I think when we were kids we didn't think that the personal assistant would have to communicate with the outside world via the internet in order to perform its function.
If all of "Alexa" was included in a disconnected local database I bet it would still be as appealing.
Almost. More specifically, we didn't think that the personal assistant would have to communicate with a corporation that wants our info to make (more) money. The government option doesn't sound any better, either.
I think they are rather creepy, because it's so obvious there is (or, could be) a hidden agenda.
While indeed creepy, I ordered the original Echo as soon as it was made available, but I'm probably a special case. I live by myself and barely even speak out loud at home.
If Amazon can somehow monetize my primary use of Echo as a glorified kitchen timer I will be impressed.
> I live by myself and barely even speak out loud at home.
It occurs to me that the background noise in your home actually reveals a whole lot about the self:
- What you're listening to and when
- What you're watching and when
- What type of gentleman's material you enjoy and when
- When you leave home and get home
- When you wake up, when you go to bed
Some of these can be limited by the size of your house, but the trend in urban dwellings has been towards smaller so one unit could presumably capture every sound in your home.
Your first three points are moot in my case because, as a testament to your mentioned small apartment size, I consume all my entertainment with headphones after some real passive aggressive comments from neighbors a few years back.
When I wake, sleep, leave, and come home could be monitored by Echo, but it's also already being monitored by other devices I own, and it's data I'm not particularly concerned about at the moment.
> I live by myself and barely even speak out loud at home.
Not sure how other people feel about talking out loud at home, but as someone who also lives alone (in a 250 sqft apartment) and always wears headphones, I can't really imagine talking out loud. Just seems weird for some reason. I never use Siri either.
Wonder if that's a living alone thing, or a small apartment thing, or ...?
I would pay $180 for a voice-controlled kitchen timer which did not need an Internet connection to function and had verifiably secure command log deletion.
I'm less than enthusiastic about a $180 kitchen timer that uploads everything I say to the cloud for analysis, even if I understand that the analysis is to some degree necessary to improve the voice recognition.
While I hear what you are saying (no pun intended), it's important to be clear that it is not uploading everything you say to the cloud. It's uploading what you say once it wakes up by detecting the wake word, which is done completely locally.
We all spend our money how we want, and cell phones most certainly aren't free, either.
Aside from that, I didn't purchase the Echo with the intent of it being primarily kitchen timer. It just so happens that after owning it for over a year my usage of it is mostly limited to that.
My usage is probably around 85% timers and alarms, 10% streaming music, 4% shopping lists, and 1% everything else.
I'd be interested to find out how much you still use it a year from now.
Do you think you've used like you thought you would, or did you have ideas about how you might use and those didn't pan out or the device didn't work very well for those?
I ordered it originally purely on the "Oh, cool gadget!" factor, and I was willing to part with $99 for it.
I really didn't have a particular use case in mind at the start, but I was (and still am) impressed by the sound quality from such a small speaker. It's nice to be looking in the fridge and say "Alexa add X to my shopping list" or when my hands are covered with flour say "Alexa set a timer for 30 minutes" or whatever. And for those things it's worth the cost to me.
Most of the features that have rolled out just seem gimmicky, though. Take the news briefing: It either provides too little info to be useful, or it drones on and I get annoyed by the voice which, while it sounds natural compared to Microsoft Sam, still feels cold and artificial. In general I like having more control over my internet actions. I'll never use it to order a pizza or anything from Amazon because I don't know what happens if it misinterprets me or I make a mistake. And the third party apps are clunky ("Alexa, ask X to do Y").
To sum it up, aside from the very basic features I've used since day one it just feels like a toy.
Basically everything B2C today is a data play. Customers want everything to be cheap or free, so the only way to make money in B2C is to turn the customer into the product.
It's a deflationary race to the bottom. The bottom is a hell where everything watches you and sells absolutely everything about you to whomever can afford to buy the data.
Whenever I read these, I can't tell if the group is paranoid or prescient. But anyway I ordered one via my alexa. Amazon probably already knew I would.
> I think when we were kids we didn't think that the personal assistant would have to communicate with the outside world via the internet in order to perform its function.
Human personal assistants were connected to the outside world -- how else would they make appointments and reservations, book flights, find out what the weather would be, etc.? The whole point is to be connected to the outside world, automatic or no.
> Human personal assistants were connected to the outside world...
There's a difference between the "always on" communication these devices have and communication the user specifically requests.
When I want to make an airline reservation, I'm requesting the device to send the booking information to the airline. I'm not asking it to send a recording to the mothership of everything that happened in my home for the last 5 hours, which a human assistant would never do.
That's also not what's happening with Echo. You'd literally have a few seconds of audio being sent to Amazon and then some text (the result of the ASR) being sent to the third party ticket search / reservation system.
Sure, but I also wouldn't let a human assistant live in my bedroom 24/7 listening to everything I say. I would also choose my words and topic differently when a human assistant is around.
You have to be able to trust that Echo isn't recording everything you say, unless you prefix it with "Alexa", and that this behavior will never change (say this is the behavior for the average user, but with a police warrant, they're able to tap your Echo).
I'm part of the group that thinks the tradeoff is worth it for the convenience, but I understand why many people would disagree.
I wonder what sort of memory related tech it would take to pack nearly all of the internet in a small space, and have it incrementally update(the internet!) and yet write it in available memory.
Besides any contact with outside world would need communication. So you can't have an entirely standalone gadget.
If all of "Alexa" was included in a disconnected local database I bet it would still be as appealing.
Rosie on the Jetsons didn't have to "phone home".