Yeah, I realized these things are terrible about a year ago. So, I hacked them into computer speakers using some cheap amps and a 12 volt power supply.
Hi I have one! The echo is actually a very useful smart speaker and produces good quality audio. Mainly I just use it to voice activate Spotify and for quick easy things like weather forecasts, trivia that comes up in conversation, and updates on package orders. Yes I realize it’s probably spying on me. No I don’t care that much.
Thats great. Try the google one as well. Its better than Alexa. I would say install one in the living room and second in in your bedroom. It’ll be a perfect home🥰
We either avoid the spying like the plague or we accept it into our homes. If we want a future with robots, those things are going to have microphones for ears, a speaker for a mouth, cameras for eyes, and some sort of smell detector for the nose. We’re just in the training phase for that experience.
Kids will adapt to it, older curmudgeons will try to stay away with their lamplight oil. I personally want a robot to take care of cooking and cleaning so I can enjoy other things in life.
Yes, it’s an ongoing struggle between convenience and privacy. I’ve noticed that the voices for privacy tend to be the loudest and angriest, yet they still choose to have cell phones and computers and complain on the Internet. Unless they’re Amish or in the deep wilderness, AI will eventually know a lot more about them than they would like.
I bought a phone mount for my car that had Alexa built in. The software fucked up after 2 weeks, but it’s still the best physical design for a phone mount that I’ve found. So it’s unplugged and got a dead battery and just holds my phone.
I have 7 in my house. I have my lights, plant humidifier, TV, air filter, Aquarium equipment, and others all hooked up to them. You can run almost anything you need to just by using your voice.
Getting ready to watch something on TV? “Alexa it’s movie time.” Turns on the TV and Switches the input to the Shield and opens up our go to media app. Shuts off all lights in the house except the living room. Dims those to 10% and changes them to red. Just enough light to see your snacks and the remote by. Turns off the sump filter for the Aquariums in just the living room but leaves the in tank bubble filter going for better silence. All with 4 spoken words and no need to work with multiple remotes and apps in your phone.
That’s just one example. We have an obscene amount of routines setup for nearly ecery scenario we have run across and adding new ones is easy.
Hell… We even have a routine where if you say “Alexa, do you know Desi naach?” It plays Naatu Naatu from every speaker in the house at full volume.
Show me a FOSS system as plug and play, powerful, and as EASY to use as Alexa and I’ll drop Alexa in the trash tommorow and switch.
Genuine question. What part of what I said makes me a sucker?
I only have so long to live on this earth. I’m not going to expend excessive amounts of energy on things that are unlikely to have any REAL effect on my life. I don’t give a shit if they listen in on me. I talk about work as a delivery driver (not Amazon), my wife’s work as a hotel front desk help, trackmania and Baldur’s Gate. Lots of state secret stuff there for me to be worried about.
Again as I said… find me an easy to use plug and play FOSS voice assistant system and I will throw Alexa in the trash.
I enjoy the home I have set up and I feel relaxed when I return from a long day at work. The Alexa system has helped make that a reality.
The best market for these will always be older people, and people with disabilities, both mental and physical. Voice interaction is a great interface when there is friction from a screen or physical input.
It’s also useful for those with families, as you can use it for shopping reminders, as an intercom around your house, etc.
These types of projects are driven by metrics, and teams have some kind of quota/goal that they need to reach by a certain date to keep the project on schedule. Bonuses or job security may be on the line here, and so you may see some desperate employees “going the extra mile” to reach their goals.
Relatedly, Alexa’s voice activation sensitivity is essentially a tunable number. It can be changed to be more sensitive, so that it will activate more easily (e.g. maybe you say “Alex” instead of “Alexa”). The people who control this are likely on the team with that deadline, so the incentives are there to lower this value in order to collect more data by recording personal conversations “accidentally”. Maybe a bad update goes out that causes Alexa to activate randomly, and they quickly fix it after a few days when they collected all the non-Alexa personal conversations they need for their AI.
That’s maybe a bit too deep into the paranoia/tinfoil hat spectrum for some, but history has shown that you can’t give big tech the benefit of the doubt. Especially when you see some of the documents from the Google trial, where executives discuss rolling back new features to improve arbitrary metrics in the short term so that they can get their bonuses for the quarter, even if it hurts consumers.
Add comment