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Alexa+

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Re: Alexa+

#111

Post by jazzyjackson »

delichon wrote: post #5

I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.

I've found Perplexity.ai with Deepseek R1 to be very good at choosing a product or a hotel for me. I just punched in your query and it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen ! "Cosori Pro LE Air Fryer"

It's a good air fryer.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/air-fryers-without-bluetoot...

Another example, after spending an hour on trip advisor going back and forth to maps to check for walking route to my destination, please recommend a hotel, more of a guesthouse, in marrakesh, near le jardin secret in the medina. something with a local flavor, not 5 star european -- I was so relieved to be able to book direct and be done with it.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/please-recommend-a-hotel-mo...

Re: Alexa+

#112

Post by goosedragons »

pflenker wrote: post #97
doctoboggan wrote: post #6

I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.

Part of why people only use it for timers is because of its limited capability to understand. „Do I need an umbrella today?“ results in Alexa telling me what the weather will be like without mentioning chance of rain. Asking a trivia question leads to it reading out a response that is wrong 50% of the time. If I ask Alexa to remind me at 8, it asks me whether am or pm though I expressed it unambiguously in German. If…

I like it when I ask it for the hours of a shop near me, it gives me the hours of some store with the same name literally thousands of kilometers away every time despite knowing my exact address.

Re: Alexa+

#113

Post by Aurornis »

creshal wrote: post #35
delichon wrote: post #5

I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.

Why would Amazon want you to have it, though? They benefit fantastically from manipulating search results against you.

> They benefit fantastically from manipulating search results against you.

Amazon makes money by selling products you want and loses money when you return them.

They aren’t manipulating search results “against you”

Re: Alexa+

#114

Post by bb88 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #104
doctoboggan wrote: post #6

I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.

Just because it's not useful to you doesn't mean it's not useful. It has the best shopping list of any assistant (non-Apple-walled-garden), it's the only one that can text me my reminders, and the skills are killer - sprinklers, remote car start, the possibilities with skills are limitless. I've never felt compelled to buy a product it has offered me, but it did offer me a really good deal once on an item I had been…

I have a funny story speaking of the Alexa shopping list.

A few years ago before I was Amazon Prime and committed only to the google infra at the time, I was over at a friends house who had recently gotten an Alexa assistant thingy.

While he went out to the garage to get some beer, I said, "Alexa, Please add Hemorrhoid Suppositories to my shopping list."

And it did!

Re: Alexa+

#115

Post by calamity_elf »

Dnguyen wrote: post #85
0898 wrote: post #66

The main use case in our house for Alexa is sending announcements between rooms. But for a few months now, it hasn’t worked properly. I will say: “Alexa, send an announcement”. But 50% of the time, instead of prompting me for the announcement, it will play me saying “Send an announcement” around the house. I wonder if anyone else has had this issue, or if it’s just me?

Works well for us by saying, Alexa, announce ...

then half the time for us it will not hear the announcement, so we say 'alexa announce' again, and it announces "ALEXA ANNOUNCE" all over the house.

Re: Alexa+

#116

Post by jazzyjackson »

hbosch wrote: post #92
jccalhoun wrote: post #64

I have 4 echos. This stuff looks like a lot of things I will never use.

Custom bedtime stories will make every night in my house more pleasurable!

I don't know why I have such a visceral gut turning reaction to the idea of a bodyless voice synthesizing a bedtime story to a child. I don't have children, but always thought the whole bedtime story thing was meant to be time spent with the parent.

Re: Alexa+

#117

Post by kahmeal »

bhhaskin wrote: post #109
wiremine wrote: post #105

I'm not optimistic, but my recent experiences with Gemini's mobile app gives me pause on my pessimism. My wife and I are planning a family vacation, and we had some questions about various destinations. I opened Gemini, and we had a helpful 10-minute conversation. If Alexa+ can provide a similar experience, I can see us having more of those voice-based sessions.

The big issue with LLM is how can you trust the information it gives you? It could be flat out making all or some of it up.

I mean that's one of the value propositions these folks have to weigh into their product offerings. At some point you either have a reputation for delivering accurate responses or not and that will dictate who uses it and how much they're willing to pay for it.

Re: Alexa+

#118

Post by IncreasePosts »

nashashmi wrote: post #76

I remember when law officers wanted the Alexa recording at the home of a murder. Amazon did not give it up. I always thought that data was meaningless if it takes a person hours to go through it. Now we have AI. Which means the data is not meaningless. And the always on feature actually means something. And that means all your data at home can be at someone's fingertips ... because say they are looking for ways to ma…

Alexa only sends network data when the hotword is heard...how exactly does that happen during a murder?

Re: Alexa+

#119

Post by bookofjoe »

The problem for both Amazon and Apple is that they've sunk SO much money into Alexa and Siri that they simply can't walk away and start over with AI. Thus, their futile attempts at combining their original creations with state-of-the-art AI and LLM. It's like putting lipstick on a pig.

Re: Alexa+

#120

Post by PaulHoule »

doctoboggan wrote: post #6

I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.

I was excited about them too and gave this "way ahead of its time" preso [1] on those kind of interfaces. Some how I wound up with five of them, I think I got a lot of them at Best Buy when I bought something else, but they weren't that useful and my family is very privacy sensitive so I removed them my my AMZN account and gave them all away to the reuse center.

[1] https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/chatbots-in-2017-ithaca...

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