Alexa is nagging you more because Amazon knows you don’t care about new features

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/23/22851451/amazon-alexa-by-the-way-use-case-functionality-plateaued

22 8 5 years ago

I have an Echo in my kitchen that I mainly use as a voice-activated timer and to play music or podcasts as I cook.

I have noticed the behavior described in the article. I will set a timer and then Alexa will say "By the way did you know that I can blah blah blah? Do you want me to do it now?" To which I will answer "No".

It is comically like the butter robot from Rick and Morty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa9MpLXuLs0) in that I just want it to do a few simple tasks and it wants to be / do more.

diskzero• 5 years ago

Come on, you are going to miss out on the Weekend Celebration Routine. Now, what that actually is, I have no idea.

bspammer• 5 years ago

I really resent being nagged by a device I own, just to meet the self-actualization needs of some product manager at Amazon.

jgrowl• 5 years ago

When I want to set a timer I have to walk over to the device and unmute it because I refuse to leave it unmuted at this point. It is partially due to the fact that I have Sonos speakers with alexa built in and it just wasn't well done. Leaving it unmuted leads to it constantly activating from normal conversations.

After being prompted by one of these 'new features' when I physically turned it on and spoke to it only to set a timer is a really big turn off for me. No I do not want your advertisements while I am trying to manage the stove and oven. You've made the ONE feature that I actually use more inconvenient than just doing it manually.

The real reason I only use it for timers though is because it has been completely useless for anything else. Asking it questions never yields anything useful even when it is able to actually understand what I've said correctly.

Normille• 5 years ago

  >I have an Echo in my kitchen that I mainly use as a voice-activated timer and to play music or podcasts as I cook.

Same here. I use it to play the radio while I'm washing the pots. As I can change channel without having to dry my hands.

  >When I want to set a timer I have to walk over to the device and unmute it because I refuse to leave it unmuted

Again, ditto.

The longer I have the Echo Dot, the more I realise just how monumentally far from any kind of "intelligence" AI currently has --especially in Alexa form.

Classic example. Tonight the missus was cooking and asked Alexa to play some Christmassy tunes [I know! I know!]. Alexa played a couple we recognised and then something quite bluesy that sounded a bit like Chuck Berry. So, we wanted to find out what it was.

"Alexa, what was that tune you just played?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know that one"

"Alexa, list the tunes you've played tonight"

"If you give me a list of tunes, I can play them"

"Alexa. What was the song you have just finished playing?"

"Did you know you can..."*

etc... etc.. til she gave up.

There is absolutely no "intelligence" behind this at all. It really irks me that people keep banging on about Alexa [and similar voice assistants] and things like online chatbots as if they were displaying some kind of intuition. All's they are is pretty good speech recognition [credit where it's due for that, at least] welded to a menu of prepared answers based on what keywords the thing picks out in what you say.

Wake me up when an AI can tell me it's depressed and has a pain in the diodes all down its left-hand side.

type0• 5 years ago

Will Alexa evolve into something crazy like what was depicted in South Park Post COVID ? I think it will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lugeruSbnAE

121789• 5 years ago

I think this is a pretty interesting problem. Assuming they DID have new features that were useful and valuable, what's the best way for you to learn them? I also find the random recommendations annoying, but discoverability for voice features must be tough

mikewarot• 5 years ago

Alexa is going to get unplugged and put in a box if it doesn't stop trying to upsell me stuff. I ask a question, I expect it to be fire and forget.

I do NOT expect it to offer me something else, and make me think about some random BS.

It's worse than clippy.

Alexa is nagging you more because Amazon knows you don’t care about new features

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