151–160 of 355 posts
I'm surprised this took as long as it did, but I'm also in the process of de-Alexafying my home and frankly this is pushing me further away. I quit using the grocery list functionality when they a) started putting ads in it b) made it so I could only use the phone app. I'm tired of it taking away features I found useful. I'm tired of it advertising features to me that I don't want to use, let alone hear about, and ca…
This is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't trust an LLM to choose between two brands of dish soap for me let alone pick a contractor, schedule a repair, and make a payment. Even if there was a demo showing this working in a sterile environment, reality is so complex that something is certain to go wrong. Even the "simple" task of summarizing news had so many catastrophic failures that Apple had to pull it from the market.
Amazon is making bold claims about the capabilities of their voice assistant to sell their subscription service so that they can make the Alexa division profitable, but if any of their claims were real, they would be demoing rather than writing science fiction in a press release.
With AI, there is still this massive trust issue. How can I trust that AI is steering me in an actual helpful way? How is Alexa+ integrated with Amazon's core model of selling stuff... lots and lots of stuff?
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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.
And yet people still drive into rivers because Google Maps tells them to.
Never underestimate the power of "computers are never wrong."
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.
Who actually wants this garbage?
Finally one of the big ones drop a conversational assistant based on modern LLMs. I'm just hoping this is what it takes for Google to follow the trend for Android Auto and they go through with their internal integration experiment, don't care if I have to pay a fee, I just want it to understand my accent and be useful consistently .
I haven't found an LLM that gives correct responses often enough to be consistently useful with typed requests, let alone spoken ones.
I fine all of the modern LLMs to be very very good, with some errors but no worse than would turn up in a google search.
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…
I think your memory is mistaken. Amazon will give up recordings when legally obligated to do so, because that’s the law. They can’t choose to ignore the law. However, Alexa and similar devices don’t actually record everything. Amazon doesn’t get a recording of everything the devices hear. They have to be triggered by the wake word (or possible a false positive). Here’s a case where the Alexa command was used as part…
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That's all moat users ever do with an Echo. Amazon thought that users would trade the benefits of comparison shopping for convenience and use the Echo to order products chosen by Amazon, but they did not. Outside of providing the time and whether, and turning lights on and off, Amazon severely limited the ability for third parties to add features, and even reduced it it further well after launch.
I could see users absolutely doing that if it was with, say, the extensively tailored product selection of Costco, where you can order a Kirkland brand item in any category and generally be satisfied with the results. But Amazon shot themselves in the foot by flooding every category with brands like XGYSZY and KWYBLPOP. No one is ever going to trust ordering off Amazon without actually seeing what they're buying. It'…
>Let’s say you need to get your oven fixed—Alexa+ will be able to navigate the web, use Thumbtack to discover the relevant service provider, authenticate, arrange the repair, and come back to tell you it’s done—there’s no need to supervise or intervene. This is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't trust an LLM to choose between two brands of dish soap for me let alone pick a contractor, schedule a repair, and make a…