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Alexa+

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Re: Alexa+

#131

Post by tokioyoyo »

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.

It doesn’t take much effort to verify and cross reference check in most of the scenarios. But I have no idea how they will fight against LLM-optimized SEO-hell. Like I could see products flat out flying in the ads, hoping for LLMs to pick that up and suggest to users. Source of truth will matter even more.

Re: Alexa+

#132

Post by msh »

drpossum wrote: post #45
harmmonica wrote: post #28

If an LLM-based voice assistant/hardware combination works as well as ChatGPT-for-voice works today, I don't think it's a stretch to say that nearly everyone in the coming years will use/have one (the software of course will be portable to whatever device you're using--house, phone, car, etc. But the hardware portion I do believe will be critical because most of the time using it will be at home in a room and in that…

I use LLMs pretty liberally and I can say with 100% certainty I am not going to leave an open microphone in my home hooked up to an LLM connected to a place I do not control that is actively trying to "learn" about me.

This is a local only version: https://www.jollamind2.com/

Re: Alexa+

#133

Post by rockbruno »

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.

Paired with Home Assistant and the Hue emulator, Alexa gets a lot more useful as you become able to expose to her whatever crazy script you'd like her to toggle via voice

Re: Alexa+

#135

Post by Mistletoe »

colordrops wrote: post #82
Mistletoe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really awesome for starting timers and playing music though. I also ask it questions and it does pretty well at answering them. For once we get to be on the opposite side of the exploitation curve here. They can provide this service to me for free in perpetuity I hope. I think my Dots were maybe $19 or bought on eBay.

It's not free though. They are collecting a massive amount of data on you, and exposing you to liability as well with recordings kept on file. If you don't value your personal data then I guess it's "free".

We all make the calculation whether it is worth it and for me it is worth it. I'm not a head of state or someone with great secrets to keep. Alexa just hears me talk a lot about Elden Ring or whether we need to buy milk. I'm just a normal guy talking to his girlfriend and for me it is worth it. I completely respect the opposite view though. For me the pros outweigh the cons. I have good reason to believe that they are being truthful when they say it only hears me talk when I give the wake word.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11899217/Murderer-j...

I think you would have a lot more cases than this if it heard you at all times. It seems the police only have access to the times the word Alexa was used.

Re: Alexa+

#136

Post by richwater »

Aurornis wrote: post #113
creshal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

Amazon puts sponsored product listings in the search results. The more you search without finding the product you want, the more ad impressions are generated.

Re: Alexa+

#137

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Alexa+

#138

Post by tokioyoyo »

drpossum wrote: post #45
harmmonica wrote: post #28

If an LLM-based voice assistant/hardware combination works as well as ChatGPT-for-voice works today, I don't think it's a stretch to say that nearly everyone in the coming years will use/have one (the software of course will be portable to whatever device you're using--house, phone, car, etc. But the hardware portion I do believe will be critical because most of the time using it will be at home in a room and in that…

I use LLMs pretty liberally and I can say with 100% certainty I am not going to leave an open microphone in my home hooked up to an LLM connected to a place I do not control that is actively trying to "learn" about me.

Fair, but the above comment is about general population. The percentage of people that’s actively against it in the real world is negligible. Like where do you cut the line? Is Siri/Google Assistant ok on your phone? What about every newer BMW nowadays coming with its own assistant? Samsung TVs? Nest/Ecobee products? I could go on, and I haven’t met a person who owns has 0 devices with voice assistants in years.

Re: Alexa+

#139

Post by harmmonica »

com2kid wrote: post #100
drpossum wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use LLMs pretty liberally and I can say with 100% certainty I am not going to leave an open microphone in my home hooked up to an LLM connected to a place I do not control that is actively trying to "learn" about me.

Do it all locally. I wrote a blog post[1] describing what a local only LLM could do. The answer is quite a lot with today's technology. The question is - do any of the tech giants actually want to build it? The locally hosted scenarios are in some ways more powerful than what you can do with cloud hosted services, and honestly given that companies could charge customers for the inference hardware instead of paying to…

I didn't say it in the prior comment, but this is what I'm hoping for and that people end up caring enough so that this option "wins." Evidence suggests people will take the cheaper option, though, even if all of their info ends up in the hands of advertisers or something far more nefarious.

You mention Apple... I feel like, of the megacorps, they're the most likely to do something like that. Then between the phone, AirPods, HomePod (tethered to the phone I guess or a newer version of the hardware), and your car with CarPlay, the hardware already exists and so someone will build a privacy-focused LLM that Apple could plug into. At least Apple could justify that by being the hardware interface between the LLM and the user if they can't build their own effective LLM (seems unlikely they'll be able to do that given track record).

If I were really crazy I'd say Apple could buy Anthropic (right right they don't do big acquisitions) and turn it into their privacy-focused LLM.

Now to read your blog post...

Re: Alexa+

#140

Post by mkayle »

My main request is to add the functionality to inquire about the progress of running tasks, such as checking the time remaining on a timer.
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