"Alexa, order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow". Could that work? Would I trust that it had worked, if Alexa just said "ok" without me running off to a computer to check the order details and defeating the whole object? More likely it would turn into an exhausting game of twenty questions with the device narrowing my selection iteratively.
(I actually tried that sentence just now. Alexa remained in a stunned silence.)
Entering into a subscription with no knowledge of that, let alone any up-front information about price or other terms, is very scummy behavior. The after-the-fact email attempts to claw back a moral high ground, but it's not difficult to see it for what it is. This combines the convenience of a smart speaker with the rapacity of a cold caller who already has your credit card number. It's thinly disguised fraud, and pernicious.
I doubt anyone would be happy with "Alexa, what's the weather?" entering them into an unannounced dollar-a-day contract with The Weather Company, or if asking about soccer scores got them automatically hooked up with a $7.99 Sportsball Channel add-on to their cable bill.
But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like when driving--not so much. For example, with podcasts, I find I really need to pre-populate a playlist and by and large I find trying to totally control my phone by voice is very hit and miss.
Voice assistants have gotten marginally better over the years. But I really wouldn't miss them much if they all went away tomorrow. The vision was/is that they could match at least a marginally competent personal assistant over the phone. And they're nowhere even near the ballpark.
Only if the album you want is titled in English (or some recognised language and with actual words).
I listen to a lot of music that have unpronounceable song and album titles. Hell, even artists, how could I ever tell a voice assistant to play "STRGTHS by SHXCXCHCXSH"? An extreme example but not too far from some of the top 10 recently played stuff on my Spotify: "sch.mefd 2" by Autechre, "JNSN CODE GL16 / spl47" an album/EP by the same Autechre, "Hygh 2k12" by SCNTST.
It's a technology on that uncanny valley of working and simplifying some use-cases, and frustrating enough for some edge cases that you end up not trusting it, in my case making me avoid it.
Even for some basic alarms/timers it can be frustrating when it misinterprets your accent and sets timers for 50 minutes instead of 15. The pain of having to fix the failure and then re-add a timer/alarm is enough to push me away.
And she definitely does the 50/15 thing to me, although generally the other way around. Everything from 30/13 to 90/19 is vulnerable to being misunderstood. My wife has a lot more trouble with it--she learned her first word of English at 43 and so she still has a fair accent.
I’ve tried Alexa, Google, and Siri multiple times over the years while driving and it’s just embarrassing how over hyped all of them are and yet simple questions which a human could potentially easily answer in seconds doing a search (if not driving of course), but none of them even get close.
- How far away is that storm?
- How many miles to the state line?
- What timezone is Omaha in?
- Where’s the closest gas station that has diesel?
- What’s the top rated BBQ place in town?
The others really ought to be voice searchable, but the diesel one would need to be timely in my area, where a couple of places have not had diesel available for several days.
A notable example was when I tried using it to make a call. I told it to call my wife, by name, and it couldn't understand her name at all. So I said "call my wife" and it asked who my wife is. I couldn't answer with voice, because it still didn't understand her name. But it did give me a popup to select her from my address book. So I did and the popup went away... No call. So I tell it "call my wife" and it replies "who is your wife?".
That's because you interact with it as though it is a person, so your expectation levels are corresponding to the mode of communication used.
Well, that was sort of the pitch and it's certainly implied by "virtual/voice assistant." Certainly Amazon wasn't pitching Alexa as a voice-operated kitchen timer. To be honest, I'm probably better with them now because I know they mostly don't work but can be used for some simple tasks for which I know an incantation that mostly gives me the result I want.
That's 2 continuous axes and one discrete option. What if the cheapest one is the worst reviewed? What if the most expensive one is the best reviewed? What if the middle price is only slightly above the worst review? What if there's a clearly cheapest, best option that is only available in 2 days?
How do you "trust" an answer to this? What does a single choice answer even mean?
I'm not sure I'd trust a shopkeeper to make this decision for me, as they could easily rationalise not telling me about the cheap and great option if it's not in stock, or falling more on the quality than the price because they make more margin. And Amazon is in this position on this one.
I can see a market for "Alexa, order me cheap dogfood for tomorrow", but pretty much anything more complex than that I just don't think people would give the decision to a biased third party to make for them, let alone a non-human one.
Also I would imagine that as often as not there would be an opportunity for human judgement. Maybe there's a _much_ cheaper one at 3.98 stars, or the 4+ star and next day delivery options are 3x more expensive than the next available option. In both of these cases a human with the right intentions would likely stop and do something different.
The elderly woman stated she didn’t own a computer, or know how to use one.
Yes, it’s an edge case.
We need an ADA that has teeth in the digital age. This is like a brick and mortar store building a ramp into their store for the convenience of people who can walk, and making it an inch too narrow for a wheelchair.
Real corporate social responsibility would be to tackle some of this low hanging fruit in their own area of expertise. But instead, everyone just promises to buy some carbon credits by 2030.
Not really: that person could have easily assumed that she "did not need to own a computer, nor know how to use one", as she may have easily assumed that no random "rambling" uttered into a computerized microphone could ever trigger expenses. It's a justifiable expectation.
There are plenty of ways to make the interface very usable and reliable. Fixating on the voice UI is absolutely the wrong way to see it. The real problem is that your "assistant" doesn't actually work for you.
It's a recommendation engine at that point, so what I assume it will do is buy you the products that Amazon is pushing or that have paid to be recommended. Does Alexa handle the website's small print to the effect of "there may be other vendors selling this product for a lower price than the vendor we're recommending."
This is Amazon we’re talking about. The cheapest best reviewed dog food probably has 4K excellent reviews saying it’s the best cheap coat hangar anyone has ever seen.
Her sister caught the corresponding email just before the paid subscription would have started. The documentation says developers must mark skills targeted at kids and those aren't eligible to have this flow enabled.
[1] https://developer.amazon.com/es-MX/docs/alexa/paid-skills/ov...
edit to add -- that was all presented without comment. But having a device that can start up a recurring subscription if anyone says "yes" to one prompt exist at all, and having the toggle for the feature on by default and in options is in the "no thanks" column for me.
Some of the most profitable early apps on the apps stores were Bible apps. People love their religions and will happily spend money on following them.
iirc, it all started with DarkSky, which was very reasonable, something like £1 a year, which made subscriptions for more "basic" apps acceptable, and from there its just got worse.
That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.
You have an “insane” QOL then if having a manual kitchen timer or a simple conversion chart on the wall would be a major difference.
At least with the manual kitchen timer, you can always know how much time is left just by looking. Set a ten minute timer on an Alexa, you have to threaten it with violence to keep the timer visible for more than 30 seconds of it, and that doesn’t always work either. I went so far as to literally turn off every single thing I could from the display and yet it’ll prefer showing a content less main screen over just keeping the timer displayed.
And my Alexa has no display, so it’s just "Alexa, timer [Name] status"
Oh, and a conversion chat is also somewhat horrible, because this one country uses volumetric measurements where the form a product is in changes how much X of that unit means.
Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room).
This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.
It affects QOL when you get used to it along with a wide range of other features which are similarly tiny by themselves (turning the TV on/off; changing volume; searching for something on my FireTV instead of using the virtual keyboard; turning lights on/off; using it as an alarm clock; telling my son in his room upstairs that dinner is ready without yelling; having a single command to turn of the lights and turn on a playlist to fall asleep to) but that combined adds up to a whole lot reduced friction.
What you seem to be needing takes an old tablet and a slice of an evening of coding...
The main reason why I'll probably never buy an Alexa is because it sucks at the specific things I need it to do, but I concede that there's something liberating about just yelling at the computer and getting a reply. If I'm about to leave and I don't know which jacket to pick, being able to yell "Alexa, what's the weather like?" keeps me from switching contexts and losing my train of thought. It may not sound like much, but once you combine a bunch of small tasks it adds up.
I don't even like to speak around them because I assume they are archiving every voice sample forever.
I find them aggravating because of my disability.
An acquaintance has made every light in their home integrated into Google's services. I have a mild speech impediment and Google seems incapable of recognising my speech as speech. "Hey Google. HEY GOOGLE. Hey Gooooogle! Turn off the lights." I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. "Hey Goooooooogle! Turn. Off. The. Lights.". I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.
And of course, when I gave in and used the switch, my host immediately came upstairs and chastised me for causing device errors to pop up in the network. Use voice!
Not terribly impressed, to say the least. And don't get me started on the bank's voice recognition system on the phone.
> can inadvertently enter into premium subscriptions simply by saying yes
So this individual (sister to a journalist at the Guardian, which facilitates information spreading and highlights the possibility of under the radar cases) gives somebody else a voice controlled machine linked to a credit card. What could possibly.
Seriously though, how long before we see AI-powered therapists? Or do they exist already?
https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/the-original-elizahttps://github.com/PixelsCommander/PrayerWheel
http://pixelscommander.com/interactive-revolution/can-comput...
The highlight of the article there.