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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

#391

Post by mystified5016 »

wnc3141 wrote: post #149
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.

That's been an issue with ordering consumer electronics. I don't know if the item is refurbished, returned,or endorsed by the manufacturer warranty. I basically only order through the manufacturer or best buy these days.

I once bought a "new" hard drive from Amazon. It was an enterprise datacenter drive with thousands of hours. Someone had scrubbed the SMART statistics, but did not wipe the drive. They deleted the partition table, but it was still chock full of data. Mostly encrypted, but there was plenty of cleartext logs including runtime statistics for the rack the drive was in.

I'm about 85% sure it was a decommissioned Backblaze drive based on the logs I could see. This was probably 10 years ago, though.

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

#392

Post by Terr_ »

fantasybuilder wrote: post #183
chaostheory wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind ordering only made sense when Amazon customer service was top notch. That ended when Amazon started having profitable quarters and started Day Two. Now I have to be paranoid about checking product details like if there are 3rd party sellers using FBA which potentially signals fakes. There’s no longer blind trust in Amazon for a lot of customers. I can’t just mindlessly buy stuff with the hope that Amazon custom…

I can't come up with a single item that I would blind order. At most, I could ask Alexa to add an item to a shopping list and then verify the list and place the order myself.

And at that point, there's no real value-add compared to a general todo-list application with simple voice commands.

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

#393

Post by matrix87 »

pjc50 wrote: post #244
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? It replaces all the David Graeber "bullshit jobs". As well as about 90% of the education system. It's not replacing them with something better , but it is cheaper.

> It replaces all the David Graeber "bullshit jobs".

Those jobs were already replaceable to begin with? Isn't that already implied by their name?

Also, is it possible that the recent investment in LLMs have actually produced more bullshit jobs instead of decreasing them?

> As well as about 90% of the education system.

:/ there's a lot more to the education system than just the content

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

#394

Post by teractiveodular »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #367
UberFly wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your baby is crying because it doesn't like the brand of formula you purchase. We recommend Amazon Basics!"

"We recommend you try UBQTLONR this time!"

Now with extra melamine!

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

#395

Post by crabmusket »

shermantanktop wrote: post #291
bagels wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't even make sense. Babies cry all the time for a multitude of reasons, none of which are informed by how many diapers are in the house.

Babies just need to learn to cry only when the diapers in the garage are running low. How hard could that be?

Clearly the feedback loop is too long currently. If we could instantly dispense diapers onto the baby as soon as it started crying, that would improve learning outcomes and encourage experimentation.

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

#396

Post by OrigamiPastrami »

alexa_throwaway wrote: post #348

Throwaway here. I'm the CEO of a fast-growing AI startup. Alex asked to meet with us about a year ago (when we were about 1/10th the size), and after asking us to prepare lots of materials, they indicated they wanted to buy us or invest in us. People warned us not to talk to them because they have a reputation for gathering technical detail, and then trying to copy it rather than striking a deal. Our software could h…

> Today we're valued at more than that number and Alexa's core experience hasn't changed in the past year. They haven't been able to copy us. The Alexa leadership team has some hubris IMO.

I can't really evaluate you since you want to stay anonymous, but you're not really giving any credibility here. FAANG being arrogant isn't really any different than flavor-of-the-year tech startup being arrogant. There are numerous stories of high-flying startups that went bankrupt a few years after rejecting an acquisition offer, including significantly multiplying their valuation and raising capital along the way. You're also in an infamously overvalued sector.

I wish you all the best but try not to fall prey to the same mindset you're criticizing Amazon for.

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

#397

Post by fbdab103 »

crazygringo wrote: post #319
nox101 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already have that, it's my phone. I don't need a second device to respond to "Set a timer"

I do. If my phone's in my pocket, it won't hear. If it's in my bag, it won't hear. Or it sets the timer, but then a kid grabs my phone for something and leaves it upstairs were I won't hear it. There's something to be said for a voice-activated timer in your kitchen that is always in your kitchen and never leaves your kitchen.

That the oven timer is oven adjacent seems a must.

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

#398

Post by novok »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #350
alexathrowawa9 wrote: post #114

Throwaway here but I used to work in Alexa org at Amazon and was amazed by how big the org was (thousands and thousands of people) considering it doesn't seem to be a big revenue generator I remember constantly hearing about projects other teams were working on thinking "why would anyone use that" or "how would that ever make money" Just trying to shoehorn alexa into as many domains as possible It was like empire bui…

I've interviewed many people on Alexa before. From what I gather, its just a giant switch statement, and each individual "path" takes a bunch of effort to support and there are thousands of paths for music, ordering, commands, etc. It's peak AI == if statement architecture.

IMO with my experience with siri being AI-style unreliable in many ways, like bit flips when saying turn off the lights makes the dimmer go to %100, I think it's better to do the switch statement for the dozen or so query types that probably represent %90 of traffic, like weather, music, home control, unit conversions, etc in exchange for way more reliability.

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

#399

Post by mymyairduster »

smrtinsert wrote: post #252
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…

I would not give Amazon control over my home. That's too far. I want a company that focuses on security.

[dead]

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

#400

Post by matrix87 »

superfrank wrote: post #138

Years ago, my wife did some contracting work for a team responsible for the voice assistant at one of the major tech companies. Her role required her to work with the directors and VPs and she came home one day to tell me how one of them laid out their grand vision for the product and was talking about how, not only will people use these things to buy every day items, but one day people will be making major purchases…

I think another problem is just a general lack of value. Why should the average person care about a 1% gain in convenience and adjust just to appease some C-suite delusion? It's like they all want to be Steve Jobs without offering any significant value to back it up
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