Amazon vs. Echo: Towards a Smarter, Smarter Alexa for Home Automation, Kitchen Timers, and Smart Lights
The challenge appears to lie in integrating large language models with the command and control method of today’s voice assistants. We can’t have a smarter Alexa than we already have. The pre-trained artificial intelligence models that are used to answer complicated questions will more likely fail at setting a kitchen timer or controlling smart lights, according to sources.
As a sign of the company realigning, Amazon has stopped allowing people to access the new voice activated assistant. You used to be able to request access by saying, “Alexa, let’s chat” to an Echo device. Now, the assistant responds with, “Let’s Chat is no longer available. You have the option of asking me questions, or playing music, turning on a connected light, and more.
The Power of Amazon to Make Sense Of Your Voice (I’m sorry, Im afraid I wouldn’t have the power of a voice assistant)
My son should not forget about his science project, set the alarm when he leaves. The back door of the plumbing business must be unlocked after 4PM and then locked again at 5PM. If Im running late, adjust the time in the oven to 3700 degrees.
Unlike Google and Apple — which have access to data about you through your smartphone, calendar, email, or internet searches — Amazon has largely been locked out of your personal life beyond what you buy on its store or select data you give it access to. People are not willing to trust it because of its privacy mistakes.
It would be a big jump forward. generativeai isn’t a silver bullet, but it could make voice assistants smarter. LLMs solve the basic “make sense of language” problem, but they don’t — yet — have the ability to act on that language, not to mention the concerns about a powerful AI hallucinating in your home.
Hearing “‘Lamp’ isn’t responding. After issuing a command, please check its network connection and power supply. It wasn’t part of the promise to spend hours configuring your smart home. This is what a computer should do for you.
Amazon, Yoga, and the Internet: Why Playing Games is Important to Online Voice Voice Game Development in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In retrospect, Amazon’s idea was pretty much exactly right. The idea of an interactive interface for the internet has been brought to the attention of some companies like OpenAI, who are trying to build their own third-party ecosystems around it. But for all its prescience on the AI revolution, Amazon never figured out how to make skills work. It never solved fundamental problems for developers, didn’t cracked the user interface, and never had a way to show people all the things their device could do.
Amazon certainly tried its best to make skills happen. The company tried to make skill development easy with new tools that they gave away, payment in credits on top of the cash they already had, and a lot of other things. And on some level, all that effort paid off: Amazon says there are more than 160,000 skills available for the platform. That pales next to the millions of app store apps on smartphones, but it’s still a big number.
The system is better if you know how to play it. You can say something like “Alexa, open Nature Sounds” or “Alexa, enable Jeopardy”, and the skill will open with that name. But if you don’t remember that the skill is called “Easy Yoga,” asking Alexa to start a yoga workout won’t get you anywhere.
Already, Child says that a majority of Volley’s players are on a device with a screen. He says that they are very long on smart TVs. Every smart TV has a microphone in the remote. I really think casual voice games … might make a lot of sense, and I think could be even more immersive.”
“I think one of the underrated reasons that the iOS and Android app stores are so successful is because Facebook ads are so good,” he says. The pipeline from a hyper-targeted ad to an app install has been ruthlessly perfected over the years, and there’s just nothing like that for voice assistants. Child says that the closest equivalent is probably people asking their devices what they can do. — but there’s just no competing with in-feed ads and hours of social scrolling. You have to do broader marketing and build broad games if you do not have that hyper-targeted marketing. The games are huge and appeal to everyone.
These are not unique challenges by the way. Mobile app stores have similar huge discovery problems, issues with monetization, sketchy subscription systems, and more. It’s just that with Alexa, the solution seemed so enticing: you shouldn’t, and wouldn’t, even need an app store. It’s up to you, you should be able to ask what you want, and if you like, it’s up toAlexa to do it for you.
Jassy installed a new head of the devices and services division while the company searched for its vision. Panos Panay has been at the company for a year now, and Bloomberg reports the former head of Microsoft’s Surface division has “brought a focus on higher-quality design to a group adept at utilitarian gadgets.”
One tester says the ongoing hallucinations aren’t always wrong, just uncalled for, as if Alexa is trying to show off its newfound prowess. For instance, before, if you asked Alexa what halftime show Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson performed at, it might say the 2004 Super Bowl. Now, it’s just as likely to give a long-winded addendum about the infamous wardrobe malfunction.
Bloomberg’s sources say those beta users who did get to chat have been unimpressed (I requested access several times but with no luck). Responses were slow, sounded stiff, and weren’t “all that useful,” they said. Plus, the new Alexa messes up smart home integrations, hallucinates, and apparently tries to show off. According to reports: