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Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

theguardian.com

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Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#101

Post by ghaff »

jacquesm wrote: post #92
ghaff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's because you interact with it as though it is a person Well, that was sort of the pitch and it's certainly implied by "virtual/voice assistant." Certainly Amazon wasn't pitching Alexa as a voice-operated kitchen timer. To be honest, I'm probably better with them now because I know they mostly don't work but can be used for some simple tasks for which I know an incantation that mostly gives me the result I want…

Fair enough, but anybody that knows more about this stuff than your average consumer was likely quite skeptical of that pitch. All I saw was an always on microphone with a line to Apple, Google or Amazon and for me that was reason enough to bar that stuff from crossing the threshold at the front door here.

>anybody that knows more about this stuff than your average consumer was likely quite skeptical of that pitch.

That probably was--or should have been the case. But it's one of those things that seems like it would be pretty straightforward. After all, if a fairly young child can do something, it seems like a computer wired up to the Internet could. And in fact, voice recognition has gotten quite good--at least for English speakers without a strong accent. But actually carrying on a conversation in natural language is a really hard problem, even if children can do so from a fairly young age.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#102

Post by ghaff »

kube-system wrote: post #94
LorenPechtel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn off voice purchasing entirely.

I’m not saying that Amazon should simply avoid harming people with disabilities. I’m going one step further and saying that they should actively help them. Voice assistants are an obvious solution for people who can’t use other input devices because disability. Yet, Amazon has designed the device as a solution for people who choose not to use other input devices out of mild inconvenience, without any thought to accom…

I don't see the conspiracy to create voice assistants that don't work very well which is what you seem to be complaining about and which, as far as I can see, pretty much everyone on the thread agrees with. Voice assistants just aren't very good so they're mostly mildly useful for people who don't need them for anything important. I'm not sure what you would necessarily do differently to make it more useful for people with disabilities other than making it better, in which case maybe I could actually use it for something useful in my car.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#103

Post by CrazyStat »

jsjohnst wrote: post #97
CrazyStat wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they make new recipes on a regular basis, so they're doing it once per recipe but still fairly often. I have hundreds of recipes in my file that I haven't gotten around to trying yet, I could easily make a new recipe every day for a year. I use a recipe app that has built-in conversions I can configure, but if I'm making a recipe out of a paper book I sometimes use Alexa to do conversions for me. Ideally I'd do…

> Maybe they make new recipes on a regular basis, so they're doing it once per recipe but still fairly often. Then memorize the conversions. It’s not that hard. Or you know, plan ahead and convert before cooking. Or simply just own up to the fact that the only reason an Alexa is a “insane QOL improvement” for this use case is SOLELY because you’ve rationalized it as such. This horse is now more than sufficiently beat…

I could memorize dozens of conversions, or I can outsource that mental load to a computer. The latter is a nice quality of life improvement.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#104

Post by ghaff »

zarriak wrote: post #90
Semaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.

I find nowadays most of the US produced content I use also lists weights in grams so no need for conversion.

I think it's definitely become more common, especially for baking. Digital scales are small and cheap and, if I'm going to work in weight anyway, I'd rather do it in grams than ounces (which would probably be mixed in with some volumetric units for small quantities).

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#105

Post by NoSorryCannot »

harvey9 wrote: post #71
jsjohnst wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like driving--not so much. I’ve tried Alexa, Google, and Siri multiple times over the years while driving and it’s just embarrassing how over hyped all of them are and yet simple questions which a human could potentially easily answer in seconds doing a search (if not driving of course), but none of them even get close. - How far away is…

You can easily search how far away is that storm? The others really ought to be voice searchable, but the diesel one would need to be timely in my area, where a couple of places have not had diesel available for several days.

It's an interesting example because the question is very easy for a person to understand but giving an actual answer would take some time, but you can invert those for an AI.

But at least a human would give a reasonable answer, like "looks like at least thirty miles" or even just "I don't know". Your phone will instead say, oops, I didn't quite get that, try again later ( goodbye chime ). Which is terrible.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#106

Post by iggldiggl »

philistine wrote: post #57
supermatt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases it doesn’t matter even if the word is in English. When choosing an audiobook, I’ve had to make some leaps in phonetics to get Alexa to understand certain words in the title.

> Hey Siri, start the last podcast I was listening to in Overcast. > I can't let you do that, Dave. Overcast has done its best to set up a shortcut, but you need to say exactly or else I'm punishing you with the enunciation of useless web searches.

https://ia800806.us.archive.org/8/items/TheBurkissWay/S03E03...

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#107

Post by [deleted] »

ghaff wrote: post #102
kube-system wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying that Amazon should simply avoid harming people with disabilities. I’m going one step further and saying that they should actively help them. Voice assistants are an obvious solution for people who can’t use other input devices because disability. Yet, Amazon has designed the device as a solution for people who choose not to use other input devices out of mild inconvenience, without any thought to accom…

I don't see the conspiracy to create voice assistants that don't work very well which is what you seem to be complaining about and which, as far as I can see, pretty much everyone on the thread agrees with. Voice assistants just aren't very good so they're mostly mildly useful for people who don't need them for anything important. I'm not sure what you would necessarily do differently to make it more useful for peopl…

[deleted]

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#108

Post by kube-system »

ghaff wrote: post #102
kube-system wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying that Amazon should simply avoid harming people with disabilities. I’m going one step further and saying that they should actively help them. Voice assistants are an obvious solution for people who can’t use other input devices because disability. Yet, Amazon has designed the device as a solution for people who choose not to use other input devices out of mild inconvenience, without any thought to accom…

I don't see the conspiracy to create voice assistants that don't work very well which is what you seem to be complaining about and which, as far as I can see, pretty much everyone on the thread agrees with. Voice assistants just aren't very good so they're mostly mildly useful for people who don't need them for anything important. I'm not sure what you would necessarily do differently to make it more useful for peopl…

The above example was a purchase confirmation sent via email. Why couldn’t the device just read it out loud? That’s literally the one thing it’s good at, and I’m sure a blind person would appreciate it.

The reason they don’t is not a conspiracy. It’s because they never considered the needs of the disabled, as many do.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#109

Post by wiml »

bambax wrote: post #87

Never mind prayers. The new frontier for AI is confessions. And Alexa should sell indulgences. Seriously though, how long before we see AI-powered therapists? Or do they exist already?

How good do they have to be? Even ELIZA apparently has (minor) demonstrable therapeutic value.

    https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/the-original-eliza

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#110

Post by ghaff »

kube-system wrote: post #108
ghaff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the conspiracy to create voice assistants that don't work very well which is what you seem to be complaining about and which, as far as I can see, pretty much everyone on the thread agrees with. Voice assistants just aren't very good so they're mostly mildly useful for people who don't need them for anything important. I'm not sure what you would necessarily do differently to make it more useful for peopl…

The above example was a purchase confirmation sent via email. Why couldn’t the device just read it out loud? That’s literally the one thing it’s good at, and I’m sure a blind person would appreciate it. The reason they don’t is not a conspiracy. It’s because they never considered the needs of the disabled, as many do.

I actually agree with that example. If I make a purchase etc. on a voice device, I expect an ACK by voice as well.
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