The women behind Amazon Alexa (opens in new tab)

(marieclaire.com)

37 pointscoolswan8y ago19 comments

19 comments

15 comments · 4 top-level

didibus8y ago· 8 in thread

As an aside, I don't know what to think of the fact that all AI assistant are made to appear female.

Likely a design choice that stems from how humans react to the voices of each gender. Female voices are generally better for voice communications which convey details, information, and other non-commands. Male voices are generally used to communicate from a sense of authority.

Take for instance the NYC subway system. The female voice announces the stop the train has just arrived at, while the male voice instructs customers to 'stand clear of the closing doors' and to 'be aware of pickpockets, take care to ensure the safety of your personal property.'

This is quite intentional. We simply react better when certain types of voices are used to convey certain things.

Source: former audiobook, VO, and podcast casting director.

DanBC8y ago

"Bitching Betty" / 'Nagging Nora" show that command voices in safety critical situations can often be female voices.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty

1 more reply

intopieces8y ago

Siri, at least, gives the option for a male voice. And BWM diid apparently recall their GPS voice system in the 90s because drivers did not want to take direction from a woman:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27244/did-bmw-r....

virmundi8y ago

They are less intimidating and on the whole easier to listen to.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-compute...

yathern8y ago

I think it's partially as a result of early science fiction movies having male-voiced robot antagonists. Mostly HAL.

y2bd8y ago

I imagine the skeuomorphism being invoked is that secretaries are stereotypically women.

mavhc8y ago

Siri in UK defaults to a male voice

savanaly8y ago

I'm sorry, but if I hear a male AI voice, I'm thinkin HAL, and that's just how it is.

throwaway_amzn8y ago· 2 in thread

This article overstates Toni's role. Though she does own a good portion of the Alexa ecosystem, there were/are several other directors/VPs that ran/run different portions of the system.

I am not saying that Toni's contributions are negligible, rather that her and her team are part of a bigger organization that built and improves Alexa.

Source: work there

ErikVandeWater8y ago

Yeah the intent of the article is obvious based on the title.

throwaway_amzn8y ago

I clicked through hoping to see a piece on the female engineers who work on Alexa, but it was an executive profile. You are right that executive profiles generally overstate the contributions of their subject.

MayeulC8y ago· 1 in thread

I would love to use such a device, and explore the possibilities.

However, it concerns me that every major player out there tries to create a locked playing field with their devices ("amazon home" vs "google home").

I really don't like the idea of buying home automation devices that are meant for one specific solution. Moreover, I also fear that I could become dependent on a corporate-owned device/service, with no direct alternatives (or with convoluted migration paths).

And that's not even mentioning the privacy issues, or (ok, I touched that a bit) the freedom to hack a bit the API (what if I would like to add a completely custom command, change the detection keyword, etc...)

There are some open solutions such as Mycroft, but I must confess I haven't looked much at it. I won't consider this technology mature or ready for use until those concerns are addressed, which could take some time: it also seems to me that those "personal assistants" are more suited to a central architecture (which raises the question: did this architecture influence their design, or is it the only possible solution for a reliable "personal assistant"?).

manyxcxi8y ago

With regards to locking in to home automation, Alexa has many integrations with the major home automation brands and hardware. For instance, my house is nearly all Z-Wave and I use a Wink Hub to tie them together. It took possibly 30 seconds to integrate Wink to Alexa and now I can control my entire house through voice commands such as "turn downstairs off" or "turn master bedroom on".

Even though I have iPhone and many HomeKit enabled devices, the fact that Wink and Alexa support so many integrations keeps me from even attempting to buy into a very locked in ecosystem like Apple or Google are attempting.

Finally, in the absence of a pre-existing integration, you can always write your own, which can't really be said for any of the other major players that aren't completely roll your own.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the flexibility the Alexa platform has shown, and it's becoming increasingly part of our home workflow because of how well it plays with other things.

kmbabson8y ago

According to independent reviews, Alexa came in dead-last when compared to Siri and Google Home.

See comparison here: http://bgr.com/2017/05/18/google-home-vs-amazon-alexa-vs-sir...

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