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Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

zdnet.com

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Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#41

Post by wlesieutre »

Karunamon wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that these few useful things can be all achieved much cheaper with much greater ergonomics. > the weather, setting alarms, (...) and asking what time it is. You can do that on your phone. Even assuming you wanted it hands-free, it doesn't justify an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud . We had the tech to do this level of voice recognition reliably in the 2000s. > It allows me to turn off the…

an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud. This is a dishonest characterization of how every smart speaker in existence works. There is no continuous stream as this statement implies. There is a continuous buffer of a couple of seconds for the device to locally catch a wake word. (You can verify this by disabling the device's internet connectivity - it will still catch the wake word and speak an apologetic me…

In an ideal world that's true. But Alexa doesn't only upload your audio when you say the wake word, it uploads it when it thinks you said the wake word. Unless the recognition is 100% accurate, that's an important difference.

There was the one very publicized instance where it recorded private conversations and sent them to a random contact, but you have to wonder how many other non-Alexa commands have been picked up and sent off to Amazon even though they shouldn't have been.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/24...

So even if you trust Amazon with recordings of your weather queries, you also need to trust Amazon's wake word recognition to not pick up anything other than your weather queries.

And there was that other time when they took 1700 of their recordings, accidentally sent them to the wrong person, and a journalist was able to track down the recorded person based on their personal information from the recordings:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-sends-alexa-shower-re...

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#42

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Karunamon wrote: post #27
ravenstine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they are useful to people in very limi…

> the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. The primary use of my Alexa devices is being a voice-controlled IP radio. I paid about $300 many years ago for Logitech/Slim Devices' crack at this, the Squeezebox, and I loved it. Now, I get that same functionality for $40 shipped with more on top. Everything else…

I've got a setup of google home devices, and that's pretty much all I use em for - the occasional stupid question and the rest of the time it's playing music that I can control with my voice, which I find incredibly convenient.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#43

Post by Baeocystin »

School-Cotton wrote: post #18
ravenstine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they are useful to people in very limi…

"Besides [a bunch of useful stuff], Alexa is useless! Therefore it's a gimmick." I have an Echo Dot which I use almost exclusively for a few static purposes: the weather, setting alarms, turning my lights on and off, and asking what time it is. I also ask it basic questions like whether various sports teams won or what time they're playing, which it also answers well. Not sure why you think it is useless just because…

You use case almost exactly mirrors my own. Even if weather, alarms, time & lights was all it ever did, it has 100% been worth the purchase price.

It is genuinely useful to have a no-hands-required timer in the kitchen, and being able to turn off the bedroom lights when I'm done reading for the night without having to reach for a switch is great.

I was even pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Alexa's Skyrim. Sure, it's really more of a joke as it is, but it made me think that some choose-your-own-adventure skills would be a lot of fun.

(Asking Alexa to play white noise to help me sleep has been nice, too.)

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#44

Post by JadeNB »

gvand wrote: post #5

Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has shown recently.

> Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has shown recently.

I think I'm being clueless, but I can't figure out what this sentence means. Is there a typo in it?

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#45

Post by lotu »

Karunamon wrote: post #33
sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious from interacting with the device that your voice data leaves, or that there's any permanent record made of your commands. That's something you have to know ahead of time.

You don't think it's obvious given that the device is completely non-functional without internet access?

I think this is obvious however I also understand that most people aren't that clever/interested in these things, and would not realize it. This creates a dilemma of how to message this information in a way that is all at once concise so as to not waste people's time, informative, and not alarmist which freaks people out and is counter productive not only to having a viable product but also to the general adoption of technology.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#46

Post by j05h »

Karunamon wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that these few useful things can be all achieved much cheaper with much greater ergonomics. > the weather, setting alarms, (...) and asking what time it is. You can do that on your phone. Even assuming you wanted it hands-free, it doesn't justify an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud . We had the tech to do this level of voice recognition reliably in the 2000s. > It allows me to turn off the…

an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud. This is a dishonest characterization of how every smart speaker in existence works. There is no continuous stream as this statement implies. There is a continuous buffer of a couple of seconds for the device to locally catch a wake word. (You can verify this by disabling the device's internet connectivity - it will still catch the wake word and speak an apologetic me…

So, I used to think the same thing, and have several Alexa devices in my home. However, last week I got an ad from Amazon about shower head installation. I have never searched for that on any device, nor asked my Alexa about it. But I did have a meatspace conversation about it the day before I got the ad.

Maybe I said something which triggered it? No idea, but I'm sure that Alexa listening in caused the advertisement to show up.

I promptly set them all so they no longer listen and I'm trying to figure out a better solution (HomePod? Mycroft?). I absolutely love the (limited) capabilities smart speakers provide. But I'm done with Alexa.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#47

Post by gvand »

JadeNB wrote: post #44
gvand wrote: post #5

Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has shown recently.

> Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has shown recently. I think I'm being clueless, but I can't figure out what this sentence means. Is there a typo in it?

I was referring, in a convolute way, to the fact that all the data collected have been/will be used to train the models that will allow offline voice recognition (like the one google has shown at i/o last week).

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#48

Post by pushpop »

pushpop wrote: post #29
School-Cotton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Besides [a bunch of useful stuff], Alexa is useless! Therefore it's a gimmick." I have an Echo Dot which I use almost exclusively for a few static purposes: the weather, setting alarms, turning my lights on and off, and asking what time it is. I also ask it basic questions like whether various sports teams won or what time they're playing, which it also answers well. Not sure why you think it is useless just because…

I fairness to your bed time reading example, it’s very common for people to have bed side lights - even if they’re just little lamps that rest on a table. At least this is the norm in the UK. So for a great many of us, turning our reading light out would just be an extension of our arm. My wife tends to prefer using the TV as her reading light. I find that rather bizarre but she likes the background noise. In any cas…

Why am I getting downvoted? Do people disagree that it’s common for bedrooms to have lamps? A little context would be appreciated because my comment is 100% accurate in terms my own experiences yet several people seem to disagree. Genuinely interested to know why.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

Karunamon wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that these few useful things can be all achieved much cheaper with much greater ergonomics. > the weather, setting alarms, (...) and asking what time it is. You can do that on your phone. Even assuming you wanted it hands-free, it doesn't justify an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud . We had the tech to do this level of voice recognition reliably in the 2000s. > It allows me to turn off the…

an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud. This is a dishonest characterization of how every smart speaker in existence works. There is no continuous stream as this statement implies. There is a continuous buffer of a couple of seconds for the device to locally catch a wake word. (You can verify this by disabling the device's internet connectivity - it will still catch the wake word and speak an apologetic me…

> [description how Alexa works]

Citation needed. I don't think the actual process is publicly available (though I may be wrong). Call me too cynical, but given the bugs that happened to both Google and Amazon, and that the law can force compel companies to do things with leased hardware they ordinarily wouldn't, I don't really trust it.

> The "user hostility" and "gimmick"-ness of this design is entirely subjective and quite overblown, in that "nobody will ever use Dropbox when they could just use rsync and a cronjob"-type bias that HN tends to have.

It's not like that. Dropbox is a simple service - syncs files, optionally allows sharing them. Doesn't do any weird stuff around it. Doesn't force an Internet round-trip for things that can be done locally. The user hostility of voice assistants comes from the way it's designed - cloud-based voice recognition instead of local one, forcing a cloud round-trip for doing things entirely over LAN, being tied to an "ecosystem" of third-party integrations you can't easily manage or complement with your own as end-user, etc. The "gimmick-ness" part comes from it doing very little, and doing it worse than alternatives.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#50

Post by thfuran »

Karunamon wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that these few useful things can be all achieved much cheaper with much greater ergonomics. > the weather, setting alarms, (...) and asking what time it is. You can do that on your phone. Even assuming you wanted it hands-free, it doesn't justify an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud . We had the tech to do this level of voice recognition reliably in the 2000s. > It allows me to turn off the…

an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud. This is a dishonest characterization of how every smart speaker in existence works. There is no continuous stream as this statement implies. There is a continuous buffer of a couple of seconds for the device to locally catch a wake word. (You can verify this by disabling the device's internet connectivity - it will still catch the wake word and speak an apologetic me…

>Also, changing the wake word requires a full restart, which says "firmware" to me.

Well to me it says "static variable".

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