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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

#851

Post by salad-tycoon »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #732
rkachowski wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd that you have to become a being of continuous price comparison in order to be considered conscious. This is predatory behaviour loaded with decades of psychological research around manipulation strategies to increase purchases (e.g. price anchoring, physical positioning on shelves, store layout). These things only work because of innate human biases and cognitive defects. The idea that anyone less than a…

PS: Even the conscious consumers loose, as they spend a ton of time at minimum wage scrolling prices for goods and services. Basically, yes, you get pay less, but for that you have to work 24/7 in the mine-defusing sweatshop.

Feels like winning to me. Feeds into my hunter-gatherer complex and every cent I keep from them gives me great satisfaction. Though, you are right, it does get old but then my defiant and vengeful nature kicks me right back into.

I know it doesn’t matter to them, it matters to me and it’s a win and winners keep winning, right?

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

#852

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

snapcaster wrote: post #194
baq wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the precious little Alexa can do reliably announcing that dinner is ready without having to yell is quite useful.

Do you value your family's privacy at all?

[flagged]

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

#853

Post by maccard »

jjk166 wrote: post #749
maccard wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to order a bunch of things - toilet paper, kitchen paper, toothpaste, mayonnaise, sriracha, foil, dishwasher and laundry tabs. Anything that isn’t a weekly purchase that I find myself out of when I want to use it. The problem isn’t that I don’t want to blind order it, it’s that I don’t trust blind ordering it from Amazon.

With the exception of foodstuffs, where I don't want to have to worry about perishability and storage, I've got most of these on scheduled deliveries - toilet paper every 4 weeks, laundry tabs every 6 months, etc. Once you figure out the appropriate rate and with a little bit of buffer stock to account for variability, you never run out of anything.

I don’t want toilet paper every 4 weeks, I want it when I have 2 rolls left. If we’re away, that might be 6 weeks. If we have family visiting it might be 3 weeks. If I buy toilet roll in the shop, my subscript still comes unless I cancel it.

To be clear, these are minor complaints, but they are the things that asking Alexa to order should solve

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

#854

Post by maximus-decimus »

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.

90% of our education system is really just watching over the kids/teenagers so they don't cause trouble while parents are at work. I don't see AI doing that.

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

#855

Post by jonhohle »

senderista wrote: post #543
jonhohle wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Amazon when Fresh was rolling out in Seattle. A coworker thought he was ordering 10 bananas but when his order arrived he received 10 bunches of bananas. Generously, he brought them in to share along with the story. I’m sure they made a lot of banana bread the following week.

Was that the origin of the banana stand?

I don’t think it was related. This incident would predate those by 4-5 years.

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

#856

Post by InDubioProRubio »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #851
InDubioProRubio wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS: Even the conscious consumers loose, as they spend a ton of time at minimum wage scrolling prices for goods and services. Basically, yes, you get pay less, but for that you have to work 24/7 in the mine-defusing sweatshop.

Feels like winning to me. Feeds into my hunter-gatherer complex and every cent I keep from them gives me great satisfaction. Though, you are right, it does get old but then my defiant and vengeful nature kicks me right back into. I know it doesn’t matter to them, it matters to me and it’s a win and winners keep winning, right?

Train an AI on it? Resell an market conscious agent and beat the opponent with artificial consumer endurance? Defect in all games played?

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

#857

Post by rlupi »

Bluestein wrote: post #686
mlsu wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store or online. I try to do the calculation nonetheless. But every time I just need to buy some ordinary staple, I’m up against the Relentless Spirit of Pure Deception, who attempts an ever evolving and always brand new form of trickery, at every engagement. Sometimes, I simply make the $1.00 donation to P&G or whoever just to a…

We will all end up having to walk around with an AI shopping assistant that can do all these pricing calculations and comparisons for us.- (Other than biases, them AI's being "mindless" might be an advantage here ...) PS. Until we go so so multimodal that they start to be influenced by packaging size, bright colors, rounding, and big breasts.- PSS. Heh. Perhaps the ultimate Turing test is when them AI's start to be i…

If a company makes something like Meta's ray-ban smart glasses but with the one function of being an AI shopping assistant (preferably offline), it would instantly make the case for why AI is good for the world. I think it could quickly become an unicorn startup, if it can deliver.

The company would have to make a compelling case of not selling itself to brands, and I am not sure such a company exists. Maybe we need an open source project, but it will be constant battle as with ad blockers.

The base features we need are: 1) price comparison: scan all unit prices of products on the shelves, compare and covert, then use AR to superimpose the comparison charts/prices.

2) filter by feature: e.g. food restrictions (allergy, halal, etc.), flavors, etc.

3) ad block: for the real world. Block misleading prices (3 for the price of 2, etc.), to avoid being primed with biased triggers in our choices.

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

#858

Post by Bluestein »

rlupi wrote: post #857
Bluestein wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will all end up having to walk around with an AI shopping assistant that can do all these pricing calculations and comparisons for us.- (Other than biases, them AI's being "mindless" might be an advantage here ...) PS. Until we go so so multimodal that they start to be influenced by packaging size, bright colors, rounding, and big breasts.- PSS. Heh. Perhaps the ultimate Turing test is when them AI's start to be i…

If a company makes something like Meta's ray-ban smart glasses but with the one function of being an AI shopping assistant (preferably offline), it would instantly make the case for why AI is good for the world. I think it could quickly become an unicorn startup, if it can deliver. The company would have to make a compelling case of not selling itself to brands, and I am not sure such a company exists. Maybe we need…

What you describe would be a game changer ...

An AR, AI assistant with marketing and advertising IRL-blocking.-

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

#859

Post by gandalfian »

crazygringo wrote: post #210
swatcoder wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision. This is compounded by the multi-headed monster that large orgs like theirs have no choice but to become. If customers could trust that every day essentials had a relatively stable price and availability pattern like they trust from their local grocery store (…

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…

Yes there should be a simple test such as "show me the cheapest three meter hdmi cable including shipping". Both ebay and amazon fail it spectacularly. Perhaps they don't want a race to the bottom?

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

#860

Post by rudasn »

emj wrote: post #165
sethhochberg wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like my Apple Watch for other reasons, but do have to admit that raising it to my face to set a timer or do a quick unit conversion while cooking is by far the most common "active" way I use it. I also use voice control a lot for music when I'm wearing gloves while working with greasy bicycle parts or when gardening. An entire product segment for when your hands are dirty...

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.

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