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Amazon Echo

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Re: Amazon Echo

#631

Post by jimmcslim »

jwallaceparker wrote: post #343

Watch the promo video again and pretend it's the first few minutes of a horror movie. A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it. It's Alexa. It's "for everyone," says Father. The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her? Father rushes in from the backyard, "Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?" Alexa an…

Awesome. This comment reminds me of the 80's movie Runaway (directed by Michael Crichton).

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/?ref_=nv_sr_4

Re: Amazon Echo

#632

Post by unclebucknasty »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #347
bryanlarsen wrote: post #302

Why I might buy an Echo: - it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically free as long as the audio quality is good. - it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would…

> - it can answer questions at the dinner table... that would be my biggest use for it, well that and as a speaker I guess. I really hope that I can swap out "Alexa" for the word "Computer" so I could feel like I'm one step closer to Star Trek

I sincerely wonder about the effect of offloading so much of our "brainwork" to computers. No one remembers phone numbers or tries to navigate without GPS, and increasingly we depend on accesss to information so there's less practice with storage and recall.

What brain/neuron plasticity tells us is that our brains literally reallocate unused neurons for other tasks. So, on the one hand, a positive theory might have it that offloading more mundane tasks would free our brains for higher order thinking and creativity, etc.

But, it seems that we are instead finding more ways to distract ourselves with less meaningful "leisure" activity.

I don't know that we will literally start getting dumber, but it's hard to know whether we are headed in a good direction as the future gets closer to the now.

Re: Amazon Echo

#633

Post by ipavl »

mrb wrote: post #417
anigbrowl wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the main innovation here is the quality of the microphone array. As a professional sound recordist, the #1 challenge of recording from a fixed point is that the ambient noise and reflections within the room rapidly swamp the original signal when you record from a point source. You can hear someone talk from the far side of a room in person very easily, because your brain constantly compensates for…

You make it sound like nobody has a "leg up" semantic voice commands. But we do and it is perfectly usable, at least on Android devices where you can ask these questions to Google Now: Q: How tall is the Empire State Building? Q: When was it built? Q: Show me Italian restaurants nearby. ... (I am not familiar with how Siri or Cortana handle similar queries.)

> (I am not familiar with how Siri or Cortana handle similar queries.)

Cortana can handle the first and the last one, and for certain queries she can "continue the conversation". For example, the following is possible:

Q: Show me Italian restaurants nearby. (list of 10)

Q: Which take reservations? (filtered list)

Q: Which ones have at least three stars? (filtered again)

Q: (with one result left) Is it open tomorrow?

Q: Call them.

Re: Amazon Echo

#635

Post by robert_tweed »

chatmasta wrote: post #87

This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to ke…

In yet another layer of brilliance in the incredibly creepy promo movie, the family name their Echo "Alexa", which just happens to be the name of an Amazon-owned tracking company and purveyor of toolbars.

Re: Amazon Echo

#636

Post by mforbes »

lsaferite wrote: post #337
anigbrowl wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the main innovation here is the quality of the microphone array. As a professional sound recordist, the #1 challenge of recording from a fixed point is that the ambient noise and reflections within the room rapidly swamp the original signal when you record from a point source. You can hear someone talk from the far side of a room in person very easily, because your brain constantly compensates for…

I wonder if they plan to capture the unknown commands and run them past human ears to help it learn.

I think Google's voice search already does this (feeding into audio captchas), but obviously there is a smaller crowd from which to source free audio recognition assuming that people who are both sighted and hearing typically prefer visual captchas due to environmental constraints.

Re: Amazon Echo

#637

Post by anigbrowl »

randyrand wrote: post #611
anigbrowl wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. Some percentage of people will be unjustly exploited, but probably not enough to offset the economic benefits that technology like this brings to its users. I think your focus on 'the people vs the government' is misplaced, because government is just a sort of social technology which can be used and abused like any other technology depending…

Privacy is different than culpability. Just because I can legally have sex with my wife doesn't mean I want the government to have a recording of it. Some things are meant to stay private.

Then you shouldn't buy this thing, or if you do be very careful about how you use it - including distinguishing between what the government has a recording of and what Amazon has a recording of (I rather doubt you are cool with your sex life providing entertainment for Amazon employees either, right)?

The point I'm making, though, is not what level of privacy you should be happy with (a decision only you can make), but how people in the aggregate make decisions about using technology that could have privacy implications - and my theory is that most people don't care.

Re: Amazon Echo

#639

Post by lowglow »

lowglow wrote: post #124
isu89 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is possibly becoming a generation gap issue; throw enough of these against the wall and people will just stop caring until they can quantize a real world impact

You say that, but I think young people are concerned with privacy: see snapchat, etc

To clarify on this statement: the perception of privacy is important to some people, regardless of if the implementation is secure and truly private. So the assertion that people are concerned with it still remains true.
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