alt Hacker NewsAlexa is in the same boat. Compared to old-fashioned finger-and-screen interfaces, maybe voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case. It's inconvenient, unreliable, and even if it works quite slow. Yet you see companies continue to chase the dream in the current generative AI craze.
I get the sci-fi "wow" appeal, but even the folks who tried to build Minority Report-style 3D interfaces gave up after realizing tired arms make for annoyed users.
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It's great interface when your hands are doing something else so I do see the appeal.
Just that... nobody is willing to pay much for a thing that will do some basic search, dictate a recipe, or do unit conversion, or add a thing to a list.
Alexa has gotten significantly worse with the "Alexa+" AI updates. I used to be able to say stuff like "Alexa, set the lights to 5" and it would turn the lights to 5% in the room I was currently in. Now half the time it tries to start a conversation about the number 5, or the northern lights, or other random nonsense. Absolute garbage.
Alexa has this annoying habit of being non-deterministic.
> Alexa, turn on the bedroom lights.
> OK lights turn on
In the evening:
> Alexa, turn on the bedroom lights.
> I'm sorry, I don't know a device called "bedroom lights".
How is it even possible to build a computer system that behaves like this?
> voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case
You know I have talked to chatGPT for maybe a 100 hours over the past 6 months. It gets my accent, it switches languages, it humors. It understands what I am saying even if it hallucinates once in a while.
If you can have chatGPT level of comprehension, you can do a lot with computers. Maybe not vim level of editing, but every single function in a driving car should be controllable by voice, and so could a lot of phone and computer functions.