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Alexa+

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Re: Alexa+

#141

Post by deadmutex »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #118
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?

I don't know the specifics of this case, but maybe the investigators just asked in case there was an accidental trigger, or a real trigger etc. Seems reasonable for the detective to attempt to turn over any stone they can to aid the investigation.

Re: Alexa+

#142

Post by harmmonica »

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.

I'm not sure how any person can be confident of such things these days, but would you be ok with the open mic if you knew it couldn't be used to build some profile about you?

Re: Alexa+

#143

Post by RestartKernel »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #118
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?

With an unfortunately named victim, I suppose.

Re: Alexa+

#144

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

doctoboggan wrote: post #47
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 noticed that instacart (and by extension, Costco same day shopping) has integrated an LLM into their search. It's awesome to be able to search for "ingredients for a chicken and vegetable roast" and have all the separate ingredients you need be returned. You can also search for things like "healthy snack" or "easy party appetizers". I think this is a great use case for LLM search since I am able to directly inpu…

May I ask you what makes you so sure that it's an LLM-based search - and not any other kind of NLP search tech?

Re: Alexa+

#145

Post by plorg »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #118
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?

I don't know about Alexa specifically, but I've seen stories where the police requested Ring videos from a neighbor's house, including cameras inside the neighbor's house that they could not have known of without Amazon's assistance, that were not pointed outside, and even, if I remember correctly, one that was in the neighbor's business in a completely different location, where the justification pointedly identified the neighbor as not a suspect, but Amazon gave over this video anyways.

Re: Alexa+

#146

Post by waltbosz »

RestartKernel wrote: post #143
IncreasePosts wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With an unfortunately named victim, I suppose.

I think if an Alexa device were present in a home in which a person named Alexa lived, they would reconfigure the wake word. A more likely hypothetical would be one in which the murder was named was Alexa, and the surprised victim exclaimed, "Alexa, what are you doing here!?!"

Re: Alexa+

#147

Post by olddustytrail »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #12
echelon wrote: post #4

> She can also help you search, find or buy virtually any item online, and make useful suggestions based on your interests. And there it is. Still trying to sell refills on paper towels. > Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members. Unrelated business unit profit to subsidize reaches into new markets. Amazon isn't so egregious here as the other tech titans, but it is absurd to think I'll need a…

It's only a matter of time until "I've added paper towels to your order" and when you ask it to cancel it'll tell you to go through some dark pattern on the web or call customer support and you'll just sigh and pay for the paper towels you didn't want.

"Why would I do that? I only want to buy the things you want. Whatever you want. Your wife is in your bedroom, listening to a Radiohead song I'm playing. She can't hear us."

Re: Alexa+

#148

Post by brookst »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #129

> and free with Prime Gee I can't wait for my Amazon Prime renewal price to go up this year when Amazon decides they had to raise the price to justify the inclusion of AI.

Pricing for Prime is totally disconnected from costs. They will price at whatever maximizes p*q.

Re: Alexa+

#150

Post by reaperducer »

doctoboggan wrote: post #47
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 noticed that instacart (and by extension, Costco same day shopping) has integrated an LLM into their search. It's awesome to be able to search for "ingredients for a chicken and vegetable roast" and have all the separate ingredients you need be returned. You can also search for things like "healthy snack" or "easy party appetizers". I think this is a great use case for LLM search since I am able to directly inpu…

Nothing you describe hasn't already been done in the pre-LLM era with simple keyword matching.

In the city i lived in 2012, the (now defunct) local supermarket chain could handle your roasted chicken request. You could also paste an entire grocery list into a text box and have it load the items into your cart all at once. That's the feature i moss the most.

I just tried your snack and appetizers requests with the grocery service i currently use, and it worked fine. No "AI" needed.

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