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Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#131

Post by grayfaced »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #52
thepasswordis wrote: post #28

I use my Alexa all the time, but 99% of it is: Alexa, time! Alexa, set an alarm for 5 minutes! Alexa how many minutes left? Alexa, turn off/on all the lights! That’s basically it. I wrote some apps for it a long time ago to do custom stuff like read me some Reddit pages, but the SDK changed or something and eventually they just died and it wasn’t obvious to me how to recreate it/not worth the effort. I really wish th…

This has been my compliant with all of this voice control stuff. The dev teams are so damn focused on being able to answer some esoteric query that you're asking as joke, they forget that you only want to do like 5 basic things: * Set an alarm/reminder * Read then send a text message (while driving). It doesn't even have to be good. Just something that I can send while driving. * Maybe.....maybe ask for the weather.…

Exactly. Mine is only used for timers/alarms, weather and as a bluetooth speaker. I just want those to work reliably. Every time it tries to change my behavior ("I can also...") it is actively annoying me.

But I also recognize that my usage won't generate revenue and will continue to cost. Surely they can't just keep offering free service forever on equipment that was purchased at deep discount. But I don't think offering gimmicks is the answer to this.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#132

Post by saghm »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #52
thepasswordis wrote: post #28

I use my Alexa all the time, but 99% of it is: Alexa, time! Alexa, set an alarm for 5 minutes! Alexa how many minutes left? Alexa, turn off/on all the lights! That’s basically it. I wrote some apps for it a long time ago to do custom stuff like read me some Reddit pages, but the SDK changed or something and eventually they just died and it wasn’t obvious to me how to recreate it/not worth the effort. I really wish th…

This has been my compliant with all of this voice control stuff. The dev teams are so damn focused on being able to answer some esoteric query that you're asking as joke, they forget that you only want to do like 5 basic things: * Set an alarm/reminder * Read then send a text message (while driving). It doesn't even have to be good. Just something that I can send while driving. * Maybe.....maybe ask for the weather.…

> Maybe.....maybe ask for the weather

I remember one time I asked my Google Home the weather to see if it was cold enough to put on a jacket, and after hearing a temperature that I was ambivalent about, I took a risk and tried asking it what the wind speed was. It started reading out the Wikipedia page for "wind speed" until I told it to stop.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#133

Post by MBCook »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #98
adventured wrote: post #38

These companies are all quasi confused about what these devices are. Voice isn't the thing, it's a mode of interacting with the thing. The thing is: the digital home. Amazon is comically dropping the ball here. They have the tablets. They have the TVs. They have the reach. They have the home security division. Integrate, integrate, integrate. Alexa is just a mode of communicating with the digital home. It's a feature…

I sometimes wonder if companies have a plan or do things and it all just kinda falls into place. I used to make fun of Steam for the DRM part, but when combined with their Proton effort, OS and Deck all of a sudden all the crazy puzzle pieces fell into place, I started to wonder to what extent it pure chance vs conscious planning by Gabe. I agree with your point on integration. All the pieces seem to be there already…

I don’t know. Steam was DRM, but they smartly saw its ability to be a platform for selling everyone’s games.

Proton/OS/deck all just seem like hedges against their constant enemy: Microsoft. That was always the existential threat to Steam, and MS made it official when they launched their store.

It’s great it worked out, but I don’t think what we have today was in any of the early plans. I think most of it came later.

But that’s just my guess.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#134

Post by timfsu »

jahewson wrote: post #119
29athrowaway wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Alexa for everything. - To ask for the weather, weather alerts, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed - To ask about outdoor air quality, indoor air quality (requires air quality monitors) - As a baby monitor (crying detector routine) - To know when to empty the dehumidifier bucket (humidity > 60% routine) - To know when someone left the AC fan off (high CO2 routine) - To know when to open the window (hi…

> Vacuuming, mopping Please elaborate.

Probably having it start the robot vacuum

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#135

Post by visarga »

zachlatta wrote: post #97
monero-xmr wrote: post #17

My echo absolutely became less accurate month after month. Simple commands like “turn off the lights” would be 50/50. Very low-value technology and it certainly gives one pause about the feasibility of AI when something so basic with so much capital and years of effort is still fairly poor.

I’ve been wondering if I’ve been going crazy. It’s gotten way worse for me too. I have to ask 3-4 times to turn the lights off sometimes.

Research is going strong. The Whisper model, recently open sourced, is great for ASR and runs on the edge. https://openai.com/blog/whisper/

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#136

Post by SoftTalker »

kennu wrote: post #9
gumby wrote: post #5

This is wonderful news. My gf has one in her living room. It is only used to play music, set a timer (usually watch is used) and adding things to a (third party) grocery list. Plus it's listening all the time to what goes on. I had one alexa device: a scanner that would read a barcode and add it to a shopping list (or you could talk to it -- ugh, had to keep it in a drawer). It was handy as I ran out of milk to just…

I'm curious, did you actually verify that "it's listening all the time to what goes on"? The Echo devices are supposed to only turn on full power and start listening when they detect the activation word ("Alexa" by default).

Have you actually verified that it isn't?

Which assumption is the safer one?

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#138

Post by adrr »

somenameforme wrote: post #48

Perhaps a silly question, but can somebody describe how they might lose $10 billion on Alexa in one year? I don't understand the math. That's enough to pay 33,000 employees $330k a year, or some recombination of such. I don't think the real numbers come even remotely close to that. So it presumably has to be hardware costs, but Alexa is software, and they have vertical integration of all servers which presumably woul…

Hardware is very expensive. Alexa dot is $14 on Amazon.com right now, i bet they are selling it at a loss for that price.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#140

Post by visarga »

danielodievich wrote: post #42
mradek wrote: post #13

Still boggles my mind that people willingly put these kinds of devices in their homes.

I absolutely concur. I think these are the creepiest pieces of spying one can have. I've never seen one do anything useful. I don't mind walking to my radio to play music and I like using my computer with keyboard and mouse to buy amazon stuff. Plus everyone's mobile device is already this anyhow.

Every click online is recorded and especially every search, which might be carrying more information than an Alexa command and a few random false positives for the trigger word.
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