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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#301

Post by conradfr »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #256
conradfr wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are useful for customer service.

When? I’ve used various customer service chat bots and they just point me to the knowledge base. They can’t take any actions. You have to talk to a human for that, and if I just wanted info I wouldn’t have contacted support in the first place.

The vast majority of CS contacts don't require action, and are not through a chat bot.

You don't even need to automate all the steps, an IA is perfectly capable of fetching the customer data, delivery info etc and write a decent reply, then a human agent can discard it, improve it or send it as written.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#302

Post by smcin »

gortok wrote: post #174
jprete wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point, one can't even pick out a brand-name product directly from Amazon's website and be sure of getting the real thing.

I ordered automated cat feeders and had bought the “honey guaridan [sic]” which is a Chinese knockoff when I thought I was buying “HoneyGuardian” brand automated cat feeders. This is blatant behavior on the part of sellers and Amazon turns a blind-eye to it. I didn’t learn my lesson either. I ordered seat covers, and what came was a misspelled Chinese knockoff brand instead of the name brand I thought I was ordering.…

"typosquatting"

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#303

Post by advisedwang »

ysacfanboi wrote: post #275

Please realize, for this to be true, there must be another incentive. I.e., Alexa devices are government-subsidized spyware. What are the advantages for Amazon? - Mic-popping, Camera-popping, mobile phone backdoor access, network sniffing, device activity monitoring across all wifi/bluetooth connected networks. - Sidewalk (remember this? Amazon "borrows" your wifi, for free...) Unplug Alexa devices. Remove the Alexa…

I'm not saying that smart home stuff isn't amazing for the surveillance state... but I am quite happy to believe a company just made a strategy mistake, no behind-the-scenes government deals needed. We've seen companies build expensive products without monetization plans, especially when they are worried about getting cut-out by a compentitor many times.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#304

Post by advisedwang »

fantasybuilder wrote: post #190
mensetmanusman wrote: post #184

They should sell them all to openAI to become the voice interface of GPTx.

Amazon is surely working on an LLM competitor integrated into their ecosystem. Even using Llama 3.1 would suffice.

The article says as much:

> A group was assembled ... to create a way to charge customers a fee for Alexa. Code-named “Banyan,” like the tree, the group has been working to create a product called “Remarkable Alexa,” that would be built on an entirely new technology stack and have more capabilities ... It will also incorporate generative artificial intelligence more than the current Echo experience. Bezos hinted at a new version of Alexa in a podcast interview in December. “Alexa is about to get a lot smarter,” he told the host.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#305

Post by Rapzid »

paxys wrote: post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

99% of my Alexa usage is:

Kitchen timer

What's the weather

Shipping and weather alerts

So yeah, not sure where the money will come from. I get angry any time Alexa recommends anything.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#306

Post by jhgvhi »

skellera wrote: post #70
arder wrote: post #44

That "Downstream impact" metric sounds like a big yikes. Massive incentives to game that metric and before you know it you've got 10 projects all claiming credit for some theoretical downstream impact all of which are actually just canabalizing existing revenue. Like, Amazon is doing $5Bn of revenue selling tide pods, the Alexa team make some claim about people's likeliness to order tide pods via the Alexa and before…

Downstream impact is gamed internally at Amazon. People crucified Sears for making teams compete internally but that’s literally what’s happening at Amazon at a larger scale. Teams and orgs regularly push back against helping each other. Will not waste resources to help others. I don’t believe Amazon has a good outlook over 5 years unless they get lucky with random bets. They no longer innovate, they just copy and tr…

[dead]

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#307

Post by textlapse »

nox101 wrote: post #255
textlapse wrote: post #225

If Amazon (and Google and Apple) couldn’t figure out how to monetize a voice/chat ‘app’ after a decade of plowing money into it, how does the whole LLM market come to fruition? Genuinely curious as I see a similar trend: there is definite consumer interest, but just like ‘kitchen timers on Alexa’ what if the LLMs main use case is simply to generate funny memes and the most basic RAG? How does this manifest into a tri…

> how does the whole LLM market come to fruition? I'm paying for chatGPT and use it quite often. I find it very useful. I don't pay for chat because there have been free options since the 80s. I don't pay for voice(chat) because there have free options for ~10yrs?

Interesting. How much would one have to pay you to stop using it?

Wondering what the use cases are (replace Google? Stack Overflow? etc).

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#308

Post by Rapzid »

noveltyaccount wrote: post #110
bluSCALE4 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...

To build on the Costco analogy: for any given product category they typically only have three specific options: good, better, best. I could tell Costco bot that I need AA batteries and it would ask me if I prefer Duracell, Kirkland brand, or cheapest. I trust that either of them will be plenty good, so I would say cheapest. Amazon has a vastly different experience with thousands of indistinguishable Chinese knockoffs…

Panasonic makes the best batteries though.

But to your point, Amazon actually bait-and-switched their own batteries. They had basics batteries that were confirmed rebranded Panasonic eneloop, then changed them out to Chinese batteries while keeping the product page and reviews.

Amazon did that. So good luck getting them to crack down on reputation fraud.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#309

Post by juxtaposicion »

booi wrote: post #220
crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

We're building that spreadsheet as a product. I'd love to show you. I'd message you a private link to a prototype but you have no contact info on your profile. If you are interested, can you email or DM me using my profile info?

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#310

Post by crazygringo »

snapcaster wrote: post #189
emj wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one need unit conversion while cooking? Sometimes I need how many grams is 1 dl of flour/oats (60g/35g) but I memorized that the second time, maybe if you are doing larger portions.

You answered your own question in the comment? If you require two instances to memorize it that means you needed unit conversion twice in cooking

Exactly. And given that there are probably 50 different common conversions you'll encounter in cooking, both between imperial units and between imperial and metric, not to mention common weight-vs-volume conversions of things like flour, good luck in not only memorizing them all but getting them exactly perfectly right every single time.

You mess up a single conversion and your finished baked goods go straight in the trash.

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