Nobody wants to talk to computers
?vaklove

Nobody wants to talk to computers

We read a lot these days about the economy not doing well. 1,000, 2,000, even 10,000 ... these are the numbers of people getting laid off from large tech companies. Hard to say if it is because of real business concerns or leaders just realizing that they overhired. For some, it is time to evaluate projects and kill the projects which are going nowhere.

For instance,?Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure” on pace to lose $10 billion this year. Everyone knows Alexa, but brand awareness is not a substitute for success. The bottom line is - there is not much that people are asking Alexa for or about.

The original thought behind Alexa and Google Assistant and Siri (Cortana doesn't count) was that we would surround ourselves with these magical boxes and engage in conversation.

Most of the commands are 'play music', 'what's the weather tomorrow', or 'start the timer'. When I ask Siri on my phone about anything, the most common answer is 'look what I found' and it shows me a few links from Google search.

The expectation was that you will be able to ask Alexa about a selection of products and buy them with a few simple words. It sounds simple, but what the developers delivered was not as useful as they hoped.

That's especially clear based on feedback from actual users from a?Reddit thread about Alexa:

  • Alexa, anytime you’re about to say something that starts with “By the way…” … SHUT THE FUCK UP
  • I tried using my Alexa for weather for the first time today. I have never been more angry than when she started giving me book suggestions.
  • I get unreasonably angry when she tries to suggest something, who fucking asked Alexa just set my timer for my god damn sausage!

That’s harsh.

And Siri didn't fare much better. A bit of user feedback:

  • 'I used to say “hey Siri” when I lost my phone in the house and I’d hear a “UH HUH?” Which helps me find it. Now she just turns on without making a sound even when not on silent. Her only use for me is now diminished.'?

But the best example is given by another user:

  • 'I think they always envisioned use cases like “Alexa, order toothpaste” and that’s a big part of what isn’t working out.?
  • The reason it can’t do this is more of a problem with Amazon’s marketplace than Alexa though and I feel like that should have been obvious from the beginning. Nothing is organized very well and Amazon sucks at just finding you like, a basic normal version of something like toothpaste. There are so many different variations of every product and some are stupidly overpriced by resellers or come in weird quantities or are some weird outdated version of the product or even downright counterfeits, so you always have to scroll through and read descriptions carefully. And if you do find something you like there’s a good chance it’ll be gone next month when you want to reorder it and you have to search all over again.'

Something which sounds so simple has thousands of unspoken rules and implicit expectations which are difficult to account for. Just as one example, we are still trying to perfect accurate voice recognition:

  • "Siri, someone is breaking into my house! Call the police!"
  • NOW PLAYING: "EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE" BY THE POLICE.

Is this a “colossal failure”? I wouldn't say so. I think that the expectations were hyped too high and the disappointment followed. The voice assistants were connected to systems which either require further human interaction or suddenly require an unreasonably detailed level of explanation. And nothing gets you more emotional when something doesn't work, but the computer cheerfully suggests that you can buy a book about it. The next level will be when the?computer suggests that you should calm down.

The recurrent pattern? Lower your expectations about technology’s revolutionary potential. Meanwhile, you can safely ignore marketing campaigns portraying smiling people having fun talking to a computer.

We’re talking generative AI plus voice recognition here? They’re like nuts and bolts: You can use them together or separately, but the range of uses is endless. There are some things you want to say to a computer, and other things are better suited to keying in. Regardless of which physical interface is in play, the dramatic impact of the ridiculous mode acceleration in this field is the degree of awareness the interlocutor system exhibits. Have you written a journal entry lately, tracing newly discovered implications of some real world dynamics, only to be blown away yet again by the sophistication inherent in the astute word completion suggestion the writing software is offering after you’ve typed in the first two letters? The blasted thing is following your very thought patterns. You’re saying Alexa can’t order you a tube of toothpaste. That’s eminently fair. Assuming free market competition prevails in this space, though, and given the exponential growth in the dimensions in which AI learning is excelling, isn’t it kind of reasonable to expect a next generation robotic personal assistant will be able to navigate the obstacle course that is Amazon’s shopping process as efficiently as you can? Or more efficiently!

回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Vaclav Vincalek的更多文章

  • The House of?Alexa

    The House of?Alexa

    The wait is over. Amazon introduced Alexa+.

  • Big Bada Boom, Christmas 2032?

    Big Bada Boom, Christmas 2032?

    There is a chance that Earth will get hit by an asteroid on Dec. 22, 2032.

    2 条评论
  • Robots. The next wave is coming

    Robots. The next wave is coming

    My dear reader, by now, you might be tired of reading another write up about AI. The promises of the imminent arrival…

    4 条评论
  • When the AI rubber hits the?road

    When the AI rubber hits the?road

    Large Language Models (LLMs) have stormed the front pages of mass media, thanks to OpenAI and its now famous ChatGPT…

    10 条评论
  • DeepSeek hysteria

    DeepSeek hysteria

    One of the advantages of writing a weekly newsletter is that you don’t have to react immediately to any breaking news…

    7 条评论
  • The pitfalls of AI?search

    The pitfalls of AI?search

    Before we resume our regular programming, I have to issue an apology to you, my dear reader. I have been misled and in…

    2 条评论
  • AI. In search of value, in search of?price

    AI. In search of value, in search of?price

    Now that we are on our way to spending billions of dollars on AI, the question of making at least some of the money…

  • The Face-AI-book

    The Face-AI-book

    I wanted to write something this week about the continuous moral decline of Facebook. But then I found something…

    1 条评论
  • Agentic madness

    Agentic madness

    The good old year 2024, when we had to deal with Software with a Soul or Agentic AI, or when we had to contemplate the…

    2 条评论
  • Cure your hangover with AI

    Cure your hangover with AI

    Another New Year’s Eve, another morning filled with devastating hangovers. But fear not, dear reader, AI is here to…

    1 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了