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Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

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Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#71

Post by daveguy »

zippergz wrote: post #55
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it easier just to do that stuff with your hands?

I have my home automation stuff hooked up to Alexa also, and no, it's not always easier to do it with my hands. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I am often baffled by this "I'll just use the light switch" response to home automation. It's not that you can't "just use the light switch," but there are situations where it makes life measurably better to not have to. First world problems, for sure, but they exist. Fo…

> increased my family's quality of life.

Seriously, man? I get that you want to justify the thousands you spent on home automation, but come on.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#72

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

This article is a case of over expectations. Echo IS a great clock radio and that's fine with me. The great part about it is the ability to access my music. If I want to hear x all I have to do is ask for it. 5 years ago I would never have had expected to be able to that for less than $50.00. Everything else that comes with it is just icing on the cake. We are still years away, if ever, from the Star Trek computer. And that's fine. Keep your expectations in check and you can see that it's excellent technology --with a great future.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#73

Post by eitland »

Fiahil wrote: post #38
rlpb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being "really good" may not be enough. If it's not perfect, being "really good" could actually make it worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

http://www.creawavestudio.com/interfaces_vocales/ Is it good enough for you? :) Note: I worked there in 2013, they are smart people. And yes, these are _computer generated_ messages, with human voices.

This is nice! German didn't work for me though.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#74

Post by hectormalot »

Fiahil wrote: post #44
hectormalot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually pretty neat! So how come other voices don't match this? Is it the fact that intonation in a single domain (weather) is easier to predict than if the voice needs to handle general (broad) topics of conversation?

It's not about the topic, but mostly the technique. You have to record and process a few hours of human speech in a studio (when I was there the "studio" was a closet with blankets on the wall). Most of the words are not cut in the same way as others text-to-speech engine would do, to preserve intonation, hence longer recording times and a "grammar" limited to the the span of the recorded vocabulary (see if you can c…

Thanks, insightful to know.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#75

Post by mercer »

blubb-fish wrote: post #59
slantaclaus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a multifamily technology conference in San Diego last year and during a panel with some 'experts', brought up the concern of devices like Amazon Echo recording people's conversations. The lady who responded misunderstood me and chimed in within something like: "you know, I haven't even thought of that. There are many opportunities for revenue with this technology". But that was an evil uber-landlord, not sur…

A policy won't help against the NSA. And technologically the language processing "necessarily" takes place in the cloud. For that everything you say needs to be sent through the web. Amazon will store everything they can for the purpose of later using this as a training data set.

> And technologically the language processing "necessarily" takes place in the cloud.

Is that actually true? And if so, how far are we from being able to do this on the device itself?

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#76

Post by Fnoord »

justinsaccount wrote: post #48
notyourwork wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the biggest downside of voice UI right now is a lack of authentication. Someone outside the window could yell "Alexa, open the door". I think this is the most overlooked use case that needs to be addressed. Even in a secure residence, if you leave a 2nd story window open it might be possible to get the audio to Alexa. Though I suppose these skills could add a 2-factor to the unlocking mechanism. "Alexa unlo…

Well, if it was "Alexa unlock the door." "Ok, what is the passcode." "123456" "Thanks, unlocking door." Now that I think of it, as someone that has 3 different 2f tokens.. smart watch integration would actually be useful in general... If I had a smart watch.

A smartwatch as simple as a Pebble can run such an app already. For example, I authenticate with 2FA with e.g. Google & Facebook w/my Pebble.

The problem is that I don't want to use my voice for commanding that much. It has privacy implications. First, obviously there is data being transmitted to a US corporation such as Google or Amazon. Second, there is analog audio data being transmitted. For example, that TOTP token generally stays valid for 30 seconds. In this window, an attacker could open the door right after you entered. I live in an apartment, and anything I say in the hallway can be heard by other people living on the same level as me while they are within their house (yep, terrible design).

I do admit that in the privacy of your home such analog audio data works better than say in public via your smartphone. But then again, smartphone is a can of worms with more privacy implications such as screen easily being seen by bystanders and cameras (a smartwatch has the very same issue; Google Glass wouldn't!). For the phone, Google Home is an interface, and certainly not (yet) the primary interface. For Amazon Echo, Alexa is the interface.

Bottomline, we need to think of these disadvantages (share our thoughts about them), and understand when they're too big to be a valid use case.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#77

Post by rorykoehler »

rlpb wrote: post #29
iamleppert wrote: post #20

I don't get the fascination with this tech. The computer in Star Trek at least had a personality and intonation in its voice when it responded, even though it sounded like a synthesized voice. The key here is intonation -- the infinitely varying way in which we vary the speed and pitch of our voices in response to another human being. It's very subtle and something Amaazon, Google and Siri have been unable to capture…

I think the value of these systems is when you have your hands full, or when getting out your phone or other UI is not convenient. "Alexa, turn on the lights". "Alexa, let the cat out". "Alexa, did I lock the door?" As soon as there are enough of these, it'll take off because it'll be useful. None of these things need real intelligence. Sure, intonation won't be great. But the convenience will override the imperfecti…

All solutions looking for a problem. Exactly the opposite approach of what's been drilled into us.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#78

Post by Klathmon »

tluyben2 wrote: post #67
Eridrus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entertainment is the biggest use care for these devices IMO; Music and TV. I haven't used an Echo in a while, but it had nothing for TV and wasn't that great at music at the time. Does it have good support for both now?

I always try all these things as I am a junky like that but these things seem to have such limited use cases. Looking up and playing things on chromecast, for me, is faster using my phone than speech will ever be. So is controlling things in the house and with a phone I can open the catflap without waking my wife talking to Alexa. Switching on and off things is okish (phone or even a normal lightswitch are still fast…

Where it really shines for me is playing the latest podcast on YouTube or continuing a Netflix show where I left off.

Being able to say "Watch Breaking bad on the living room TV" and have Netflix pop-up and start playing right where I left off, or being able to say "play the latest off topic podcast on the bedroom TV" and have it startup right away is really nice.

I've also got a lot of home automation stuff so that combined with telling it to turn lights on/off is fantastic.

My nightly routine is to tell it to turn the bedroom lights on, get ready for bed, tell it to play the show I'm watching, then when I'm in bed and comfy tell it to turn all lights off.

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#79

Post by Klathmon »

notyourwork wrote: post #45
snarf21 wrote: post #23

I don't get this rant. Alexa is still bleeding edge. It does some things really well. It does some things really poorly. There are lots of things it can't do. So the main complaint is that Alexa could be better, your point..? To me, right now it excels as an interface when you are busy doing something else. Ours is used most in the kitchen and living room. Timers, streaming music/audio and basic facts all work great.…

> I think the biggest downside of voice UI right now is a lack of authentication. Someone outside the window could yell "Alexa, open the door". I think this is the most overlooked use case that needs to be addressed. Even in a secure residence, if you leave a 2nd story window open it might be possible to get the audio to Alexa. Though I suppose these skills could add a 2-factor to the unlocking mechanism. "Alexa unlo…

I mean people can already bump most locks, or break a window, or in your case just climb in the window...

No house is really secure, and I'm not going to spend my time trying to secure it against non-existent threats.

That's not to say I don't want security. The threat of someone finding a loophole and being able to enumerate and unlock all smart doors is very real. But I'm not going to care if someone can come up with a scheme where they megaphone their voice to unlock the door, then somehow prevent the notification going to my phone letting me know someone is home, avoiding or destroying the few security cameras we have, and avoiding being caught by someone else during all this ruckus. Especially when they could just break a window...

Re: Alexa isn’t the future of AI–it’s a glorified radio clock, and stupid otherwise

#80

Post by sahn44 »

EnFinlay wrote: post #11
IgorPartola wrote: post #7

Alexa is a voice interface, and a pretty good one at that. I use it primarily for home automation and it works pretty well for that. There is not much intelligence behind it in that regard, but it's very good at recognizing commands, which is what is needed.

The voice recognition is good, but the interface is completely independent of Alexa. The interface is spawned from a group of people brainstorming all the different ways someone can ask to turn on the lights, and then figuring out the ways to deal with all the different inputs. I'm not sure how common the knowledge is around making an Alexa skill, but I made one as a side project so I might have some insight. You def…

Totally right. I've been building a skill and you quickly learn how un-magical Alexa is. Most of the effort is engineering in fine detail to achieve some degree of natural interaction for your users. For example, adding in state and awareness of what the user said before to influence the skill's behavior and response. It feels like I'm inventing all that from scratch rather than the alexa platform helping achieve that.

If you want to see how well I've done, enable "NextSubway" :)

https://www.amazon.com/Matt-Sahn-NextSubway/dp/B01N9MO4DT/

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