Running AI is so expensive that Amazon will probably charge you to use Alexa in future, says outgoing exec::In an interview with Bloomberg, Dave Limp said that he “absolutely” believes that Amazon will soon start charging a subscription fee for Alexa
Alexa is so bad though. Who’s going to pay for that?
“By the way, you can now pay for Alexa AI option if you want me to reply in a slightly smarter way, but I will still cut you off with ads and other useless things. To activate AlexaAI say activate”
“No”
“I heard ‘activate’. Thank you! Your credit card will be charged $129 annually. To cancel, please log on to the website because there’s no way we’re letting you get out of this mess the same way we got you into it.”
Mine can’t ever seem to tell the difference between on and off if there is any sound in my house
Do you change the names of all your devices to people names? The living room lamp is Steve, the bedroom fan is Maryanne…
Siri was always shit but somehow managed to devolve even further lately. I never trusted her to do more than than turning lights on or off but now this shit happens:
Me: Siri, turn off the lights in the living room
Siri: OKAY, WHICH ROOM? BATHROOM, BEDROOM, KITCHEN, HALLWAY, LIVING ROOM?
Imagine living in a mansion with this cunt
I use Google to turn on my TV by saying ‘turn on TV’, easily done. But then when I ask it to adjust volume it asks me which TV… I only have one TV online and it had just turned it on.
We need to move AI from the cloud to our own hardware running in our homes. Free, open source, privacy focused hardware. It’ll eventually be very affordable.
Yes, and you can run a language model like Pygmalion Al locally on koboldcpp and have a naughty AI chat as well. Or non sexual roleplay
Storage is getting cheaper every day and the models are getting smaller with the same amount of data.
In five to ten years, imo, AI will be everywhere and may even replace the need for mobile Internet connections in terms of looking up information.
You’re probably right, but I kinda hope you’re wrong.
God I wish, I would just love local voice control to turn my lights and such on and off… but noooooooooooo
I have that with just my phone, using Wiz lights and ITEEE. It’s the only home automation I even have because it’s the only one I found that doesn’t necessarily need a special base station like an Alexa or Google Home.
But you want a local base station, else there’s no local control. You want to use local-only networks like z-wave, zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth, etc, even though they require a base station because that’s what gives you a local-only way of controlling things.
Matter promises a base station may no longer be necessary for smart devices to control each other, but it is rolling out very slowly
I also wonder what I’ll be able to do with the Thread radio in the iPhone 15 Pro
It’s the year of the voice for Home Assistant. Given their current trajectory, I’m hopeful they’ll have a pretty darn good replacement for the most common use cases of Google Home/Alexa/Siri in another year. Setting timers, shopping list management, music streaming, doorbell/intercom management. If you’re on the fence about a Nabu Casa subscription, pull the trigger as it helps them stay independent and not get bought out or destroyed by commercial interests.
Thumbs up for Nabu Casa and Home Assistant!
I haven’t yet played with the local voice stuff but have been following it with interest. Actually, now that Taspberry Piis are starting to become available again, I’m on the fence between buying a few more, vs finding something with a little more power, specifically for voice processing
While you may have points against Apple and how effective Siri may be, with this latest version kind of products, even the watch has enough processing power to do voice processing on device. No ads. No cloud services
Pretty much. If you want a voice assistant right now, Siri is probably the best in terms of privacy. I bought a bunch of echos early, then they got a little shitty but I was in, and now I just want them out of my house except for one thing - music. Spotify integration makes for easy multi-room audio in a way that doesn’t really work as well on the other platform that I’ll consider (Apple/Siri) and basically adds sonos-like functionality for a tiny fraction of the price. The Siri balls and airplay are just not as good, and of course, don’t work as well with Spotify.
But alexa is so fucking annoying that at this point I mostly just carry my phone (iPhone) and talk to that even though it’s a little less convenient because I’m really goddamned tired of hearing “by the way…”
AI is being touted as the solution to everything these days. It’s really not, and we are going to find that out the hard way.
I get what you’re saying, but voice assistants are one of the main places LLMs belong.
Yes, but so much more. An actually useful assistant that could draft emails, set reminders appropriately, create automations, etc. would be worth A LOT of money to me.
I think if there ends up actually being a version of AI that is privacy focused and isn’t screwing over creators it’d be so much less controversial. Also, everyone (including me) is really, really fucking sick of hearing about it all of the time in the same way that everyone is/was sick of hearing about the blockchain. As in: “Bro your taco stand needs AI/the blockchain.”
Hey that’s only because Amazon, Google and Microsoft (et al) just doesn’t have the Money to Make it good!!
So what about 9.99 a month?
4.99 if you pay up front for a year?
Euh, or how much can you cough up, like for a year or at least for Q4, I’m literally on a bad roll here.
I’m not going to buy into a subscription model for something I’ve already paid for. This subscription model crap is complete bullshit.
We even tried to do it with heated seats recently. Like install heated seats in your car, but disable them in software. It’s crazy that companies think they can get away with this.
Alexa is more like a telemarketer disguised as an assistant. Every interaction is followed by a “by the way . Its a shit experience so I stopped using mine.
Alexa was designed explicitly for that purpose. They lose money on every Echo sold, the whole idea was they would make money selling you stuff. Turns out people would rather use their Echo to check the weather, get recipes, etc. rather than voice shop.
I just can’t see a use case for voice shopping. There are almost zero instances where I want to buy something without having a visual of that thing in front of me at time of purchase.
I could possibly see something like “buy another stick of deodorant”, but even then I want to see if there are deals or some other options and would want to check the price at a minimum.
Seems like yet another MBA idea.
It’s really only good for re-ordering things you’ve already ordered. It will let you know that it found something in your order history and then you can decide whether you want to order again.
Ha, I use mine almost exclusively as a light switch. I don’t have to get out of bed to turn off my lights or turn on my fan. I’m sure they’re losing a bunch of money on me
So they expect that people pay for being spied upon and seriously data mined?
