I get the feeling Amazon aren't very good at consumer-facing platforms. My experience with everything Fire related has been poor, their Android apps are 2nd rate and the Kindle is good despite their software. I wouldn't write off the competition yet. Apple, Microsoft and Google have good voice products and the ability to forge partnerships.
Also (cliche warning) I only know one person who owns an Alexa or has even expressed an interest in buying one.
A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa?
Based on the commercials, it seems to solve trivial problems like answering trivia questions. Why can't it vacuum my room like a Roomba, fix my leaky ceiling or fix my power outage? That's what I call an useful home assistant. Being able to parse and understand my voice is nice but it's relatively useless if it can't perform extremely valuable tasks.
IMO: A voice controlled internet radio with really good sound, backed up by a respectable music library for individual songs. I'd have bought it for that alone even if it didn't do another thing.
Snark aside, once you get it paired with reasonable smarthome products, there's an element of magic there. "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights" feels downright futuristic.
>A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa?
Somewhat predictably, the best working use cases are ones that drive additional revenue for Amazon. Playing music from your Amazon Prime Music subscription, ordering laundry detergent and dog food from Prime Now, etc.
> A small tangent, but what's the most compelling use case for an Alexa?
An excellent question especially in the context of adding another always on audio device to a private space. I think for many people the value has to be more than just a novelty to justify it.
I know it seems a bit overt, but I'm pretty serious... I find myself reaching for google now more often than I ever have before. They're a step past Alexa when it comes to the sheer data that Google has to pull from. My only complaint is sometimes I hit clear all, and I can't get back to the reminders auto-set via email invites.
I also don't like that they've effectively deprecated the hangouts UX... they made interacting via SMS outside the phone pretty painful. I know there's hard costs to the stuff that came out of Grand Central / Google Voice, but I feel like when they first launched Hangouts, the experience was better overall.
In general using Google's services works so much better than anything else I've tried. That said, it's kind of creepy ay times.
I would do a quick Google search using a lyric or something to get song name to then tell my Echo. Now have the Google Home and no longer need the Google search.
The things I'd really like an assistant for around the house--and which I pay people to help me with in various cases--are vacuuming, cutting the lawn, dusting, doing (and putting away) laundry, doing (and putting away) dishes, etc. Activating lights with a voice command is pretty far down the list.
That said, given enough smarts and interfaces to enough online services, a purely virtual assistant would still be pretty useful for a lot of people. "Book a trip with these general parameters." It uses my preferred booking services, knows my preferences, and comes back with some choices. Get to the level of at least a competent personal admin and that's a service I'd be willing to pay for even if it can't pick up a broom.
Expedia gave an interesting demo at AWS re:Invent around a digital travel agent. It was a very simplified demo--and, of course, Expedia specific--but I think it did give you a glimpse of what's possible.
Its the first really usable internet radio appliance I know of. It doesn't cost that much more than a similar quality bluetooth speaker. I already have prime membership to get free shipping, so prime music is free and the jukebox functionality beyond using my phone is also free plus its not tied to my phone which is nice.
Neither it nor amazon seem to understand the concept of a family or being in public even at the very lowest level. I can't imagine tying it to my personal account unless I lived alone. Anyone can use it to do anything they want. I have been rickrolled, all someone needs to do to rickroll an echo owner is walk by an open window and yell "Alexa (pause) play never gonna give you up by rick astley" then run like hell. It was funny the first time. I would imagine if I were dumb enough to link my amazon purchasing account to it, I expect I would now own a lifetime supply of dragon dildos from jokers walking by my window. Being able to respond to any human voice with no training sounds like an awesome idea, and it is, mostly, but unlike star trek daydreams, Alexa has no idea who's talking to her and if they should be allowed to talk to her, so she can only be given access to stuff that mostly doesn't matter.
IoT means closed non-interoperable silos but there exists a java project that emulates a Philips lightbulb Hue controller accurately enough to fool Alexa, and it can execute arbitrary URLs, and misterhouse automation can most certainly control lights and appliances using arbitrary static URLs so I have a pretty decent voice activated home automation. This brings up the point that most people cannot handle setting that up, but we're in the equivalent of the 1980s home computer boom where everyone has a different idea what a home computer would do, but we all agree everyone needs one. Alexa can do all kinds of weird things, surely it does something useful for everyone. Supposedly she has lots of sportsball features, none of which would interest me, but someone probably wants them. Everyone probably wants something Alexa does.
Being located in the kitchen I use the alarms and timers a lot while cooking.
This article briefly covers Google Home's advantages in the conclusion, but I think they are pretty understated.
The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.
I have both and Google Assistant/Google Now is a much better experience than Alexa/Echo. The google voice interface is much more intuitive, allows context to be kept in a conversation, and is with me wherever my phone is. With Alexa I feel like I'm constantly searching for the right way to ask her to do something.
Ya, this article heavily underemphasized the research Google has done in conversational systems. These devices won't have mainstream appeal until you can just talk to one with minimal instruction.
Although at this time Google Home is only conversational for search and is still very bad about being entirely keyword based in context; I suspect that this will change.
Amazon does have one killer feature over Google right now. You can buy physical goods of them. The people I know who make the most use of their Echo are also milking the free shipping on Amazon Prime.
I have a Nexus 4 and have used Google Now extensively since it's inception as a hands-free system in my car. Since the inception of the Pixel and Google Assistant, the system has degraded significantly. Now no longer works when the Maps App is in the foreground, instead Maps seems to have it's own VR solution that doesn't work well at all. Saying "Ok Google, send a text to <wife>, I'm on my way home" no longer works, it opens Now with a search for exactly what I said. At one point you could say "remind me to wash my ass tomorrow" and it would just work. Now it prompts "ok, when would you like to be reminded to 'wash your ass tomorrow'?".
This degrading of UX is very common with Google through the life cycle of products. What's going to happen to Google Home next year or 2 years down the road? We saw OnHub get castrated in less than a year after launch. The Nexus Q was still born.
I don't disagree about Assistant, but OnHub and Nexus Q are bad examples. OnHub was not castrated, in fact it's a first class citizen next to Google Wifi and is now upgraded with Google Wifi's mesh networking capabilities. Nexus Q was never actually sold to anyone; the product category is now filled by the Chromecast for $25.
No. We built a market analytics app on top of Alexa and we have Echos all over the office. It's great.
But I don't want to be tied to stationary speakers in the office. I want my app integrated with the devices I carry with me everywhere. Google and Apple are poised to win here once they open up Assistant and Siri to third-party development.
Wasn't that one of the big pushes of the latest iOS release? Opening up Siri? Sad I haven't seen as much as I would've expected, or as quickly. I was quite excited for it but it has yet to be realized.
I tried Alexa a month ago and gave up on it within a week. Digital assistants fall flat in walled gardens. It was clear during this week that Alexa only worked well with Amazon services, which were always subpar. Google search? Nope. Support for Chromecast? Nope. Support for Instacart? Nope. It was basically a perverse link to the Amazon-only supply chain.
Google's assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don't have high hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released. Given that Google won't be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy, we can expect them to offload voice requests to the highest bidder or prefer Google services above all else. This is another perverse link into Google's realm of anti-privacy; but worse, because they won't be able to do ads along the side. The responses will be the ads.
All of this to say that all of these locked down digital assistants will fail until a company truly approaches it from an open and wholistic perspective, and one that doesn't rely upon troves of private data. These devices may sell well this year, but so did digital picture frames. How many of those are still in use?
I'm not really sure why you think it's Amazon only or a walled garden. I have limited experience with it but from the research I've done thus far it seems to have a fairly robust development platform.
I'm under the impression that if it feels Amazon-only it's because of a failure of companies and devs to take advantage of the platform, not a failure of the platform itself. For example the Google services you're asking about, is that Amazon's fault or has Google not taken the time to develop that app because they're focusing on their own product?
I've used my echo dot most often with 3rd party services so far (daily briefing integrations, capital one, yahoo fantasy football).
I agree with this perspective. However, you have to wonder why we don't have more Alexa skills in the platform. Here are a couple of my thoughts.
1. They require you to say "Alexa, tell <app_name> to <do_something>"; This pushes all 3rd party services one level deeper.
2. Amazon competes with too many companies and services these days. Instacart devs won't want to work on a skill within a platform that is itself is a competitor.
#1 does get annoying. I think it does make the experience a little more jarring having to use the same sentence structure for each question. For example, if I want an update on my fantasy football team, I have to say "Alexa, ask yahoo fantasy football"... this is weird and not natural. In normal conversation, I would say "ask yahoo", which isn't specific enough, or skip right to "alexa what's going on with my fantasy team?" since I only have the one team and one integration capable of dealing with fantasy sports.
#2 I agree is an issue. I wonder if with the current environment any independent would be allowed to gain traction, or would the competitors lock them out of services that users find mandatory (amazon shopping lists, google search, apple music, etc).
Plus if you have a million skills on the platform, the namespace for reasonable things will fill up pretty quick, consider you evoke each skill by the app name
Not tried google home, but Spotify support on the Echo is pretty good - aside from the ability to create an on the go playlist (please add this!) its actually working really well for me.
I agree, I own two of them. I use them to play music from Spotify and set timers (which is actually very helpful, and makes me realize how lazy I am).
However, I get an email once a week from Amazon with "whats new" on Alexa. Its always a few useless things like holiday trivia and then some garbage you can order from Amazon. It was a ground breaking device, but its clearly meant to just be another gateway to Amazon's weird, limited ecosystem.
Google opened up the assistant platform where you can create 'Actions' similar to skills on Amazon. It's only a matter of time, Google Assistant supersedes in 3rd party integrations.
I don't recall where I saw it, but I recall reading a comment from Google saying they weren't planning on having "Apps for Home" where the voice commands were things you installed like on Android/Echo, but were keeping it locked down and working with partners for the foreseeable future.
Alexa is actually not a walled garden at all; skills are almost entirely separated from each other, and I think that will be one of the biggest problems though. My gut says that the reason language is convenient is that it allows for things to be implicit rather than explicit and I expect the voice assistants that will be most useful are the ones that can best understand this context, which will require deeper integration.
> I don't recall where I saw it, but I recall reading a comment from Google saying they weren't planning on having "Apps for Home" where the voice commands were things you installed like on Android/Echo, but were keeping it locked down and working with partners for the foreseeable future.
OFC partner negotiations will need to take place in this; this is a new field with massive implications for customer security and caution and oversight _should_ be the watchword. Imagine the open ecosystem model for this and the disasters it could bring.
But the door to the ecosystem is plainly marked now and the rules are posted over the queue. You can do it today.
> The first and most important difference is that Google is not going to create an “Action Store” where users can select which ones they want and “install” them on Google Home. Instead, Google itself is going to approve all the keywords that developers want to use to invoke their actions and make them all available to everybody.
> That effectively means that actions will be curated by Google (like an app store), but users won’t have to install anything before using them (like the web). “It's not a direct analog to any existing ecosystem,” says Jason Douglas, director for actions on Google.
That article does specify that there will be a hand-off to 3rd party systems, rather than Google orchestrating everything, but it still sounds quite tightly constrained and I think that if the plan is to have things all work nicely together and not be silos, then tighter integration with more Google control will be the name of the game.
That's weird, I use my Alexa almost entirely to connect to Spotify, Google Calendar, and TuneIn (for radio stations). I never use Amazon services through it except music and the occasional Alexa-based sale.
> Given that Google won't be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy
Is there a technical reason why they couldn't play an audio ad after a response based on what you asked for and your account history? It seems to me that voice UIs, like mobile UIs, have constraints on the quantity of ads but don't make them impossible. These constraints, by reducing the ad space supply, can also drive up the price for said space, especially when you consider the audience for an audio ad is A) captive and B) not restricted to a single individual.
I have this hope that Google will shift to selling hardware and services and ween itself off search revenue gradually such that people pay them for their AI directly or indirectly.
This would make users the customers and better align incentives letting them do things like put user privacy first.
I used to work there, and I can definitely say that are working hard and fast at becoming a non-walled-garden platform for voice.
The voice capabilities are still lightyears beyond Siri/Alexa, but they have spent more time focusing on big partnerships than the fickle user facing market.
I hope they make some moves very soon, because frankly I believe their tech is truly superior.
> Google's assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don't have high hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released.
> only five percent of American households have an Alexa-powered device right now
And how many people have a Google-powered phone with them every day? Siri on their iDevice? Cortana on their auto-upgraded Windows 10 PC and in their living room Xbox? All of them have Alexa's penetration beat.
“Qualitatively, Amazon’s position is more secure than the numbers would indicate.”
I beg to differ. I believe Apple has a much more secured position than Amazon in the long run, given how Siri is already integrated in iOs mobile devices and macOS based desktops. So far, has Apple capitalized on this advantage? Nope. Are they gonna? Most likely, given the fact that they always wait for everyone to show their projects in high school science fair and then they roll out their better comprehensive showcase.
If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late.
Apple's true competitor in this domain can only be Google with its staggering command on Android ecosystem. Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon.
Amazon has mainstreamed a voice tech. They have done it well and made a point that this is the way of the future. Now the second part of the problem is to integrate already existing daily use computational devices with this "voice-tech". Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.
>If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late.
Why would it be too late? This isn't a social network where the network effects make competition almost impossible. Apple already has a platform in HomeKit that leverages the much larger iOS installed base. More HomeKit compatible devices are being released all the time.
In fact many people criticized Apple for imposing requirements around hardware-based security which slowed the release of devices, but the recent DDOS attacks and the Internet of Shit Twitter account has shown that was the correct move.
I don't think there's any deadline for Apple to release an Echo competitor. If they release a product that is better/differentiated in some way, people will buy it. And they'll likely have a number of HomeKit devices already that work with it.
I like your recent DDOS attack point in context to IOT devices. One argument in favor of Apple's wait stance could be that they just want the IOT/home-automation market to mature enough for them to come in with their voice-tech integration.
I wasn't making a specific claim regarding Amazon vs. Apple. Just pointing out that scale, and thus time-in-market, does have competitive meaning in this context.
I think this market is Google's to lose, providing they can execute.
The price point of Google Home is aggressive, and the same functionality is provided (or will be soon) to the Android ecosystem via Google Now / Google Assistant.
Their voice and intent recognition is getting very good. I have noticed a marked improvement over the last year, even in noisy environments. I think competitors will struggle to keep up, and this is probably the single most defining feature of a personal assistant.
It's a bit weird that Apple recently killed their Airport products[1]. Seems like it would be a good thing to retain, after all the router/wifi is sort of the nexus of any home. Sure, they may not directly make a lot of money off them but they that's also the case with many other things Apple make (iOS, for example).
Most of Apple products (Mac/iPhones/iPads/AppleTV/[future Apple home product]) go through them.
Google went the other direction, recently adding routers to their product mix.
Routers are mostly built into broadband modems now, or provided as part of the service. They are dumb; the value is moving toward WiFi-enabled smart devices like the set-top box or Echo or heck the smartphone itself.
The big selling points of Apple WiFi routers were the ease of use and the integrated Time Machine backups. Now they are hard to use (since there is already an ISP-supplied router to work around) and people backup online instead of locally.
Apple had the Airport line for 17 years. Google announced the launch date for their new mesh WiFi network and Apple ended the line 1 week before the Google release.
I think you're right. Alexa and Google home do well at...home. But Apple want everyone using a phone/watch/Airpods to interact with their AI assistant wherever they are.
We can argue about the quality of Siri, but I think Apple have the best chance of dominating the wearables market.
> Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon.
Not really. Microsoft has dozens of apps on iOS and Android, including Cortana, and it has Cortana on Xbox One as well. Microsoft also has a huge cloud business, second only to Azure. The Windows PC is one of the smaller parts of Microsoft's business nowadays.
Microsoft has a big advantage over Google, because it supports online, on-premise and hybrid operations. It has a big advantage over Apple because it doesn't really care which hardware you use.
> Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.
Amazon has a substantial tablet business with a forked version of Android, and has its own app store. It also has plug in Fire TV products (which work much better than Apple TV), and an e-reader range, with content libraries to match.
That's a pretty nuts assertion. Alexa is doing well for the sector but the sector is still incredibly immature and the general public is barely aware of it. That's not enough of a market dominance to really say they own it.
I don't think everyone will desire a live mic in their living room or bedroom, and not just any wireless mic, but one that understands what they are saying.
Private spaces are essential for creative thought, exploration, experimentation and just being yourself. The price is too high - it will answer questions for me, and execute commands, but I will lose my last bastion of privacy as an admission price.
Voice is the next big platform? But… talking to your devices out loud just feels weird as hell. And offers less privacy, even in terms of "parents/roommates/strangers overheard what you're googling". A lot, A LOT of people wouldn't be comfortable saying out loud what they type into their phones.
I cannot fathom how people willingly put themselves under this level of surveillance. Especially if you are not USA citizen or resident and your privacy is not defended by the US constitution.
I don't think Alexa is that great. I have one, and it's pretty bad at voice recognition compared to my phone. Google voice recognition on my phone gets what I'm saying basically 100% of the time. I have to constantly repeat myself for Alexa (and I'm a native English speaker).
Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do. Every single Voice UX I've used for input (Siri, Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from the device because it doesn't actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point.
Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7" screen in the future.
What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these things unless you're stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.
The same criticism can be levied against keyboard-driven tools aimed at power users. That doesn't make the tool less useful, it just shifts its target audience.
Exactly. The use cases and target audience are different. I use my echo dot for playing songs, switch off lights and add random alarm/timer etc. The future not might be voice only, but it will definitely voice intensive.
"Big" only works if someone can make big money. It can't have advertising without becoming useless. So, Voice activated lights are "The Clapper 2.0" which was not a big deal last time around.
Sure, there is a niche for reordering products easily, but commodity voice tech is going to rapidly hit zero margins. Like those 10$ TV dongles that used to take a full PC.
I agree that the UX is pretty bad now.
But Potentially, a system could monitor your on screen behavior and educate you unobtrusively when you do something that might have been easier by voice. Theoretically, the device could monitor your location and background noise to understand if voice commands are reasonable at that time.
I want to see voice assistants become actually useful and usable in the coming years, and agree that massive data-vacuuming like "monitoring background noise" is probably the fastest way to pump enough data through ML and AI techniques to push them forward, but that feels unnervingly intrusive.
I avoid these devices for the privacy concerns and also the generally poor security of IoT devices. I hate to sound like a luddite, but i really abhor these devices and how hard the tech companies are trying to foist them upon us as "the next big thing".
I am not proposing sucking in all the data, I mean an awareness of its environment so it knows when voice is appropriate. For instance if it can detect me driving in my car (due to speed) with no passengers (noise it has heard) maybe it can understand it should use voice.
You do realize that in order for the assistant to know you're in a car, and that you're "at speed" it would likely need access to your location information, right? Aggregated over time (even if only when the assistant is "on" - ie, the iOS "while using" setting), that's a pattern of your movements.
Either Apple/Google/etc and granulize the permissions such that things like "boolean: user is in vehicle at speed" are addressable separately (possible but unlikely) or such knowledge comes with a cost - the app knows where you are and have been.
Same applies doubly for "noise it has heard".
Consequently my decision is: no assistant, thankyouverymuch.
Ok, so how exactly would assistants do that? They'd need to take environmental inputs such as GPS data to determine if you were travelling in a car. It would need to have consistent access to your microphone and speakers so that it could gather and compute info relating to your environment (noise levels, voice recognition, etc). Combine that with the fact that most phones already track your location fairly precisely. There exists almost zero incentive for Google/Fb/Apple/Amazon/MSFT to NOT collect and aggregate massive amounts of user data.
How will it learn to compare all these different environments? ML obviously; which pretty much entails leveraging the consumer data to provide a better product. The cost of usable, voice-driven assistants is giving up a vast trove of personal data and abandoning the concept of privacy completely, just so I can order some paper towels from an Internet of Shit connected device instead of walking three blocks to a store.
Your position is akin to a Louis CK joke(not offense meant): "Oh boy! I hope he doesn't do what he's going to do!"
I start from the firm belief that "technology X will never be worse than it is now."
Whether you're considering voice interfaces, connection speeds, machine learning, web development, phone battery life, or whatever.. things are trending towards the better. Sometimes it's steady improvement, other times it's punctuated. Either way, the floor on what we can considering is always increasing.
This is rather debatable when it comes to human-machine interfaces. UI goes through phases of improvement followed by radical degredation due misguided, cargo-culted redesigns. Take cars as an example. In my car I can adjust the airflow and temperature with a button and a knob, but in newer models a touchscreen or voice command is required that takes quite a bit longer.
Counter-examples: Privacy (almost always getting worse), security (no clear trend, but it would be hard to argue it's consistently getting better), usability / discoverable interfaces (debatable)
There are certain times when a voice interface is dramatically faster, simpler and more intuitive than a visual UI. One example is setting a timer or alarm. Another is asking for conversions (how many teaspoons in a tablespoon).
The Amazon Dot is my favorite kitchen tool, we use it more than we do spoons at this point. The ability to set multiple timers, convert units and measures, and remind you to do things all while playing your favorite tunes is amazing.
You laugh but it is a seriously good thing. I mentioned the 'side project' I had submitted that Google legal had rejected, it was combining Siri with timers and cooking facts as the ultimate kitchen timer. As the GP points out, there are a bazillion factoids you might consult while cooking and a huge win for cooking is having everything come out at the same time (co-ordinating timers) so as an app on your phone following you around in your pocket it can be pretty killer.
"I see you're baking chicken, Dave. 98% of recipes agree your requested baking time and temperature will result in an overly dry bird. I'm afraid I can't allow you to set your own smart oven parameters anymore..."
Given how badly people screw chicken up on a regular basis, I'm not even seeing the problem here, and I'm usually the one to shout Skynet during an otherwise reasonable discussion on AI.
No. A billion dollar system that is so accessible that it's not even insane to connect a simple kitchen timer to it.
Sci-fi got it wrong with their humorous stupid robots providing comic relief while smart robots do the work. All the robots are the same smart, and getting better every day.
I like Alexa in the kitchen for shopping lists and some other tasks such as, as you say, converting measurements.
I don't actually care that much for it as a time though. The other timers I can easily set in the kitchen tell me at a glance how much time is left. Alexa I have to ask. These are small things but it means I don't default to using Alexa.
If you only have one timer going and you're watching the clock then it is a bit of a pain.
However when you're preparing a meal or making cookies and you're constantly moving and not watching the clock, just responding to it, it becomes handy. It's also nice to not have to stop and wash your hands to set an egg timer.
I use the timer feature all the time for kids time outs. I've got four kids, and often need multiple timers. It's perfect because I can set it from the other room while resolving whatever issue sent them away. I do wish it had an "Add 5 minutes" feature though, for every time they come out early.
I tried using Google Now for timers for a while, the amount of times it didn't start properly or you'd say:
"Google Now, Set a timer for..[slight pause]...<How long would>three<you like>minutes<a timer for?> [Pause, pause, pause] Three minutes. Three minutes! Three Fuck<Setting timer for>ing Minutes<three minutes>.
I presume on your phone? I set echo timers/alarms nearly every day and don't think I have ever had to repeat myself. The far-field mics make a huge difference in recognition accuracy when you aren't talking directly into the device.
Same here. Dot in the kitchen connected to 10" subwoofer+satellites. Spotify/Amazon Music (kids' favourite), setting timers, listening to news in the morning. That's about it. Jokes and calculator sometimes.
I'd like it if the knowledge graph was better, for answering questions. Just wikipedia queries is a bit lame. I think Google Home will win on that one.
Oh, and I'd really, really like to be able to voice call/skype through it (presuming the array mic + software will be able to isolate my voice/remove reverberation well enough).
Home automation tasks also tend to lend themselves much better to voice interfaces than touch because voice commands are always available regardless of where you are or what devices you have (or don't have) with you.
I was a huge skeptic of voice assistants before the Echo came along, but being able to turn my lights on and off with a single voice command alone has been more than worth the price of entry for the Echo Dot + TP-Link Smart Switch combo I got for $60.
Google Home is an exception to that I think. Partly because you have a good idea which Google searches result in a knowledge graph result. Those are read out by Google Home.
Also you're being very "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
The side swiping menus (like in Snapchat) are so confusing to me as an old guy. How the heck are we expected to know you can swipe left and right on a screen to reveal a completely new screen?!?
It's discovery/referral gating. Teens who get Snapchat upon hearing it from a friend can ask their friends on how to use it, and it stimulates conversation and feature discovery. If you don't have at least one existing friend who is experienced at using Snapchat, you're probably not in their target market (by design).
It does take < 1 second. And then so does swiping right. And left. And up. And pressing. And long-pressing. And double-tapping. And two-finger tapping. And two-finger swiping (in all directions). For every element on the screen. For all screens.
Slack's iOS app has like two side-swiping menus essentially stacked on top of each other. One of those menus (the first one) is NEVER what I want. The whole thing is so confusing, and I have to relearn it every time I actually need it.
I can't stand how almost every mobile app use icons without labels, so I have to press them to find out what they do. If I'm lucky there's a tooltip available if I long press.
I've seen these complaints, slightly re-worded a number of places, and I remain confused. The changes aren't that big.
"File, Edit, View" etc model is condensed into 3 horizontal lines. The lines I suspect were modeled on the idea of a row, with one option per row after another. Click "View" in a random app, oh look, one after another. Don't like that notion? Think of it as a Start menu in ever app, and you still have to drill down. It's barely a change, since the idea has existed since Windows 95!
Small screens need less chrome to highlight content. It's about the user having the best view of their content, not peddling a catalog of "me to" features and pretty icons in people's faces. Turns out, people actually enjoy seeing more of their content on desktops too, rather than rows of default icons.
Scrollbars? People still stop what they're doing to look for the scrollbar? I stopped dealing with that once MS shipped the Intellimouse 20 years ago. Tap/drag on mobile. You know how to tell if you're at the bottom of a document? It won't scroll further.
"It's maddening. There's absolutely no way to discover how to use apps like this unless you already know how."
But you KNOW how to use them already. They're just slightly modified. And these things have existed long enough now, there's no excuse not to just swipe either side or tap the hamburger to see what's up? I mean, how am I going to know what the new app using classic "File, Edit, View" menus does? By using the input options I have, mouse, keyboard, to dig through them. That hasn't changed on these new desktop apps. On mobile, input options are fingers, tap and swipe about.
This falls into a category of "Personally, I don't want to rethink things ever." type arguments.
Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other.
Things said in our home all the time:
"Do you know what the weather is going to be like?"
"Is it going to rain today?"
"We need to buy some milk."
"The roast need one and a half hour."
We speak all the time with each other and there is nothing weird about that.
I bought a Google Home and it's literally transformed our lives in the little details for the better.
Before asking for the weather was something which required one of us to find the phone, open it find the weather app.
It sounds banal but if you have to do it every day because you take your kids to school believe me it's a godsend.
My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio.
My kids love talking with it.
And it's basically just a very practical assistant which is revolutionary in the little details not some sci-fi scenario.
It's not disrupting anything it's improving the quality of tech by allowing us to interface with technology in one of the ways which removes yet another layer of abstraction.
You don't need to know what the system can do as long as it can do enough Google Home certainly can and it's just getting started.
The general issue I have today is that, for a lot of things, voice can feel like an exercise in coming up with the right wizard's incantation--especially as you add Skills, etc.
But that's not really an inherent issue with voice. It's just that today's systems are mostly stuck with requiring relatively strict adherence to specific syntax. This will certainly improve over time.
I don't find Alexa as transformational as some people I know do but I find it useful enough.
Google Assistant is slowly getting better with stuff like this. While usually I stick with the commands and syntax I _know_ works, occasionally I'll try getting fancy and throw it a curveball by just speaking 100% naturally and Assistant will surprise me by actually doing what I intended.
For example, a while back I was using Assistant to look up showtimes for a movie at a specific theater, and just to see what would happen I said "show me a map" without giving any explicit context. I was expecting Assistant to come back with a search query or maybe pictures of generic maps in response, but to my surprise it actually understood that I was talking about a map of the theater and gave me that.
Of course, that specific response in that exact situation isn't in and of itself all that impressive, and for every time Assistant succeeds in figuring out what I meant in a situation like that there's maybe one or two other times when it has no clue, but the idea of being able to speak 100% naturally to a virtual assistant and having it "just work" is unbelievably cool.
As a parent in New England, you have to choose between 3 jackets and when you are trying to get socks on two kids and can ask "alexa, what's the weather today" and know the answer without having to pause and get a phone and let one of the kids escape, that's really nice.
Thank you for that. I was thinking; wait people actually care about the weather but this makes sense. As someone without kids, we have not checked the weather for over 10 years and so using that as an example 'what people talk about' sounded weird to me.
It is interesting how little we now need to think on the weather.
With modern heating systems (specifically thermostatic radiator valves) we no longer need to ensure that the heating is prepared at the right time, so we don't need to know the weather.
With the prevalence of tumble driers washing doesn't need to hang out, so we don't need to know the weather.
Most modern clothing is suitable for a very large range of temperatures and good waterproofs can be comparatively small and lightweight, allowing them to be brought everywhere without burden, so we don't need to know the weather.
Cars and roads have improved significantly, the impact of the weather on a small or long journey is often negligible, so we don't need to know the weather.
More jobs are performed indoors now and where they aren't special machines and tooling have been made that make the job easier alongside significantly reducing the risk and discomfort that weather can cause, so we don't need to know the weather.
There remain some situations where knowing the weather is very important, but very few of them affect 'the general populace' is a consistent enough manner to cause them to waste time following it.
Conversely, many jobs need to be performed on the schedule that was agreed upon beforehand regardless of the weather. The weather is rarely accepted as a legitimate source of everyday disruption and misery, except in extreme events.
Case in point, my area got 11" of snow overnight recently and my wife got yelled at for being late to work because subcompact cars don't do too well in the deep snow. So people end up buying SUVs that they drive year-round just for the 1% of the time when they're really needed.
Idk.. sounds very weird to me because when I was a kid in the Northeast I had one (1) winter jacket. If it was between September and March I left the house with the jacket else I didn't. Simple. I can't imagine my parents ever checking the weather and I can't imagine a child owning several jackets. Very odd. People make things much too complicated.
This winter so far the temp ranged from 2f to 60f... In 48 hours... So in those cases you know if it is single jacket, double jacket, or sweatshirt.
That's one example. Schedules, playing music, guitar tuner, uke tuner, metric conversion when hands are dirty from cooking, and plenty of other examples are abundant in our house
Yes, I am extremely familiar with that temperature fluctuation. I still owned 1 winter jacket and if I got hot I unzipped it or took it off. We didn't have money for multiple fancy jackets or sweaters or whatever. You'd outgrow your multiple jackets before you even got to wear them.
Pretty much the story of modern civilization. Just step outside and check the temperature, and look up at the clouds and guess if it's gonna rain later. Wear a sweat shirt or waterproof windbreaker if in doubt. Or you can just not care about getting mildly cold or wet. I say this as someone who spent 25 years in Minnesota.
And then you have a kid who you have to pick up from school, you are going to be at work until you pick them up. It might look fine in the morning but might rain in the afternoon.
But sure, you don't need umbrella either and we could all be driving open cars :)
Meh, if my kid is anything like me, they won't care about getting wet. If they do care then they can buy a Google Home with their allowance and check the weather to their heart's content. Plus, no plans to send my future children to school or to be working a 9-5 job.
My kids don't care about getting wet either. I do.
Don't get one if you don't want to, the discussion is whether it's useful and it is. Not just for the weather not just for rain. For many little things in life.
Honestly there has been a few times in my entire life I've checked the weather report for guidance on how to dress. Every single time I've been burned and ended up dressing inappropriately. I do much better using my own senses. However, I don't really use an umbrella because I never had one growing up so I guess if you wanted to make sure you weren't caught in the rain without one you'd have to check the weather report.
+this. You just described every morning at my house (including asking Google home what the weather is), and we only have one kid. It's also very useful that everyone in the room gets to hear the answer. Same for setting timers. "you have five minutes left of play time. " It makes the process very transparent. We have a 20 minute walk to school, rain, snow, or shine, and getting the munchkin dressed appropriately (and willingly) is key.
Both Alexa and Google home have been great with a kid.
Personally, I devote the upper 1/8th of my phone's homescreen to a widget that shows a weather graph (temp, rain/snow, wind) for the next 36 hours. The forecast updates every 2 hours.
But then again, we live a few hours north of the location where they filmed the Battle of Hoth. Asking anyone, let alone a machine, "what is the weather outside" gives you little information about the weather in six hours.
Must be interesting to live that far north. FWIW further south people configure their phones likewise because the question of whether there will be rain is when rather than if - or at least during the rainier season(s).
There is something about the tangibility of information we use a lot. Instead of it being hidden behind login, app launch etc we just access it directly.
It's funny - we've been remodeling our house, and as part of it, added a bunch of z-wave compatible switches. I was moving some stuff back in (we've been out of it), walked into the house at night, and after living with an Echo and a Google Home for the last year and a half, had a very strong urge to say "Hey, Google, turn on all the lights." -- unfortunately, I hadn't moved the Home in yet! :) I was carrying a large box and it would have been fantastic.
My experience with both devices is that there's no one Big Thing, except maybe music. There's a lot of stuff that just works surprisingly well by voice. Quoting my daughter: "Hey, Google, play Puff the Magic Dragon" - "What's the weather today?" - "Turn on/off the lights" - "Set a timer for 5 minutes" - "What's 17 tablespoons in cups?" - "How long does it take light to get to Mars?"
It's probably not smartphone big. But I think that in the long term, we're going to find that some kind of voice-based interactive device like this will become very common.
I have fun playing games with my kids teaching them trivia, Google Home does that while we are free to do other things.
We listen to a lot of different music. Google at home allow me to stream from Spotify simply by saying the type i want.
My wife likes to listen to radio, she just tell Google at home to start a radio station.
Listening to the news, google does a pretty good job assembling what is most important during the day.
You can ask it to play the latest "Startups for the rest of us" podcast simply by asking it to play that.
You can ask it when you next flight is.
How long it's going to take to get to somewhere.
You can add things to a shopping list which is important when you are family.
And these are just things that it does out of the box. I don't care about switching on lights which it also can do and turn the heat up or down.
What I think most of you realize is that just like the touchscreen removed a layer of abstraction to access technology because it allow for things humans do naturally. So does the voice. It's extremely intuitive as there is nothing to learn. As voice gets better and better it's going to change a lot of things.
The sales numbers of Alexa is pretty telling too and this is from all sorts of people like my parents in law who now have one they use and understand.
I don't care whether it's going to be the next big thing, but to claim as the parent did that voice is a bad interface is simply as wrong as it can be and to claim there is no value in what it can besides a few things, well it turns out at least for my family those few things are pretty useful.
Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other.
Except that humans have an average IQ of 100. They understand context, they get what I'm trying to say. Try getting Siri to turn off all repeating alarms, just for today. Or turn off all alarms until 12pm.
"But that's not how Siri is supposed to work!"
Sure, fine. It's just a ux to a limited api. But then you can't also compare it to how we use the same input for humans. Robots aren't humans. Not by a long shot. They have an api, a very specific and limited set of capabilities. They are not flexible. They don't get context.
Voice interfaces have their place. Because once you know the api, the possibilities, voice may well be most practical. But not because we happen to talk to humans.
Siri and Google Voice are in completely different leagues. I find Siri completely useless; I use Google's voice interface all the time; it even understands context.
Thats like complaining about a commodore 64 not being able to run the same games as a Playstation.
The discussion is not whether Alexa, Siri and Google Home are perfect AI's but whether they are good enough for some very basic things like those I described.
And no it's not because we talk to humans that they are good, it's because we interact with other humans through speech.
If you really understand context, a lot of the time you don't need voice at all.
Consider a voice operated light switch. Why do I need to tell the switch I want the lights to turn on when I enter I room? The house AI should know the ambient light level, the time of day, my location in the house, and my default lighting preferences, and lighting should "just work" unless I want to change something - which is when I can ask for it.
Alexa can't do any of this yet. I can give Alexa commands to turn lights on or off, but currently there isn't even a context for the current light state. So I can't say "Alexa, lights" and have Alexa work out whether that means "turn the lights on" or "turn the lights off" for the room I'm in.
IFFT may eventually be able to do this, but it's far from transparent and straightforward.
It's about affordances. I have a reasonable idea what a human's affordances are. The current voice UI (vUI?) equivalent is a handful of dots of implemented functionality surrounded by huge areas of not-working-yet space.
Not only is there no map, there's no way to guess what might be on the map.
It's also about cognitive load. I'm typing this in a bedroom with a couple of 433MHz switches controlled by a remote - one for a light, one for a heater.
Using the remote takes no conscious load at all. When I had the switches controlled by Alexa, formulating a command took effort.
All what you are saying is true but it's missing the point I was trying to make originally which was that what it can do now is more than enough to be very useful for many of us.
I don't think you are appreciating the things that used to be which got lost with digitalization and now can get back.
It's not just about what the AI can do, it's how it gets expressed.
I disagree. My habits would be so hard for a computer to learn, mostly because they already frustrate humans who are much smarter. When the sun goes down, I don't want all the lights to turn on. I don't even necessarily want all the lights on in the room I'm sitting in. Many times I sit in a lit-up room just because I can't turn the sun off. Once it goes down, it's nice to sit in the dark watching TV.
That is unless I'm reading a book, in which case I need a light on. But not just any light, I'd probably just lamp next to me to shine on my book instead of the one that lights the whole room. I don't need the whole room lit, just my book. So now the contextual system needs to have cameras to see if I'm reading or just watching TV or playing on my phone or napping.
And when I walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night, I'm fine with the nightlight above the toilet. Turning on all the lights will wake me up and ruin my night vision. But my wife likes the light on. So now we need facial recognition to tell who is walking into the room.
Right now I have to get up and turn on a light if I'm on the couch reading. If we're talking effort, that's a hell of a lot more effort than saying "Alexa, turn on my reading lamp". And don't get me started on the effort it takes to try to find the missing remote...
My phone is always with me, either on a countertop or in my pocket.
"Ok Google, is it going to rain today?" is something I can (and do) ask at any point. No need to have a new device in every room of my house and no need to learn a different interface when driving in my car etc.
Voice is great to have conversations. To give short commands, other interfaces are good as well.
For example, I can check the weather for today on my phone with minimal fuzz, clicking 2 or 3 times and getting much richer information (a full graph with short term forecast, a few hours in advance, etc) in a single screen shot.
Another example, ordering a pizza. I prefer a GUI over calling and taking to some human. The options are clearer, and I can review easily what I'm ordering.
Not to say that it's impractical, but voice doesnt carry a lot of info for a lot of services. We'd prefer a phone call over an specific tactile interface for everything, and that's not the case...
I a not sure I understand what you are getting at.
I gave some pretty specific examples of what it's great for.
I am not saying it's great enough yet for much more complex things no disagreement there. But unlike Seamless web or mobile interface I could potentially just with the command, "order the usual from Joe's Pizza" skip a whole suite of interactions needed to order food today.
> My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio.
Oh god please. I can't understand how complicated radio is these days. Fuck me, I'm forever returning or rescanning or some bullshit just to listen to something.
Is there something weird about radio in the US? Radio is still the same old AM and FM stations here, you just "turn on the radio" to listen to it like you always have. Am I missing something?
As if knowledge of me visiting a public site is comparable to Google having an always-on microphone that probably is riddled with 0days and has constant internet activity that can easily mask a malicious connection?
it only takes approximately 10 minutes of recorded audio to interpret individual keystrokes with a ~96% accuracy. [1]
Google / NSA / foreign state hackers / your next door neighbor could potentially find or pay for an exploit to the device and have all of your passwords down within a few days. All of your children's passwords.
It can reconstruct every message you've typed in range of the microphone. Ergo unless you rely on bookmarks and not the address bar, it can in fact track which websites you visit. Furthermore, it could interact with ultrasonic sounds emitted by your computer speakers to track your ad experience, and if you live in a malevolent state, to locate you. [2]
If your kids are a problem to the police state, they will be identified and marked before they even know they want to be political activists.
This is the world you aren't only allowing, but are defending as well.
You would be surprised what you visiting public sites can be used for. Insurance purposes for instance. You should be much more worried about that.
And then there are the ISPs you use to access the internet. Or the cellphone tracking your wereabouts or your camera and your microphone on your laptop. Or your router.
I could go on. If that's what you are afraid of that game is already lost.
Why do you insist on thinking I'm also not concerned about those forms of unlawful surveillance?
You're trying to invalidate my legitimate concern over a device's security implications by telling me other devices have security implications as well. No shit.
Right now it's pretty much what it does. Small little things that takes 2 seconds without it. And it's less reliable. I've yet to witness a revolutionary use of IoT.
It's great for certain interactions. I use it to turn off the lights and set alarms before I go to bed, get the weather every morning, make grocery lists, etc. Nothing huge, but the reduced friction is great.
Also, for the $100 price it frequently goes on sale at, it's a great wireless speaker with Spotify integration built in.
This is the Infocom problem: You're trying to present the user with two fundamental illusions. 1) the computer can understand what you're saying, totally and completely, and 2) that you (or it) can do anything.
However, it can't, it can't, and you can't. And when the illusion fails, it's frustrating: Neil Stephenson would call it Metaphor Shear, I (being less fancy) would call it why-didn't-they-give-me-a-better-ui-or-at-least-a-manual-dang-it.
This is ultimately why I prefer unambiguous interfaces over "friendly" ones.
> It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point.
I don't think your statistics makes any sense.
99% of the time, you save time by speaking your intent, vs interfacing with your phone. That time saved is meaningful and outweighs the 1% of the time you have to fall back to your screen device.
99% of the time, you can use your hands/fingers for other tasks while speaking your intent. That allows you to multitask more efficiently.
>Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do.
This is the same as the command line. Just like the command line, voice may not be completely intuitive initially but for regular use, it's probably much faster than a colorful GUI.
Even using Siri, which everyone can agree is terrible, having her set a timer using voice is much, much faster than picking up your phone, unlocking it, navigating to the Clock app, switching to the right tab of the app, then setting a timer.
"Hey Siri, set a timer for fifteen minutes". Done.
That's a bit disingenuous. iOS command center swipe up, timer button and it'll remember your last setting. Works faster than voice for the most common use case.
I just tried it with best case scenarios, and it's still a second or so faster using voice (1.5 seconds) vs control center (3 seconds). I mean, voice is literally just yell out "hey siri set a timer for 15 minutes" and that ends the interaction. Done, just like that.
If you're changing the time that is set, it's significantly longer.
I only have two problems with voice, one of which is UX related:
1. It's slow. Apple AirPods are a good example. Siri controls the volume. Talking is slow. The input and response until the volume is changed is slow. Faster would be to use the long side of the AirPod as a touch control and sliding up and down it changes the volume. One finger slide = volume change. Two finger slide = track change. In any case, touch controls are way faster than voice.
2. It's weird in public, and faulty in loud environments. Talking aloud to yourself is going to get strange looks at you. I tend to do things that don't bring me attention, so I don't use Siri. Also, good luck using Siri at a concert or loud train commute.
It's like a CLI- intimidating and not discoverable at first, but hopefully powerful later on. Except I am not sold on how it will be powerful yet: it lacks th "replay" that cli's have with scripts, and it lacks composability right now.
Tab completion, the "history" command, and using the up-arrow weren't in the first shells either. Eventually someone will find a way to create custom macros with voice commands.
Thx. I thought i was the only one WHO HATE Voice input. Especially when i have a long day i dont want to speak to a bloody machine just to get things done.
I think Voice Input should be an Additional, not as the ONLY input method.
Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do
Very true -- our Echo can control the lights, but I can never remember what each light is called, while with a GUI, I can see the list and it's obvious that "Livingroom - TV" is the light near the TV that I want to dim, while "Livingroom - TV table" is the one on the table to the right of the TV and I want to turn that one off.
Maybe this could work like Tesla is trying to get auto driving working:
When you say 'Hey Google / Siri / Alexa / whatever' a connection is set up to a real human who can control your house automation. Then the system could be self learning because the operator is translating your command into an action.
But it would not be for me. I absolutely never felt the need for home automation (don't think it is going to make my life better). And I care for my privacy.
I didn't see Google Now in the list of "every single voice UX you've tried", so recommend trying that. It's pretty great actually, and only getting better. I've tried most of these systems, and Siri is actually a joke in comparison.
In addition, Voice works well if you are alone in a silent enviroment. It does not work well if kids are playing loudly in the same room and the wife is yelling at you from the next room.
I also don't like the feeling of having a dedicated microphone set up that records everything, waiting for a command and is completly intransparent about what it sends back to Amazon/Google/Apple.
The point about talking out loud is the key one for me. It doesn't matter how good the interface is, I don't want to talk out loud to myself in public. The same way I don't use magic wand like gestures to control phone.
Talking, while potentially more natural, is also simply slower than most other input types.
We need a free software (GNU project?) solution that has everything open. The hardware, the software, anyone can contribute modules, etc. it's so obvious
Out of curiosity, what is stopping these platforms from being able to learn from users? For example, when I say something to Siri / Alexa / Home that they cannot process, I would love to be able to manually train them to perform an action and have them "learn" this new feature. (Something along the lines of, "ok Siri, whenever I say 'blah blah blah', open this app, go to this page, hit this button, tell me the content in this box")
Obviously this is not an easy task, and maybe it is being worked on already. Thoughts?
For whatever it's worth, Siri is much, _much_ better at understanding my accent (Scottish, but mild) than Alexa is. We've got an echo at home, and I find it painful to get her to do pretty much anything other than ask for tube status updates. The TV manages to set her off every few hours, though.
Doesn't feel like Amazon have much of an advantage to me.
I use Alexa nearly every day. Once I understood the limitations with the interface I was hooked. Once you have one Alexa and maybe an Echo dot you really aren't going to want to switch platforms. It also is consistently supported for Smart Home devices. I think that you could still push Amazon off the platform because its not as entrenched as others but Amazon does have a wide lead compared to google.
When I visited Berlin last year, I visited the DDR Museum. It's not about the RAM or the dance game you might know, but instead the organization we just know as "East Germany." You can probably guess where I'm going with this.
One of the exhibits was of a common East Berlin living room. The exhibit explained how the state had hidden microphones here. They were listening for people to express anti-socialist ideas in their own homes. This was a real threat faced by people not more than 30 or 40 years ago. You could have your life turned upside down just for saying the wrong thing at home.
This exhibit drove home for me the inherent abusive powers enabled by some tech. One of these technologies is always on, always connected microphones. Why would I want one in my house? Given the potential downsides, what could possibly be worth it to justify having one?
That's a valid point and at the same time, we have to wonder about things like bundled cameras and mic's on computers, cell phones, TV's. These days it seems like the act of having an internet connection at all can open this type of door.
Quite. So it becomes a matter of trust. Amazon and Google are probably on the wrong side of that balance. For a lot of IoT apps the net isn't the appropriate place at all - local net is better. I'm not a fan of thermostats that prevent you having heating because some cloud server is being DDOS'd etc.
I had hoped and frankly expected that there'd be a few more privacy oriented choices in this space by now. There was Zoe[1], but that got canned at last minute. I really didn't want a refund...
I spent a few minutes on the campaign page but couldn't find details about the closure of the project (it looks like it's still open). As someone with an interest in privacy-protecting home devices, can you explain a bit more about why it closed?
Click into the updates, 3 months ago. I think the only thing on the main page, now the funding has closed, is the updated FAQs at the end including info about refunds.
In short 5 months ago all seemed to be going OK, then they went a tad quiet. Three months ago there was another update including a CEO statement.
"Due to unforeseen delays in the development, we are not going to deliver the ZOE in the current form and all contributors will be refunded." They mention it's a partner having development delays in some critical component, but all very vague with no details.
Supposedly the project is alive and we'll get an update email when they're ready to try again. I infer from refunds all round it's not going to be soon. If it was just a few months I figure they'd ask for patience to work around whatever issue.
Ok, thanks. I'm certain all of the necessary technological building blocks exist to make this kind of thing a reality, but all the megascale funding goes to mediocre, insecure devices and services. These cloud consumer perceptions and make it difficult to know what would actually work in the market.
There's probably scope for an open project here. There might be one - never searched as Zoe ticked all the boxes for me. Local voice recognition, open to the cloud for better accuracy, and set exactly what gets to talk to the net. From a company with some experience in private cloud and hardware.
I don't know enough of IoT specs, protocols etc to know what would be needed other than the broadest terms. Probably yet another use for a Pi 3.
Yes, but in all those examples the camera/microphone defaults to "off", not "on".
That is the most important distinction. Sure my laptop has a camera but if I keep good security practices I can feel reasonably assured that it is not monitoring me unless I've switched it on for some reason. The Alexas and Google Homes of the world default to "on", and everything you do/say is monitored because "cloud processing".
I will always have a problem with anything that tries to use my actions to build a more predictable model of who I am or what I am/will be doing
The risk is rather low if you don't live in a totalitarian state and you don't engage in extremely subversive or criminal activities.
Sure, the government could force Amazon to let Echo spy on you. But they could force Apple or Google to do the same thing with your phone. Speakerphone isn't as good as far field mikes, but it's pretty good.
The government could also just bug your apartment the old fashioned way.
The big fear would be that echo is storing audio of your house that a future government could use against you. But there is no indication that Amazon does that. It only sends audio after it's triggered by the codeword. Honestly, my google and bing histories are probably a lot more damning.
But if Trump goes all hitler on us, I'd throw mine out.
You're assuming the device never acts incorrectly/has bugs. Why?
Also, the recent findings show it's not just subversive actors who gets surveiled. There are already massive dragnet operations. That's happening right now. So it's not some hypothetical, that's reality.
I think the better approach, rather than waiting and finding out too late, is just to avoid these altogether. The world has mostly been pretty safe but the security appears to now be threatened and civil liberties are rapidly eroding. So just for that reason I think our position for ourselves and for friends/family should just be to pass altogether on this type of device
That's a strange thing to say. "The government" (whatever that may be) doesn't force anything on us.
Yet, when everyone has email, that becomes a rather important data source. That draws the interest of those organizations tasked to keep us safe. They certainly wouldn't be doing their jobs very well if they left that trove untrawled, and voilà, soicograms of everybody.
When everyone has a live audio feed from their homes to Google, Amazon and Samsung that becomes an even bigger data source. It would be unthinkable not to mine it and I don't think anyone knows what the effects of that will be.
The problem with this logic is you don't know what the future will hold, yet the data is being captured and stored, likely in perpetuity, today.
This means a future dictator will have a huuuge corpus of data on everyone with the perfect surveillance apparatus to leverage it. And by then it is too late.
I wonder what direction our new Russian-influenced President will take things given Putin's KGB background and savviness in shutting down free speech.
My standard counter-argument to this is "drugs". Drugs are a sufficient bug-bear to be used by the UK government as justification for invasive surveillance, but there are so many drug users in the UK that if they tried enforcing that law they would bankrupt the nation three times over from each of prosecution, building and staffing sufficient prisons, and the sheer number of people in prison who would then not earn any money or pay any taxes.
And that is just from a thing the government uses as its justification for the surveillance power it now has.
> The risk is rather low if you don't live in a totalitarian state and you don't engage in extremely subversive or criminal activities.
And what happens when failing to have an Alexa or equivalent devices becomes an act of subversion or at least suspicion?
> Sure, the government could force Amazon to let Echo spy on you. But they could force Apple or Google to do the same thing with your phone
I think you'll find this is an argument against Google and Apple handing over data wholesale to the government, not an argument in favour of getting another device that does that same thing too.
> The government could also just bug your apartment the old fashioned way.
You mean with judicial oversight and at some considerable amount of effort and expense that would make dragnet surveillance unpopular both within and without the government meaning its use would be reserved only for the sorts of activities proponents of surveillance say it would be used for? Yes, I'm okay with the old fashioned way.
> The big fear would be that echo is storing audio of your house that a future government could use against you. But there is no indication that Amazon does that.
The big fear is that by inviting these amoral entities into our lives they CAN (not will) perform these immoral activities at the request of other parties. It enables it.
> Honestly, my google and bing histories are probably a lot more damning.
Yet you still submit to the surveillance. Good for you. Not everyone is will to make the same compromises.
Either you can be scared all your life or adopt a system which is going to make your/your family's life more convenient.
Wrt your fear of always on microphones, there is a possibility that this may also happen on your smartphone where some rogue app might be listening to all your conversations. I don't see this to be quite different from that. I guess as more and more people adopt Alexa and you see the benefits, you will reach a tipping point where the pros outweigh the cons..
Resistance to technology that has unbounded risk isn't "fear". It's vigilance against an increasingly dangerous threat. Ignore that risk at your own peril.
> this may also happen on your smartphone
What smartphone? Regular phones still work, and a full size screen and keyboard has much better ergonomics.
Also, the existence of malicious software doesn't mean it's a good idea to voluntarily increase your attack surface. Lockpicks exist, but you probably still lock your house and car.
> you see the benefits
That will never happen, because voice input isn't ever going to be compatible with my apartment's old walls. Talking loudly at night is rude to the neighbors.
I sell my Bluetooth/BLE garage door remote on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon is suggesting customers buy an Echo along with my device. To make matters worse, if you search Amazon for "garage door opener that works with Amazon Echo" my product incorrectly appears.
Although I explicitly state that it does not work with Echo, I anticipate many returns and bad reviews after the holidays. I am pretty sure they'll keep the Echo, so it is all good for Amazon.
Ironically the Alexa Skills Kit doesn't even support Bluetooth. Does anyone know when or if it ever will ?
No. Google will trample them underfoot. Amazon can't compete with google's ai talent. Maluuba is another one to watch in this space though, very interesting research.
291 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadAlso (cliche warning) I only know one person who owns an Alexa or has even expressed an interest in buying one.
Based on the commercials, it seems to solve trivial problems like answering trivia questions. Why can't it vacuum my room like a Roomba, fix my leaky ceiling or fix my power outage? That's what I call an useful home assistant. Being able to parse and understand my voice is nice but it's relatively useless if it can't perform extremely valuable tasks.
Snark aside, once you get it paired with reasonable smarthome products, there's an element of magic there. "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights" feels downright futuristic.
Somewhat predictably, the best working use cases are ones that drive additional revenue for Amazon. Playing music from your Amazon Prime Music subscription, ordering laundry detergent and dog food from Prime Now, etc.
An excellent question especially in the context of adding another always on audio device to a private space. I think for many people the value has to be more than just a novelty to justify it.
I know it seems a bit overt, but I'm pretty serious... I find myself reaching for google now more often than I ever have before. They're a step past Alexa when it comes to the sheer data that Google has to pull from. My only complaint is sometimes I hit clear all, and I can't get back to the reminders auto-set via email invites.
I also don't like that they've effectively deprecated the hangouts UX... they made interacting via SMS outside the phone pretty painful. I know there's hard costs to the stuff that came out of Grand Central / Google Voice, but I feel like when they first launched Hangouts, the experience was better overall.
In general using Google's services works so much better than anything else I've tried. That said, it's kind of creepy ay times.
The things I'd really like an assistant for around the house--and which I pay people to help me with in various cases--are vacuuming, cutting the lawn, dusting, doing (and putting away) laundry, doing (and putting away) dishes, etc. Activating lights with a voice command is pretty far down the list.
That said, given enough smarts and interfaces to enough online services, a purely virtual assistant would still be pretty useful for a lot of people. "Book a trip with these general parameters." It uses my preferred booking services, knows my preferences, and comes back with some choices. Get to the level of at least a competent personal admin and that's a service I'd be willing to pay for even if it can't pick up a broom.
Expedia gave an interesting demo at AWS re:Invent around a digital travel agent. It was a very simplified demo--and, of course, Expedia specific--but I think it did give you a glimpse of what's possible.
Neither it nor amazon seem to understand the concept of a family or being in public even at the very lowest level. I can't imagine tying it to my personal account unless I lived alone. Anyone can use it to do anything they want. I have been rickrolled, all someone needs to do to rickroll an echo owner is walk by an open window and yell "Alexa (pause) play never gonna give you up by rick astley" then run like hell. It was funny the first time. I would imagine if I were dumb enough to link my amazon purchasing account to it, I expect I would now own a lifetime supply of dragon dildos from jokers walking by my window. Being able to respond to any human voice with no training sounds like an awesome idea, and it is, mostly, but unlike star trek daydreams, Alexa has no idea who's talking to her and if they should be allowed to talk to her, so she can only be given access to stuff that mostly doesn't matter.
IoT means closed non-interoperable silos but there exists a java project that emulates a Philips lightbulb Hue controller accurately enough to fool Alexa, and it can execute arbitrary URLs, and misterhouse automation can most certainly control lights and appliances using arbitrary static URLs so I have a pretty decent voice activated home automation. This brings up the point that most people cannot handle setting that up, but we're in the equivalent of the 1980s home computer boom where everyone has a different idea what a home computer would do, but we all agree everyone needs one. Alexa can do all kinds of weird things, surely it does something useful for everyone. Supposedly she has lots of sportsball features, none of which would interest me, but someone probably wants them. Everyone probably wants something Alexa does.
Being located in the kitchen I use the alarms and timers a lot while cooking.
The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.
Although at this time Google Home is only conversational for search and is still very bad about being entirely keyword based in context; I suspect that this will change.
This degrading of UX is very common with Google through the life cycle of products. What's going to happen to Google Home next year or 2 years down the road? We saw OnHub get castrated in less than a year after launch. The Nexus Q was still born.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/blackberr...
No. We built a market analytics app on top of Alexa and we have Echos all over the office. It's great.
But I don't want to be tied to stationary speakers in the office. I want my app integrated with the devices I carry with me everywhere. Google and Apple are poised to win here once they open up Assistant and Siri to third-party development.
Google's assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don't have high hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released. Given that Google won't be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy, we can expect them to offload voice requests to the highest bidder or prefer Google services above all else. This is another perverse link into Google's realm of anti-privacy; but worse, because they won't be able to do ads along the side. The responses will be the ads.
All of this to say that all of these locked down digital assistants will fail until a company truly approaches it from an open and wholistic perspective, and one that doesn't rely upon troves of private data. These devices may sell well this year, but so did digital picture frames. How many of those are still in use?
I'm under the impression that if it feels Amazon-only it's because of a failure of companies and devs to take advantage of the platform, not a failure of the platform itself. For example the Google services you're asking about, is that Amazon's fault or has Google not taken the time to develop that app because they're focusing on their own product?
I've used my echo dot most often with 3rd party services so far (daily briefing integrations, capital one, yahoo fantasy football).
1. They require you to say "Alexa, tell <app_name> to <do_something>"; This pushes all 3rd party services one level deeper.
2. Amazon competes with too many companies and services these days. Instacart devs won't want to work on a skill within a platform that is itself is a competitor.
#2 I agree is an issue. I wonder if with the current environment any independent would be allowed to gain traction, or would the competitors lock them out of services that users find mandatory (amazon shopping lists, google search, apple music, etc).
However, I get an email once a week from Amazon with "whats new" on Alexa. Its always a few useless things like holiday trivia and then some garbage you can order from Amazon. It was a ground breaking device, but its clearly meant to just be another gateway to Amazon's weird, limited ecosystem.
Alexa is actually not a walled garden at all; skills are almost entirely separated from each other, and I think that will be one of the biggest problems though. My gut says that the reason language is convenient is that it allows for things to be implicit rather than explicit and I expect the voice assistants that will be most useful are the ones that can best understand this context, which will require deeper integration.
Except that: https://developers.google.com/actions/
OFC partner negotiations will need to take place in this; this is a new field with massive implications for customer security and caution and oversight _should_ be the watchword. Imagine the open ecosystem model for this and the disasters it could bring.
But the door to the ecosystem is plainly marked now and the rules are posted over the queue. You can do it today.
> The first and most important difference is that Google is not going to create an “Action Store” where users can select which ones they want and “install” them on Google Home. Instead, Google itself is going to approve all the keywords that developers want to use to invoke their actions and make them all available to everybody.
> That effectively means that actions will be curated by Google (like an app store), but users won’t have to install anything before using them (like the web). “It's not a direct analog to any existing ecosystem,” says Jason Douglas, director for actions on Google.
That article does specify that there will be a hand-off to 3rd party systems, rather than Google orchestrating everything, but it still sounds quite tightly constrained and I think that if the plan is to have things all work nicely together and not be silos, then tighter integration with more Google control will be the name of the game.
With Google voice assistant I can't say "look up the New York Giants score then text it to Phil"
I don't recall reading that functionality in the Alexa docs, either.
Seems natural and logical to me.
* I had to specify New York Giants because Google always brings up the SF Giants if I don't
Is there a technical reason why they couldn't play an audio ad after a response based on what you asked for and your account history? It seems to me that voice UIs, like mobile UIs, have constraints on the quantity of ads but don't make them impossible. These constraints, by reducing the ad space supply, can also drive up the price for said space, especially when you consider the audience for an audio ad is A) captive and B) not restricted to a single individual.
This would make users the customers and better align incentives letting them do things like put user privacy first.
I used to work there, and I can definitely say that are working hard and fast at becoming a non-walled-garden platform for voice.
The voice capabilities are still lightyears beyond Siri/Alexa, but they have spent more time focusing on big partnerships than the fickle user facing market.
I hope they make some moves very soon, because frankly I believe their tech is truly superior.
But they have released one? https://developers.google.com/actions/
And how many people have a Google-powered phone with them every day? Siri on their iDevice? Cortana on their auto-upgraded Windows 10 PC and in their living room Xbox? All of them have Alexa's penetration beat.
“Qualitatively, Amazon’s position is more secure than the numbers would indicate.”
I beg to differ. I believe Apple has a much more secured position than Amazon in the long run, given how Siri is already integrated in iOs mobile devices and macOS based desktops. So far, has Apple capitalized on this advantage? Nope. Are they gonna? Most likely, given the fact that they always wait for everyone to show their projects in high school science fair and then they roll out their better comprehensive showcase.
If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late.
Apple's true competitor in this domain can only be Google with its staggering command on Android ecosystem. Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon.
Amazon has mainstreamed a voice tech. They have done it well and made a point that this is the way of the future. Now the second part of the problem is to integrate already existing daily use computational devices with this "voice-tech". Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.
Why would it be too late? This isn't a social network where the network effects make competition almost impossible. Apple already has a platform in HomeKit that leverages the much larger iOS installed base. More HomeKit compatible devices are being released all the time.
In fact many people criticized Apple for imposing requirements around hardware-based security which slowed the release of devices, but the recent DDOS attacks and the Internet of Shit Twitter account has shown that was the correct move.
I don't think there's any deadline for Apple to release an Echo competitor. If they release a product that is better/differentiated in some way, people will buy it. And they'll likely have a number of HomeKit devices already that work with it.
There are still economies of scale. More microphones being used more frequently means more data on which to train.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11906654/apple-wwdc-2016-n...
The price point of Google Home is aggressive, and the same functionality is provided (or will be soon) to the Android ecosystem via Google Now / Google Assistant.
Their voice and intent recognition is getting very good. I have noticed a marked improvement over the last year, even in noisy environments. I think competitors will struggle to keep up, and this is probably the single most defining feature of a personal assistant.
Most of Apple products (Mac/iPhones/iPads/AppleTV/[future Apple home product]) go through them.
Google went the other direction, recently adding routers to their product mix.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/11/report-apple-has-broken...
The big selling points of Apple WiFi routers were the ease of use and the integrated Time Machine backups. Now they are hard to use (since there is already an ISP-supplied router to work around) and people backup online instead of locally.
Probably a weird coincidence but is interesting.
We can argue about the quality of Siri, but I think Apple have the best chance of dominating the wearables market.
Amazon has Kindle Fire tablets[0], [1]; these have Alexa built-in.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018SZT3BK/ref=twister_B01BRWH8G8?...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0189XYY0Q/ref=fs_ods_fs_tab_ts
Not really. Microsoft has dozens of apps on iOS and Android, including Cortana, and it has Cortana on Xbox One as well. Microsoft also has a huge cloud business, second only to Azure. The Windows PC is one of the smaller parts of Microsoft's business nowadays.
Microsoft has a big advantage over Google, because it supports online, on-premise and hybrid operations. It has a big advantage over Apple because it doesn't really care which hardware you use.
> Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops/laptops/tablets.
Amazon has a substantial tablet business with a forked version of Android, and has its own app store. It also has plug in Fire TV products (which work much better than Apple TV), and an e-reader range, with content libraries to match.
Ooops. That should say "AWS"...
Private spaces are essential for creative thought, exploration, experimentation and just being yourself. The price is too high - it will answer questions for me, and execute commands, but I will lose my last bastion of privacy as an admission price.
Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do. Every single Voice UX I've used for input (Siri, Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from the device because it doesn't actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point.
Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7" screen in the future.
What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these things unless you're stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.
Sure, there is a niche for reordering products easily, but commodity voice tech is going to rapidly hit zero margins. Like those 10$ TV dongles that used to take a full PC.
Google makes 330 million in profit every week.
I avoid these devices for the privacy concerns and also the generally poor security of IoT devices. I hate to sound like a luddite, but i really abhor these devices and how hard the tech companies are trying to foist them upon us as "the next big thing".
Either Apple/Google/etc and granulize the permissions such that things like "boolean: user is in vehicle at speed" are addressable separately (possible but unlikely) or such knowledge comes with a cost - the app knows where you are and have been.
Same applies doubly for "noise it has heard".
Consequently my decision is: no assistant, thankyouverymuch.
How will it learn to compare all these different environments? ML obviously; which pretty much entails leveraging the consumer data to provide a better product. The cost of usable, voice-driven assistants is giving up a vast trove of personal data and abandoning the concept of privacy completely, just so I can order some paper towels from an Internet of Shit connected device instead of walking three blocks to a store.
Your position is akin to a Louis CK joke(not offense meant): "Oh boy! I hope he doesn't do what he's going to do!"
Whether you're considering voice interfaces, connection speeds, machine learning, web development, phone battery life, or whatever.. things are trending towards the better. Sometimes it's steady improvement, other times it's punctuated. Either way, the floor on what we can considering is always increasing.
While not quite what you meant, Firefox is frequently bloody awful now and it used to be quite usable :)
I think security is getting better but what we see now are the consequences of years of poor decisions. It's the post-Christmas credit card bill.
The Amazon Dot is my favorite kitchen tool, we use it more than we do spoons at this point. The ability to set multiple timers, convert units and measures, and remind you to do things all while playing your favorite tunes is amazing.
Fucking up food is a sin.
Sci-fi got it wrong with their humorous stupid robots providing comic relief while smart robots do the work. All the robots are the same smart, and getting better every day.
I don't actually care that much for it as a time though. The other timers I can easily set in the kitchen tell me at a glance how much time is left. Alexa I have to ask. These are small things but it means I don't default to using Alexa.
However when you're preparing a meal or making cookies and you're constantly moving and not watching the clock, just responding to it, it becomes handy. It's also nice to not have to stop and wash your hands to set an egg timer.
HN isn't the best sample group for this, because for most people that's a pretty large amount of the time.
"Google Now, Set a timer for..[slight pause]...<How long would>three<you like>minutes<a timer for?> [Pause, pause, pause] Three minutes. Three minutes! Three Fuck<Setting timer for>ing Minutes<three minutes>.
I am now manually inputting timers again.
"I'm sorry, mikestew, I didn't catch that."
Maybe if you waited more than 2.6 milliseconds for me start flapping my pie hole, you'd have something to catch.
I'd like it if the knowledge graph was better, for answering questions. Just wikipedia queries is a bit lame. I think Google Home will win on that one.
Oh, and I'd really, really like to be able to voice call/skype through it (presuming the array mic + software will be able to isolate my voice/remove reverberation well enough).
IM (with TTS) could be fun too
I was a huge skeptic of voice assistants before the Echo came along, but being able to turn my lights on and off with a single voice command alone has been more than worth the price of entry for the Echo Dot + TP-Link Smart Switch combo I got for $60.
Also you're being very "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
It's maddening. There's absolutely no way to discover how to use apps like this unless you already know how.
It takes all of < 1 second. I get it is obfuscated but we aren't talking about a crazy level of interface hiding.
People expect to be able to swipe on most interfaces these days.
See you in a few hours.
Just consult the nearest "X things you need to know/didn't know about Snapchat" article /s
"File, Edit, View" etc model is condensed into 3 horizontal lines. The lines I suspect were modeled on the idea of a row, with one option per row after another. Click "View" in a random app, oh look, one after another. Don't like that notion? Think of it as a Start menu in ever app, and you still have to drill down. It's barely a change, since the idea has existed since Windows 95!
Small screens need less chrome to highlight content. It's about the user having the best view of their content, not peddling a catalog of "me to" features and pretty icons in people's faces. Turns out, people actually enjoy seeing more of their content on desktops too, rather than rows of default icons.
Scrollbars? People still stop what they're doing to look for the scrollbar? I stopped dealing with that once MS shipped the Intellimouse 20 years ago. Tap/drag on mobile. You know how to tell if you're at the bottom of a document? It won't scroll further.
"It's maddening. There's absolutely no way to discover how to use apps like this unless you already know how."
But you KNOW how to use them already. They're just slightly modified. And these things have existed long enough now, there's no excuse not to just swipe either side or tap the hamburger to see what's up? I mean, how am I going to know what the new app using classic "File, Edit, View" menus does? By using the input options I have, mouse, keyboard, to dig through them. That hasn't changed on these new desktop apps. On mobile, input options are fingers, tap and swipe about.
This falls into a category of "Personally, I don't want to rethink things ever." type arguments.
Things said in our home all the time:
"Do you know what the weather is going to be like?"
"Is it going to rain today?"
"We need to buy some milk."
"The roast need one and a half hour."
We speak all the time with each other and there is nothing weird about that.
I bought a Google Home and it's literally transformed our lives in the little details for the better.
Before asking for the weather was something which required one of us to find the phone, open it find the weather app.
It sounds banal but if you have to do it every day because you take your kids to school believe me it's a godsend.
My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio.
My kids love talking with it.
And it's basically just a very practical assistant which is revolutionary in the little details not some sci-fi scenario.
It's not disrupting anything it's improving the quality of tech by allowing us to interface with technology in one of the ways which removes yet another layer of abstraction.
You don't need to know what the system can do as long as it can do enough Google Home certainly can and it's just getting started.
But that's not really an inherent issue with voice. It's just that today's systems are mostly stuck with requiring relatively strict adherence to specific syntax. This will certainly improve over time.
I don't find Alexa as transformational as some people I know do but I find it useful enough.
For example, a while back I was using Assistant to look up showtimes for a movie at a specific theater, and just to see what would happen I said "show me a map" without giving any explicit context. I was expecting Assistant to come back with a search query or maybe pictures of generic maps in response, but to my surprise it actually understood that I was talking about a map of the theater and gave me that.
Of course, that specific response in that exact situation isn't in and of itself all that impressive, and for every time Assistant succeeds in figuring out what I meant in a situation like that there's maybe one or two other times when it has no clue, but the idea of being able to speak 100% naturally to a virtual assistant and having it "just work" is unbelievably cool.
As a parent in New England, you have to choose between 3 jackets and when you are trying to get socks on two kids and can ask "alexa, what's the weather today" and know the answer without having to pause and get a phone and let one of the kids escape, that's really nice.
With modern heating systems (specifically thermostatic radiator valves) we no longer need to ensure that the heating is prepared at the right time, so we don't need to know the weather.
With the prevalence of tumble driers washing doesn't need to hang out, so we don't need to know the weather.
Most modern clothing is suitable for a very large range of temperatures and good waterproofs can be comparatively small and lightweight, allowing them to be brought everywhere without burden, so we don't need to know the weather.
Cars and roads have improved significantly, the impact of the weather on a small or long journey is often negligible, so we don't need to know the weather.
More jobs are performed indoors now and where they aren't special machines and tooling have been made that make the job easier alongside significantly reducing the risk and discomfort that weather can cause, so we don't need to know the weather.
There remain some situations where knowing the weather is very important, but very few of them affect 'the general populace' is a consistent enough manner to cause them to waste time following it.
Then again I'm British, and an American I've recently befriended has shown me how different attitudes to the employer employee relationship can be
That's one example. Schedules, playing music, guitar tuner, uke tuner, metric conversion when hands are dirty from cooking, and plenty of other examples are abundant in our house
Pretty much the story of modern civilization. Just step outside and check the temperature, and look up at the clouds and guess if it's gonna rain later. Wear a sweat shirt or waterproof windbreaker if in doubt. Or you can just not care about getting mildly cold or wet. I say this as someone who spent 25 years in Minnesota.
But sure, you don't need umbrella either and we could all be driving open cars :)
Don't get one if you don't want to, the discussion is whether it's useful and it is. Not just for the weather not just for rain. For many little things in life.
Nothing complicated about it, it's just a reality for many people.
Not sure what you think you are proving here.
I didn't really think of rain in my original comment because when I was growing up we literally just walked in the rain.
Again whats your point?
Both Alexa and Google home have been great with a kid.
[0] http://www.leevalley.com/en/images/item/Gardening/ab804s1.jp...
https://www.amazon.com/AcuRite-02027A1-Forecast-Temperature-...
But then again, we live a few hours north of the location where they filmed the Battle of Hoth. Asking anyone, let alone a machine, "what is the weather outside" gives you little information about the weather in six hours.
There is something about the tangibility of information we use a lot. Instead of it being hidden behind login, app launch etc we just access it directly.
Telling Alexa "send me some paper towels" only works if you have established a protocol in writing with Amazon (i.e. I want a 8 pack of jumbo bounty).
Your use case "how is the weather" is useful, but is it useful enough to be "the next big thing"? It may be big, but not smartphone big.
My experience with both devices is that there's no one Big Thing, except maybe music. There's a lot of stuff that just works surprisingly well by voice. Quoting my daughter: "Hey, Google, play Puff the Magic Dragon" - "What's the weather today?" - "Turn on/off the lights" - "Set a timer for 5 minutes" - "What's 17 tablespoons in cups?" - "How long does it take light to get to Mars?"
It's probably not smartphone big. But I think that in the long term, we're going to find that some kind of voice-based interactive device like this will become very common.
I cook a lot, timing is important.
I have fun playing games with my kids teaching them trivia, Google Home does that while we are free to do other things.
We listen to a lot of different music. Google at home allow me to stream from Spotify simply by saying the type i want.
My wife likes to listen to radio, she just tell Google at home to start a radio station.
Listening to the news, google does a pretty good job assembling what is most important during the day.
You can ask it to play the latest "Startups for the rest of us" podcast simply by asking it to play that.
You can ask it when you next flight is.
How long it's going to take to get to somewhere.
You can add things to a shopping list which is important when you are family.
And these are just things that it does out of the box. I don't care about switching on lights which it also can do and turn the heat up or down.
What I think most of you realize is that just like the touchscreen removed a layer of abstraction to access technology because it allow for things humans do naturally. So does the voice. It's extremely intuitive as there is nothing to learn. As voice gets better and better it's going to change a lot of things.
The sales numbers of Alexa is pretty telling too and this is from all sorts of people like my parents in law who now have one they use and understand.
I don't care whether it's going to be the next big thing, but to claim as the parent did that voice is a bad interface is simply as wrong as it can be and to claim there is no value in what it can besides a few things, well it turns out at least for my family those few things are pretty useful.
Except that humans have an average IQ of 100. They understand context, they get what I'm trying to say. Try getting Siri to turn off all repeating alarms, just for today. Or turn off all alarms until 12pm.
"But that's not how Siri is supposed to work!"
Sure, fine. It's just a ux to a limited api. But then you can't also compare it to how we use the same input for humans. Robots aren't humans. Not by a long shot. They have an api, a very specific and limited set of capabilities. They are not flexible. They don't get context.
Voice interfaces have their place. Because once you know the api, the possibilities, voice may well be most practical. But not because we happen to talk to humans.
Thats like complaining about a commodore 64 not being able to run the same games as a Playstation.
The discussion is not whether Alexa, Siri and Google Home are perfect AI's but whether they are good enough for some very basic things like those I described.
And no it's not because we talk to humans that they are good, it's because we interact with other humans through speech.
Consider a voice operated light switch. Why do I need to tell the switch I want the lights to turn on when I enter I room? The house AI should know the ambient light level, the time of day, my location in the house, and my default lighting preferences, and lighting should "just work" unless I want to change something - which is when I can ask for it.
Alexa can't do any of this yet. I can give Alexa commands to turn lights on or off, but currently there isn't even a context for the current light state. So I can't say "Alexa, lights" and have Alexa work out whether that means "turn the lights on" or "turn the lights off" for the room I'm in.
IFFT may eventually be able to do this, but it's far from transparent and straightforward.
It's about affordances. I have a reasonable idea what a human's affordances are. The current voice UI (vUI?) equivalent is a handful of dots of implemented functionality surrounded by huge areas of not-working-yet space.
Not only is there no map, there's no way to guess what might be on the map.
It's also about cognitive load. I'm typing this in a bedroom with a couple of 433MHz switches controlled by a remote - one for a light, one for a heater.
Using the remote takes no conscious load at all. When I had the switches controlled by Alexa, formulating a command took effort.
I don't think you are appreciating the things that used to be which got lost with digitalization and now can get back.
It's not just about what the AI can do, it's how it gets expressed.
That is unless I'm reading a book, in which case I need a light on. But not just any light, I'd probably just lamp next to me to shine on my book instead of the one that lights the whole room. I don't need the whole room lit, just my book. So now the contextual system needs to have cameras to see if I'm reading or just watching TV or playing on my phone or napping.
And when I walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night, I'm fine with the nightlight above the toilet. Turning on all the lights will wake me up and ruin my night vision. But my wife likes the light on. So now we need facial recognition to tell who is walking into the room.
Right now I have to get up and turn on a light if I'm on the couch reading. If we're talking effort, that's a hell of a lot more effort than saying "Alexa, turn on my reading lamp". And don't get me started on the effort it takes to try to find the missing remote...
However, the voice ux projects at big tech companies are inevitably about collecting training data.
Five years down the road that limited API is going to be a lot less limited.
"Ok Google, is it going to rain today?" is something I can (and do) ask at any point. No need to have a new device in every room of my house and no need to learn a different interface when driving in my car etc.
For example, I can check the weather for today on my phone with minimal fuzz, clicking 2 or 3 times and getting much richer information (a full graph with short term forecast, a few hours in advance, etc) in a single screen shot. Another example, ordering a pizza. I prefer a GUI over calling and taking to some human. The options are clearer, and I can review easily what I'm ordering.
Not to say that it's impractical, but voice doesnt carry a lot of info for a lot of services. We'd prefer a phone call over an specific tactile interface for everything, and that's not the case...
I gave some pretty specific examples of what it's great for.
I am not saying it's great enough yet for much more complex things no disagreement there. But unlike Seamless web or mobile interface I could potentially just with the command, "order the usual from Joe's Pizza" skip a whole suite of interactions needed to order food today.
Oh god please. I can't understand how complicated radio is these days. Fuck me, I'm forever returning or rescanning or some bullshit just to listen to something.
Hope it was worth the convenience.
As if knowledge of me visiting a public site is comparable to Google having an always-on microphone that probably is riddled with 0days and has constant internet activity that can easily mask a malicious connection?
it only takes approximately 10 minutes of recorded audio to interpret individual keystrokes with a ~96% accuracy. [1]
Google / NSA / foreign state hackers / your next door neighbor could potentially find or pay for an exploit to the device and have all of your passwords down within a few days. All of your children's passwords.
It can reconstruct every message you've typed in range of the microphone. Ergo unless you rely on bookmarks and not the address bar, it can in fact track which websites you visit. Furthermore, it could interact with ultrasonic sounds emitted by your computer speakers to track your ad experience, and if you live in a malevolent state, to locate you. [2]
If your kids are a problem to the police state, they will be identified and marked before they even know they want to be political activists.
This is the world you aren't only allowing, but are defending as well.
[1] http://rakesh.agrawal-family.com/papers/ssp04kba.pdf, https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acou...
[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-tha...
And then there are the ISPs you use to access the internet. Or the cellphone tracking your wereabouts or your camera and your microphone on your laptop. Or your router.
I could go on. If that's what you are afraid of that game is already lost.
You're trying to invalidate my legitimate concern over a device's security implications by telling me other devices have security implications as well. No shit.
Weather and traffic reports are still a staple of radio broadcasts
Also, for the $100 price it frequently goes on sale at, it's a great wireless speaker with Spotify integration built in.
However, it can't, it can't, and you can't. And when the illusion fails, it's frustrating: Neil Stephenson would call it Metaphor Shear, I (being less fancy) would call it why-didn't-they-give-me-a-better-ui-or-at-least-a-manual-dang-it.
This is ultimately why I prefer unambiguous interfaces over "friendly" ones.
I don't think your statistics makes any sense.
99% of the time, you save time by speaking your intent, vs interfacing with your phone. That time saved is meaningful and outweighs the 1% of the time you have to fall back to your screen device.
99% of the time, you can use your hands/fingers for other tasks while speaking your intent. That allows you to multitask more efficiently.
The problem is: The electronic light control modules are expensive, break down after 1-2 years, and then go obsolete.
I'll spend more time rewiring my house than stumbling around in the dark!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper
This is the same as the command line. Just like the command line, voice may not be completely intuitive initially but for regular use, it's probably much faster than a colorful GUI.
"Hey Siri, set a timer for fifteen minutes". Done.
People love to misuse that word.
I just tried it with best case scenarios, and it's still a second or so faster using voice (1.5 seconds) vs control center (3 seconds). I mean, voice is literally just yell out "hey siri set a timer for 15 minutes" and that ends the interaction. Done, just like that.
If you're changing the time that is set, it's significantly longer.
That's friction, and that's where these frictionless interfaces step in.
This is how I thought about search without search operators. Then Google got it right and owned the market.
So I agree with you -- but I also think someone will eventually get it right, and that company will take off.
1. It's slow. Apple AirPods are a good example. Siri controls the volume. Talking is slow. The input and response until the volume is changed is slow. Faster would be to use the long side of the AirPod as a touch control and sliding up and down it changes the volume. One finger slide = volume change. Two finger slide = track change. In any case, touch controls are way faster than voice.
2. It's weird in public, and faulty in loud environments. Talking aloud to yourself is going to get strange looks at you. I tend to do things that don't bring me attention, so I don't use Siri. Also, good luck using Siri at a concert or loud train commute.
I think Voice Input should be an Additional, not as the ONLY input method.
Very true -- our Echo can control the lights, but I can never remember what each light is called, while with a GUI, I can see the list and it's obvious that "Livingroom - TV" is the light near the TV that I want to dim, while "Livingroom - TV table" is the one on the table to the right of the TV and I want to turn that one off.
When you say 'Hey Google / Siri / Alexa / whatever' a connection is set up to a real human who can control your house automation. Then the system could be self learning because the operator is translating your command into an action.
But it would not be for me. I absolutely never felt the need for home automation (don't think it is going to make my life better). And I care for my privacy.
I also don't like the feeling of having a dedicated microphone set up that records everything, waiting for a command and is completly intransparent about what it sends back to Amazon/Google/Apple.
Talking, while potentially more natural, is also simply slower than most other input types.
Obviously this is not an easy task, and maybe it is being worked on already. Thoughts?
Doesn't feel like Amazon have much of an advantage to me.
One of the exhibits was of a common East Berlin living room. The exhibit explained how the state had hidden microphones here. They were listening for people to express anti-socialist ideas in their own homes. This was a real threat faced by people not more than 30 or 40 years ago. You could have your life turned upside down just for saying the wrong thing at home.
This exhibit drove home for me the inherent abusive powers enabled by some tech. One of these technologies is always on, always connected microphones. Why would I want one in my house? Given the potential downsides, what could possibly be worth it to justify having one?
I had hoped and frankly expected that there'd be a few more privacy oriented choices in this space by now. There was Zoe[1], but that got canned at last minute. I really didn't want a refund...
[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-s...
In short 5 months ago all seemed to be going OK, then they went a tad quiet. Three months ago there was another update including a CEO statement.
"Due to unforeseen delays in the development, we are not going to deliver the ZOE in the current form and all contributors will be refunded." They mention it's a partner having development delays in some critical component, but all very vague with no details.
Supposedly the project is alive and we'll get an update email when they're ready to try again. I infer from refunds all round it's not going to be soon. If it was just a few months I figure they'd ask for patience to work around whatever issue.
I don't know enough of IoT specs, protocols etc to know what would be needed other than the broadest terms. Probably yet another use for a Pi 3.
That is the most important distinction. Sure my laptop has a camera but if I keep good security practices I can feel reasonably assured that it is not monitoring me unless I've switched it on for some reason. The Alexas and Google Homes of the world default to "on", and everything you do/say is monitored because "cloud processing".
I will always have a problem with anything that tries to use my actions to build a more predictable model of who I am or what I am/will be doing
Sure, the government could force Amazon to let Echo spy on you. But they could force Apple or Google to do the same thing with your phone. Speakerphone isn't as good as far field mikes, but it's pretty good.
The government could also just bug your apartment the old fashioned way.
The big fear would be that echo is storing audio of your house that a future government could use against you. But there is no indication that Amazon does that. It only sends audio after it's triggered by the codeword. Honestly, my google and bing histories are probably a lot more damning.
But if Trump goes all hitler on us, I'd throw mine out.
Also, the recent findings show it's not just subversive actors who gets surveiled. There are already massive dragnet operations. That's happening right now. So it's not some hypothetical, that's reality.
I think the better approach, rather than waiting and finding out too late, is just to avoid these altogether. The world has mostly been pretty safe but the security appears to now be threatened and civil liberties are rapidly eroding. So just for that reason I think our position for ourselves and for friends/family should just be to pass altogether on this type of device
Yet, when everyone has email, that becomes a rather important data source. That draws the interest of those organizations tasked to keep us safe. They certainly wouldn't be doing their jobs very well if they left that trove untrawled, and voilà, soicograms of everybody.
When everyone has a live audio feed from their homes to Google, Amazon and Samsung that becomes an even bigger data source. It would be unthinkable not to mine it and I don't think anyone knows what the effects of that will be.
This means a future dictator will have a huuuge corpus of data on everyone with the perfect surveillance apparatus to leverage it. And by then it is too late.
I wonder what direction our new Russian-influenced President will take things given Putin's KGB background and savviness in shutting down free speech.
My standard counter-argument to this is "drugs". Drugs are a sufficient bug-bear to be used by the UK government as justification for invasive surveillance, but there are so many drug users in the UK that if they tried enforcing that law they would bankrupt the nation three times over from each of prosecution, building and staffing sufficient prisons, and the sheer number of people in prison who would then not earn any money or pay any taxes.
And that is just from a thing the government uses as its justification for the surveillance power it now has.
And what happens when failing to have an Alexa or equivalent devices becomes an act of subversion or at least suspicion?
> Sure, the government could force Amazon to let Echo spy on you. But they could force Apple or Google to do the same thing with your phone
I think you'll find this is an argument against Google and Apple handing over data wholesale to the government, not an argument in favour of getting another device that does that same thing too.
> The government could also just bug your apartment the old fashioned way.
You mean with judicial oversight and at some considerable amount of effort and expense that would make dragnet surveillance unpopular both within and without the government meaning its use would be reserved only for the sorts of activities proponents of surveillance say it would be used for? Yes, I'm okay with the old fashioned way.
> The big fear would be that echo is storing audio of your house that a future government could use against you. But there is no indication that Amazon does that.
The big fear is that by inviting these amoral entities into our lives they CAN (not will) perform these immoral activities at the request of other parties. It enables it.
> Honestly, my google and bing histories are probably a lot more damning.
Yet you still submit to the surveillance. Good for you. Not everyone is will to make the same compromises.
Wrt your fear of always on microphones, there is a possibility that this may also happen on your smartphone where some rogue app might be listening to all your conversations. I don't see this to be quite different from that. I guess as more and more people adopt Alexa and you see the benefits, you will reach a tipping point where the pros outweigh the cons..
Resistance to technology that has unbounded risk isn't "fear". It's vigilance against an increasingly dangerous threat. Ignore that risk at your own peril.
> this may also happen on your smartphone
What smartphone? Regular phones still work, and a full size screen and keyboard has much better ergonomics.
Also, the existence of malicious software doesn't mean it's a good idea to voluntarily increase your attack surface. Lockpicks exist, but you probably still lock your house and car.
> you see the benefits
That will never happen, because voice input isn't ever going to be compatible with my apartment's old walls. Talking loudly at night is rude to the neighbors.
Although I explicitly state that it does not work with Echo, I anticipate many returns and bad reviews after the holidays. I am pretty sure they'll keep the Echo, so it is all good for Amazon.
Ironically the Alexa Skills Kit doesn't even support Bluetooth. Does anyone know when or if it ever will ?
Why isn't your desk in front of the telescreen?