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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#411

Post by throwadobe »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #349
rainbowzootsuit wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This used to be the Sears Kenmore & Craftsman model where appliances were really Whirlpool, or Maytag, Carrier{1}. Hand tools variously came from many OEMs like SK, Plumb, Knipex, and Williams{2}. I suppose they still do, now at Lowes, but the OEM is Chinese. {1} https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/How_to_identify_who_made_your_Ke... {2} https://forum.toolsinaction.com/topic/2118-craftsman-date-co...

The big thing with Sears Craftsman (formerly), and Costco (currently) is that the company will back the product. If I want to return a product to Costco, I have really strong confidence that they will take it back.

TBF to Amazon they take all my shit back on the reg

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#412

Post by ipaddr »

crazygringo wrote: post #210
swatcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision. This is compounded by the multi-headed monster that large orgs like theirs have no choice but to become. If customers could trust that every day essentials had a relatively stable price and availability pattern like they trust from their local grocery store (…

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…

You have one supplier of a book. You have many suppliers of generic products. Target gets from one supplier.

The multi vender estore offers something different. The low prices, large selection more supplied inventory are some benefits.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#413

Post by derefr »

jprete wrote: post #125
noveltyaccount wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To build on the Costco analogy: for any given product category they typically only have three specific options: good, better, best. I could tell Costco bot that I need AA batteries and it would ask me if I prefer Duracell, Kirkland brand, or cheapest. I trust that either of them will be plenty good, so I would say cheapest. Amazon has a vastly different experience with thousands of indistinguishable Chinese knockoffs…

To add to your point, one can't even pick out a brand-name product directly from Amazon's website and be sure of getting the real thing.

These days, you can't even pick out a brand-name product from a brick and mortar store and be sure of getting the real thing.

People will buy something from a store, buy a fake version of that thing on AliExpress, swap the fake into the box, re-shrinkwrap the box, return the shrinkwrapped fake to the store, and sell the real one on eBay.

The store will often put the thing back on the shelf, because it's still shrinkwrapped, weighs the same, and even looks the same under an x-ray.

And then someone buys it and gets a dud.

This is why, except for a few high-margin categories, Amazon itself will never put returned stock back into inventory, instead always selling it off through bulk channels. It's effectively impossible to authenticate a return as legitimate these days, without converting the "BNIB" device into a "NIB" device.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#414

Post by Theodores »

devilbunny wrote: post #117
Theodores wrote: post #111

One problem with Alexa and all other voice assistants is that the older people that have money are precisely the people that detest voice assistants. So how do you make money?

Older people are not the ones who detest voice assistants (my in-laws love them). It’s the middle-aged (me) who grew up using computers and don’t trust something that’s always listening.

[flagged]

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#416

Post by throwadobe »

I think the fundamental issue with Alexa is that Amazon is trying to answer the question "how can we use it to sell more shit?" instead of trying to answer "how can we make people's lives better by adding more value than any other assistant in the marketplace?"

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#417

Post by rtpg »

ghaff wrote: post #333
julianeon wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other really big use case - actually the majority for me! - is telling Alexa to add things to shopping lists. I have one list I always check when I'm at a physical store or preparing for curbside shopping.

And I use a steno pad for that.

What works for a person works of course, but pulling out my phone and just holding down a button and saying "add onions to shopping list" is very helpful halfway through cooking some stuff in a kitchen.

Of course I could put that on my fridge and have a marker. But it's "I need my list right now and have almost no free hands to do this" in other parts of the house too (toilet paper etc). Meanwhile my phone is always in my pocket.

Maybe time to just keep a pocket pad + pencil in my pocket though...

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#419

Post by rtpg »

ihkasfjdkabnsk wrote: post #390
asdasdsddd wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed many people on Alexa before. From what I gather, its just a giant switch statement, and each individual "path" takes a bunch of effort to support and there are thousands of paths for music, ordering, commands, etc. It's peak AI == if statement architecture.

Throwaway, used to work at the NLU unit of Alexa about 5 years ago. There is some ML going on but as with all ML projects I have worked on people want control. This means you add rules for the "important" stuff. You also add test cases to make sure the ML works. But if you already have those test cases, why not just match on them directly? There are also advanced techniques for generating examples (FST for example).…

Is this not actually kind of powerful? Having linguists write up a bunch of rules seems a lot more predictable than "rolling a bunch of dice and hoping that some LLM spits out a coherent set of steps".

It feels very fractal but on the other hand if Alexa has only a specific gamut of responses it's not exactly a limitless state space right?

Very curious about how those rules look like though

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#420

Post by Zenst »

The amount of awareness and integration with its revenue streams makes it a loss leader. It equally helps tie people into that ecosystem. So it's an underrated appreciated marketing budget more than a loss.

Now they can and should have added functionality(worthwhile pay for add ons) earlier and then, Alexa does have some basic flaws in dialogue, like try and ask it for the wind direction without being subjected to a weather forecast that tells you everything but the wind direction. Then the pet peeves for example - Ask for the time, you get the time, and you politely say thank you, to which Alexa responds "Anytime".

But with the processing done at a backend, they do have an opportunity via ease of access and user-base to jump into the AI personal assistant race, if they price it right. Which is what seems afoot, though the price will be key here.

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