You know what I really want?
Rosie, from the Jetsons.
I want a physical robot to do domestic tasks. All the things that Alexia+ automates are things that don't take much time, nor are things I want to hand over to AI.
Alexa+
211–220 of 355 posts
Re: Alexa+
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood how people find setting a timer on their phone so excruciatingly difficult that they need to buy a $100+ device they can speak to to do it for them. Or perhaps it's another case of shiny object syndrome.
I don't have my phone on me at all times. More, it is often the case that I will set the timer for whatever I just put in the oven and let the kids know to take it out when the timer goes off while I go take care of something in the yard/other. That is, the timer is often specific to the room I set the timer in. Not to me.
Is not having your phone on you at all times worth spending money on a stupid speaker device? And you need one in every room you spend time in?
Like, the solution is to put your phone in your pocket. I don't get it. Unless you are walking around naked most of the time, the solution is a device you already own.
That's something I like a lot about Apple's smart home setup having the option of having the Apple TV as the hub. I don't want or need a smart voice command speaker considering I already own the hardware capable of such things. I have no use for a low quality shitty speaker device that sits there and does nothing useful besides take voice commands.
Re: Alexa+
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has already done this. Destroyed its existing assistant product -- removed key functionality, de-staffed the team, moved it all under Gemini. I'm in a few Polestar car user groups, and people are pissed that their Android based head units can no longer do basic integration via assistant stuff that the car was initially sold to them able to do. In some cases they are blaming Polestar, in some cases connecting t…
I bet the people involved in the decision to bork it up don't even use the product. Management by OKRs. The numbers look good, ship it!
Customer satisfaction is not a number Google counts
Re: Alexa+
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a few dozen use cases based on my own use of smart home devices: - Hands are full or dirty while cooking. Voice activation is more convenient. True for not just timers, but every other aspect - music playing, controlling home devices like lights, watching something on YouTube, etc. - The above also applies to any case where my hands can't readily access my phone, such as wanting to listen/change music when sho…
Smart speakers just don't solve a problem. Period. - Don't need to control home devices or watch shit while you're cooking. If I really want to queue up a video I just do that before I start cooking. - Don't need music while showering, who cares, showering takes 5 minutes - Again just like "oh it's for music" - Yes I like controlling smart lights but I can just hold the power button on my phone and tell it what to do…
We build the most sophisticated AI in the world to open Spotify app instead of pressing Play on a phone
Re: Alexa+
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what’s happening to us.
Same, announcements are kind of flaky. My usual command is "Alexa, announce " - half the time she asks what I want to announce, 20% of the time she announces "announce", 30% of the time it works as expected. If i'm already on my phone sometimes I'll just type the announcement in the Alexa app instead.
Same exact thing, now we know that we have to say the full announcement the second time we trigger Alexa.
Re: Alexa+
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 walkin…
> it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen ! How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it?
> How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it?
These questions apply to any review or recommendation, from anyone, not just LLMs. How did anyone find out about the product at all? Did they do rigorous testing before they made a recommendation? Is there shared understanding between the recommender and recommendee about desired level of quality or what the user intents that need to be satisfied are? Are they even speaking the same language? Is their concept of "red" the same as ours?
At some point, you have to make a decision and buy with imperfect information, and treat it as an experiment. If it's not right for you, then return it for a full refund from Amazon. This is unfortunate. It costs money, time, and adds lots of friction to the whole process.
Maybe advertisers or manufacturers should post quality assurance bonds for their products, in addition to money-back guarantees or easy returns. Upon receiving a lemon or dumb product, you would return the item and activate the arbitration/bond clause and possibly get money out of the posted quality assurance bond.
Re: Alexa+
#217>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…
I can already see Alexa+ acting like this when someone says they are hungry:
Re: Alexa+
#218I'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.
Curious as to what LLMs you are using to allow successful queries like this and what are you using them for? If you don't mind sharing. My understanding was that these would result in some fairly random, maybe true maybe not, results. Is there a company with a RAG that produces reliable results? If so, I would like to check it out.
The majority is coding in an IDE with Claude. It outputs results that I can validate immediately. There are lots of wrong answers to be tossed out but it's still a large acceleration over just docs and stackoverflow.
I can understand the skepticism if you use it in a context where you can't independently test the answers, so you can't filter out the trash. But it's a big level up when you can.
Re: Alexa+
#219I find it interesting that the big companies are so sure that LLMs are somehow going to make a larger market for smart speakers than they currently have. To the contrary, I expect they are going to damage the market they have for people that just want easy kitchen timers and radio like functionality. This feels like the VR plays some of the big companies have made. I'm willing to bet that the market for people that w…
I never understood how people find setting a timer on their phone so excruciatingly difficult that they need to buy a $100+ device they can speak to to do it for them. Or perhaps it's another case of shiny object syndrome.
This is so disingenuous. Echos are nowhere near $100 at the baseline, no one is buying it JUST for the timer, and no one finds setting a phone "excruciatingly difficult". Calm down.
Re: Alexa+
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smart speakers just don't solve a problem. Period. - Don't need to control home devices or watch shit while you're cooking. If I really want to queue up a video I just do that before I start cooking. - Don't need music while showering, who cares, showering takes 5 minutes - Again just like "oh it's for music" - Yes I like controlling smart lights but I can just hold the power button on my phone and tell it what to do…
We build the most sophisticated AI in the world to open Spotify app instead of pressing Play on a phone
Exactly. People are acting like putting some music on is so damn hard, and that it's critical that we spend 100% of our time listening to it.
OMG if I can't control my music in the shower I'll literally melt.