Amazon Is Set To Supercharge Alexa With Generative AI 29
At its fall hardware event Wednesday, Amazon revealed an all-new Alexa voice assistant powered by its new Alexa large language model. The Verge reports: According to Dave Limp, Amazon's current SVP of devices and services, this new Alexa can understand conversational phrases and respond appropriately, interpret context more effectively, and complete multiple requests from one command. In an interview with The Verge ahead of the event, Limp explained that the new Alexa LLM "is a true generalizable large language model that's very optimized for the Alexa use case; it's not what you find with a Bard or ChatGPT or any of these things."
However, this all-new Alexa isn't being unleashed everywhere, on everyone, all at once. The company is rolling it out slowly through a preview program "in the coming months" -- and only in the US. Clearly, there have been lessons learned from the missteps of Microsoft and Google, and Amazon is proceeding with caution. "When you connect an LLM to the real world, you want to minimize hallucinations -- and while we think we have the right systems in place ... there is no substitute for putting it out in the real world," says Limp. If you want to be notified when you can join the preview, tell your Echo device, "Alexa, let's chat," and your interest will be registered.
Unsurprisingly, this superpowered Alexa may not always be free. Limp said that while Alexa, as it is today, will remain free, "the idea of a superhuman assistant that can supercharge your smart home, and more, work complex tasks on your behalf, could provide enough utility that we will end up charging something for it down the road."
However, this all-new Alexa isn't being unleashed everywhere, on everyone, all at once. The company is rolling it out slowly through a preview program "in the coming months" -- and only in the US. Clearly, there have been lessons learned from the missteps of Microsoft and Google, and Amazon is proceeding with caution. "When you connect an LLM to the real world, you want to minimize hallucinations -- and while we think we have the right systems in place ... there is no substitute for putting it out in the real world," says Limp. If you want to be notified when you can join the preview, tell your Echo device, "Alexa, let's chat," and your interest will be registered.
Unsurprisingly, this superpowered Alexa may not always be free. Limp said that while Alexa, as it is today, will remain free, "the idea of a superhuman assistant that can supercharge your smart home, and more, work complex tasks on your behalf, could provide enough utility that we will end up charging something for it down the road."
Alexa, inflate my date. (Score:1)
Multi-command support?
"Hey Alexa, at 7:00 tonight, turn the lights 25% and the color to amber, and turn on the smart plug labeled date inflater."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I do too, but it doesn't work well without specifying every action precisely in one of the formats skills or built-ins expect.
As far as navigating ambiguity goes, Alexa has done a piss-poor job of it. For the longest time, whenever I tried "Alexa, play reggae." the response was "Playing Balia Reggaeton on Amazon Music." Now, it plays a playlist from (not Amazon Music) without any changes in music services on my part. If there's an exact phrase you'd prefer to do something, you are/were better off writing o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it that every time someone tries to be romantic some pervert has to come in and ruin it all?
Re: (Score:2)
Right. Romantic would have been suggesting Kenny G.'s son, the guy who plays sax for the metal band Imperial Triumphant. *SWOONS*
Re: Alexa, inflate my date. (Score:2)
"Alexa, I don't have a date inflator. Order one for same day this evening. And copy the things this person said on Slashdot."
Pass (Score:5, Insightful)
Will it stop trying to sell me shit and/or launching into a lengthy unrelated diatribes in response to simple questions like, "What's the temperature?"
Siri: It's 71 degrees.
Alexa: It's 71 degrees. By the way, did you know that [youtube.com]....
I wanted the computer from the Enterprise-D but all I got was this lousy data harvester.
Re:Pass (Score:5, Interesting)
Siri: It's 71 degrees.
Alexa: It's 71 degrees. By the way, did you know that [youtube.com]....
Me: looks at the thermometer.
That's the difference between a gen-Xer with a 1970s' of privacy and common sense and today's generations: do the simple thing that doesn't require megajoules of energy, a gigantic networking infrastructure and getting spied upon by sketchy big tech oligopolies to obtain a simplistic result.
Re: (Score:3)
Umm, I'm likely not much younger than you are, in the middle of Gen-X and the Millennials, regardless, this isn't a purely generational thing. There are conveniences. I can ask the smart speaker for the temperature while getting dressed for work. I don't have to pause to walk to the living room where the mercury-in-glass thermometer lives. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have it in the house despite the convenience, but my partner (late Gen-X, FYI) loves the damn thing. I'm not going to die on the hill
Re: (Score:2)
Apple's privacy policy is probably the best out of the bunch
Least bad.
Because if you think Apple doesn't spy on you, collect and monetize mountains of your personal data, you're deluded.
Siri isn't one of them. I find her incredibly annoying and only use her in the car-
it, not her.
Siri is a fucking machine.
There are conveniences. I can ask the smart speaker for the temperature while getting dressed for work.
I will pass such a minor convenience when it involved compromising my privacy and wasting insane amounts of energy.
For not much more inconvenience, I can buy a thermometer with an outside sensor and stick it in the dressing room, if looking at the temperature while I'm getting dressed is something I do regularly. And that will cost a couple of AA
Re: (Score:2)
You’re massively overstating your case dude. For one, read this comment [slashdot.org]. For two, stop exaggerating the energy footprint of looking up a weather forecast via the Internet. With or without a voice assistant, it’s not megajoules. The infrastructure does other things you know, including facilitating this conversation.
Want to explore how much energy the local newscast requires to deliver a weather forecast to your TV? I'd wager it’s more but I’m not gonna apologize for tuning in
Re: (Score:3)
With or without a voice assistant, itâ(TM)s not megajoules.
Yes it is:
- When you talk to the box and it samples and compresses your voice command, it consumes electricity.
- It sends data down the interpipes. All those routers and switches consume electricity
- Apple receives the audio, decompresses it, and turns it into a text. General speech-to-text is a VERY CPU resource-intensive - if not AI-level - kind of a job. That burns a massive amount of electricity.
- Then some task is performed as a response to your query. In this case, fetching the temperature from a serv
Re: (Score:2)
> Because if you think Apple doesn't spy on you, collect and monetize mountains of your personal data, you're deluded.
Who told you that?
The only thing I could find was some researchers could see that Apple App store app was communicating with Apple, but couldn't say what that information was.
They hacked a phone with an earlier versions of iOS (which didn't have tracking limitation) to see other apps communicating. So they claimed it must be sinister without any real evidence.
Then a class action was opene
Re: (Score:2)
I've never been clear on why people think that they're so important and their information so valuable that Amazon is going to "spy" on them. Maybe if you're a major movie star or corporate executive there might be some value in the trivia of your daily life, but face it, not even the cat cares about your conversations.
I was an early adopter and an Alpha and Beta user for a number of new features, and have never seen any sign of the system "spying" on me. It does what I want most of the time, although it h
Re: (Score:2)
Main character syndrome - a tendency among people to view themselves as the lead character in their own life story, more important and interesting than those around them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
...and the Earl Grey isn't even that hot.
Hey Alexa, sing me a Ye song about unicorns! (Score:2)
Wait until Alexa is hooked up with your printer and you can ask here to draw a picture of Drake riding the unicorn.
yay (Score:1)
yet another bit of technology to completely ignore.
can't wait!
Finally (Score:2)
I got an Echo when they were new and hyped, and I got some Google Home Minis for free with some Nest thermostats. We use them mostly for setting timers controlling a few lights, and answering very simple questions. From the start I was frustrated that they had trouble with a lot of things that I tried, and they never got any smarter. With all the money Amazon supposedly has been pouring into them, you would think we would have seen improvements, but I've seen no evidence that either of them has changed f
Alexa... STOP! (Score:3)
Now generates wrong answers 2x faster! (Score:2)
Lawyers are giddy with excitement in anticipation of Alexa serving up bad advice causing actual harm to people.
Re: (Score:1)
Nah, it will just generate 2x more ads.
Yay (Score:3)
Now with twice the sales pitch after the wrong answer!
About time (Score:2)
As of now, Alexa is a cupid stunt.