53
nostrebored wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct solution. The Alexa Skills Kit contains the Amazon.SearchQuery slot which meets your needs, but Lex doesn't. This is one of the two missing slots from Alexa in Lex. If you read articles regarding Lex slots you might get inaccurate info as they are slightly differing products.

Thanks, I just did some searching and found that this was added in February 2018 - I think I gave up on my project in 2017 so it now looks like I could program something like what I wanted. I still have the source code so that's nice. However I'm just thinking of getting rid of my Alexa devices anyway - I was discussing political events with my partner last night, spotted the Alexa device light up (I think I said "a…

For research: have another device perform "audio fuzzing" of Alexa, trying random phrases. Use a camera to look for Alexa turning on. Bonus points, check the list of Alexa recordings (via web interface) to confirm 1:1 relationship between device activation and recorded file. Publish the inadvertent "watchlist" of phrases, monitor over time.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#156

Post by oarsinsync »

taco_emoji wrote: post #146
zwkrt wrote: post #136

I was taking with a friend who said ,"people use Alexa like a toaster, we haven't found what this interface will be really good at" But what if it /is/ just a toaster? Tech people tend to have high hopes for technology but technology must serve a purpose and it will go the way of the dodo if the purpose of not strong or clear. For me, having a voice interface for music and calls is enough justification for such a dev…

I don't think it's enough justification--you can get a "dumb" bluetooth- or wifi-enabled speaker to hook up with the voice-enabled smartphone you already have in your pocket. The value proposition for an Alexa or Google Home has to be over and above that functionality.

The smart speaker is always fixed in place, always listening, always ready to play and independent of anything else.

Your phone needs to be in range of the 'dumb' speaker, needs to be paired to it / connected to the same wireless network, can't be used for any other audio functions, and probably can't be in your pocket if you want it to be listening for voice commands. It now also can't be trained to your voice specifically if you have others in your home who want to use it, which makes it ripe for abuse whenever you leave the home.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#157

Post by mikepurvis »

oarsinsync wrote: post #132
slg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that is too far on the "creepy scale". Everyone probably knows that Amazon has a full record of everything they have asked their Alexa, but I am not sure it is smart to repeatedly remind people of this.

Phrasing comes into play here. Instead of: > "Hey, 3 months ago you asked for the forecast according to the ECMWF weather model, and I couldn't answer you. But now I can, so go ahead and try!". What might work more effectively is "We've been improving our weather forecasting and you can now get the forecast in your area according to a range of new models, including the often requested ECMWF weather model! Give it a t…

This attempt to obscure the fact that it's actually super-targeted can also backfire too, though. It wouldn't take too many of them for a savvy user to be like... now wait a minute.

Thinking back to this classic where Target figures out the trick to not creeping out someone they suspect may be pregnant is to shuffle the maternity coupons in with a bunch of other random stuff: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#158

Post by kitsunesoba »

abakker wrote: post #87

The problem is that Alexa is just a consumer voice command line. UI discoverability is impossible, and everything that you can do is just a utility that does something else. There are no native apps because everything that it can do is just an IO to something else. If they actually get conversational, this will change, but until then, it’s just a command line with no man page.

A great step that could be taken before full on conversation ability would be the simple ability for the assistant to ask questions and seek basic clarification when encountering ambiguity and then using the user’s answer to learn so clarification won’t be needed next time. This way, over time the voice assistant would refine itself and acclimate itself to its user’s way of communicating.

This alone would make for a much more usable experience, and yet no voice assistant has implemented it yet, which flabbergasts me. I don’t have much knowledge in this particular realm so maybe I’m missing some big blocker that prevents it from being possible, but to me it seems like such an obvious thing to do.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#159

Post by walterbell »

jbattle wrote: post #74
ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine how frustrating it is for folks named Siri. You can at least change Alexa's wake word to a couple other options ("Echo" or "Computer").

One of my coworkers has a friend named Siri. When Apple's siri first came out somehow she kept getting texts from friends "remind me tuesday to call the doctor". She didn't realize what was happening so she kept track of those reminders and texted her friends back until everyone sorted their technology out.

Great story!

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#160

Post by walterbell »

Alexa is useful to visually impaired and people and seniors:

  - landline dial by name
  - radio station by name
  - TV channel by name
  - play/resume audiobook by name
  - microwave for duration 
  - device power on/off 
  - time, weather, etc
It takes some setup to get all devices integrated, but once it all works, it's borderline magic to a non-technical user.
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