Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

The voice recognition is good, but the interface is completely independent of Alexa. The interface is spawned from a group of people brainstorming all the different ways someone can ask to turn on the lights, and then figuring out the ways to deal with all the different inputs.

I'm not sure how common the knowledge is around making an Alexa skill, but I made one as a side project so I might have some insight.

You define a bunch of variables, and describe what form they are likely to come in (number, data, US city, list of strings). It's not strictly bound to any enumeration you use. Then you list out a bunch of phrases that people are expected to say to activate a function. You can pepper the variables into these phrases. Then you link these phrases to functions, which receive the variables as parameters. What you do from there is up to you.

I would say it's a clever way of gradually reducing the complexity, but it does result in putting the "conversation" complexity on the developer. There is no "state" or compound queries unless the developer thought of the conversation going that way.

This article far exaggerates the devices problems, at least as I've experienced it.

If someone shouts my name—Alex—across the apartment, it will activate Alexa

That's trivially fixable. You can rename her to "Echo", "Amazon", or "Computer".

sometimes Alexa will also be activated by arbitrary syllables in ordinary conversation. ... As I read this paragraph aloud to myself, her blue ring has already lit up several times

I've had this happen at random (i.e., when I didn't say her name accidentally) exactly once that I've noticed.

not only is Alexa incapable of looking up even basic facts

This is an exaggeration. By all accounts Google's device does better. But it's simply false that it can't look up "even basic facts". It's quite limited, but far from absolutely useless.

In my mind, Alexa's greatest flaw is in the design for its skill interface. You can't interact with her conversationally, because you always need to preface every command with its skill name, e.g., "Alexa, ask Spaceman what's the news today?" [1]. You must always remember these special names, and used them in this stilted fashion for all interactions. And making this worse is that Amazon insists that the interactions within each skill must be completely discoverable, so that they don't want to publish more than a couple of samples from each, encouraging you to experiment and discover yourself, a process I find tiresome and one guaranteed to leave at least some of the capabilities unknown.

[1] Shameless plug - this is a skill I wrote to give you news about scheduled rocket launches, near earth object passes, and lunar phase - https://sites.google.com/view/spacemanforalexa/

You need to put the payload inside the vehicle before you deliver it. Your chances of successfully installing it later fall asymptotically towards zero.

My favorite one:

Me: Alexa, set up an alarm for 2 minutes

Alexa: Two minutes.

[Two minutes later]

Alexa: Beep beep beep

Me: Alexa, thank you!

Alexa: You are welcome... Beep beep beep...

Edit: formatting

I have an Amazon Echo in every room of my house, and I use it to control home automation, such as all of my lights, my ecobee thermostat, and my entire home theater (via a logitech harmony). I even use it to switch on and off my humidifier and space heater (and manage the temperature). My wife and I also use it to manage my shopping list (via the OurGroceries skill/app). I can use it to remote start my car and preheat or cool it down in the morning. I can even control my adjustable tempurpedic bed base, and have an IFTTT trigger which makes my bed vibrate whenever my amazon echo alarm goes off in the morning.

The possibilities are endless, and it's only going to get better.