I've said it multiple times in the past when posting to articles that claimed Alexa was "beating" Siri: Amazon's intentions with Alexa were to get customers to increase their impulse purchasing from Amazon, not to answer random questions better. And since Alexa wasn't actually effective at doing that...it was more of a failure than a success.
I've said it multiple times in the past when posting to articles that claimed Alexa was "beating" Siri: Amazon's intentions with Alexa were to get customers to increase their impulse purchasing from Amazon, not to answer random questions better. And since Alexa wasn't actually effective at doing that...it was more of a failure than a success.
If Amazon’s sole reason for building Alexa technology was to drive impulse buying via voice, then one could argue that the project is a failure. But that was never the case. They set out to build Alexa as a technology that could actually deliver on the promise of voice based human-machine interaction where many previous attempts had failed or come up far too short. They knew that one of the reasons for the failures of previous attempts at voice based interaction technology was an insufficient volume of human sourced data to build their deep learning models from. Selling millions of inexpensive Echo devices at very low cost helped make Alexa “smarter” by pulling in a much broader base of data to feed into their massive storage and processing backend systems that they already have in place.
As a technology Alexa is very successful and goes far beyond previous attempts at building similar technology. Figuring out how to monetize the technology to improve Amazon’s bottom line is a different class of problem and in no way detracts from it having met its design objectives, which largely came directly from Jeff Bezos.
You are free to determine whatever criteria you wish for declaring success or failure of a product in isolation or in comparison to other products. But every objective comparison that I’ve seen between the available voice assistants has consistently rated the Alexa technology as being more accurate and relevant when tested with the same queries. These comparisons don’t seem to be a thing anymore for some reason, but if I had to guess, I’d say they’ve largely reached a point where they are good enough for those people who actually use them, or bad enough that people who don’t like them have given up trying to make them work at all. I don’t see Alexa and Siri as competing as much as I see them as basically filling the the same role in two different ecosystems. I can’t replace Alexa with Siri, or vice versa. If I could I know which one I would choose.
I use Alexa every single day for home automation, lighting control, alarms, reminders, security, Apple Music access, weather reports, shipping status, and surveillance (viewing security cameras). I rarely use Alexa to order anything because I do all of my online shopping using a web browser on Mac, iPad, or iPhone. If Apple allowed Siri based ordering I wouldn’t use it any more or less than I use Alexa for this purpose, which is effectively never. I use Siri with Apple Car Play, Apple Music, and with my HomePod. I could use Siri more but I’m not a patient person and I don’t like repeating myself.
I've said it multiple times in the past when posting to articles that claimed Alexa was "beating" Siri: Amazon's intentions with Alexa were to get customers to increase their impulse purchasing from Amazon, not to answer random questions better. And since Alexa wasn't actually effective at doing that...it was more of a failure than a success.
If Amazon’s sole reason for building Alexa technology was to drive impulse buying via voice, then one could argue that the project is a failure. But that was never the case. They set out to build Alexa as a technology that could actually deliver on the promise of voice based human-machine interaction where many previous attempts had failed or come up far too short. They knew that one of the reasons for the failures of previous attempts at voice based interaction technology was an insufficient volume of human sourced data to build their deep learning models from. Selling millions of inexpensive Echo devices at very low cost helped make Alexa “smarter” by pulling in a much broader base of data to feed into their massive storage and processing backend systems that they already have in place.
As a technology Alexa is very successful and goes far beyond previous attempts at building similar technology. Figuring out how to monetize the technology to improve Amazon’s bottom line is a different class of problem and in no way detracts from it having met its design objectives, which largely came directly from Jeff Bezos.
You are free to determine whatever criteria you wish for declaring success or failure of a product in isolation or in comparison to other products. But every objective comparison that I’ve seen between the available voice assistants has consistently rated the Alexa technology as being more accurate and relevant when tested with the same queries. These comparisons don’t seem to be a thing anymore for some reason, but if I had to guess, I’d say they’ve largely reached a point where they are good enough for those people who actually use them, or bad enough that people who don’t like them have given up trying to make them work at all. I don’t see Alexa and Siri as competing as much as I see them as basically filling the the same role in two different ecosystems. I can’t replace Alexa with Siri, or vice versa. If I could I know which one I would choose.
I use Alexa every single day for home automation, lighting control, alarms, reminders, security, Apple Music access, weather reports, shipping status, and surveillance (viewing security cameras). I rarely use Alexa to order anything because I do all of my online shopping using a web browser on Mac, iPad, or iPhone. If Apple allowed Siri based ordering I wouldn’t use it any more or less than I use Alexa for this purpose, which is effectively never. I use Siri with Apple Car Play, Apple Music, and with my HomePod. I could use Siri more but I’m not a patient person and I don’t like repeating myself.
It (voice assistants) will get better as time goes on, but Amazon doesn’t have a OS, or high end SOC’s to make it happen long term like Apple, the tech isn’t there yet, it’s going to a long slow iterative process (an Apple strong point). Which is why I don’t get upset by the performance of any of them.
I've said it multiple times in the past when posting to articles that claimed Alexa was "beating" Siri: Amazon's intentions with Alexa were to get customers to increase their impulse purchasing from Amazon, not to answer random questions better. And since Alexa wasn't actually effective at doing that...it was more of a failure than a success.
If Amazon’s sole reason for building Alexa technology was to drive impulse buying via voice, then one could argue that the project is a failure. But that was never the case. They set out to build Alexa as a technology that could actually deliver on the promise of voice based human-machine interaction where many previous attempts had failed or come up far too short. They knew that one of the reasons for the failures of previous attempts at voice based interaction technology was an insufficient volume of human sourced data to build their deep learning models from. Selling millions of inexpensive Echo devices at very low cost helped make Alexa “smarter” by pulling in a much broader base of data to feed into their massive storage and processing backend systems that they already have in place.
As a technology Alexa is very successful and goes far beyond previous attempts at building similar technology. Figuring out how to monetize the technology to improve Amazon’s bottom line is a different class of problem and in no way detracts from it having met its design objectives, which largely came directly from Jeff Bezos.
You are free to determine whatever criteria you wish for declaring success or failure of a product in isolation or in comparison to other products. But every objective comparison that I’ve seen between the available voice assistants has consistently rated the Alexa technology as being more accurate and relevant when tested with the same queries. These comparisons don’t seem to be a thing anymore for some reason, but if I had to guess, I’d say they’ve largely reached a point where they are good enough for those people who actually use them, or bad enough that people who don’t like them have given up trying to make them work at all. I don’t see Alexa and Siri as competing as much as I see them as basically filling the the same role in two different ecosystems. I can’t replace Alexa with Siri, or vice versa. If I could I know which one I would choose.
I use Alexa every single day for home automation, lighting control, alarms, reminders, security, Apple Music access, weather reports, shipping status, and surveillance (viewing security cameras). I rarely use Alexa to order anything because I do all of my online shopping using a web browser on Mac, iPad, or iPhone. If Apple allowed Siri based ordering I wouldn’t use it any more or less than I use Alexa for this purpose, which is effectively never. I use Siri with Apple Car Play, Apple Music, and with my HomePod. I could use Siri more but I’m not a patient person and I don’t like repeating myself.
It (voice assistants) will get better as time goes on, but Amazon doesn’t have a OS, or high end SOC’s to make it happen long term like Apple, the tech isn’t there yet, it’s going to a long slow iterative process (an Apple strong point). Which is why I don’t get upset by the performance of any of them.
I don't understand the use case of voice assistants. Do people actually need it and if yes for what?
I've said it multiple times in the past when posting to articles that claimed Alexa was "beating" Siri: Amazon's intentions with Alexa were to get customers to increase their impulse purchasing from Amazon, not to answer random questions better. And since Alexa wasn't actually effective at doing that...it was more of a failure than a success.
If Amazon’s sole reason for building Alexa technology was to drive impulse buying via voice, then one could argue that the project is a failure. But that was never the case. They set out to build Alexa as a technology that could actually deliver on the promise of voice based human-machine interaction where many previous attempts had failed or come up far too short. They knew that one of the reasons for the failures of previous attempts at voice based interaction technology was an insufficient volume of human sourced data to build their deep learning models from. Selling millions of inexpensive Echo devices at very low cost helped make Alexa “smarter” by pulling in a much broader base of data to feed into their massive storage and processing backend systems that they already have in place.
As a technology Alexa is very successful and goes far beyond previous attempts at building similar technology. Figuring out how to monetize the technology to improve Amazon’s bottom line is a different class of problem and in no way detracts from it having met its design objectives, which largely came directly from Jeff Bezos.
You are free to determine whatever criteria you wish for declaring success or failure of a product in isolation or in comparison to other products. But every objective comparison that I’ve seen between the available voice assistants has consistently rated the Alexa technology as being more accurate and relevant when tested with the same queries. These comparisons don’t seem to be a thing anymore for some reason, but if I had to guess, I’d say they’ve largely reached a point where they are good enough for those people who actually use them, or bad enough that people who don’t like them have given up trying to make them work at all. I don’t see Alexa and Siri as competing as much as I see them as basically filling the the same role in two different ecosystems. I can’t replace Alexa with Siri, or vice versa. If I could I know which one I would choose.
I use Alexa every single day for home automation, lighting control, alarms, reminders, security, Apple Music access, weather reports, shipping status, and surveillance (viewing security cameras). I rarely use Alexa to order anything because I do all of my online shopping using a web browser on Mac, iPad, or iPhone. If Apple allowed Siri based ordering I wouldn’t use it any more or less than I use Alexa for this purpose, which is effectively never. I use Siri with Apple Car Play, Apple Music, and with my HomePod. I could use Siri more but I’m not a patient person and I don’t like repeating myself.
It (voice assistants) will get better as time goes on, but Amazon doesn’t have a OS, or high end SOC’s to make it happen long term like Apple, the tech isn’t there yet, it’s going to a long slow iterative process (an Apple strong point). Which is why I don’t get upset by the performance of any of them.
I don't understand the use case of voice assistants. Do people actually need it and if yes for what?
Need? Not really. I find Siri useful but not necessary.
For instance, while driving the other day I asked Siri to set a reminder to a take care of something in the basement that would notify me when I arrived home. It’s a task I remembered while in the car but had forgotten a couple times at home.
We have a HomePod in the kitchen. This morning I was baking an apple pie so I used Siri to set timers. I also had Siri send several text messages for me while I was prepping stuff. Again, not necessary but something I was able to do hands-free and without stopping.
I didn’t do it today but if my young daughter wants to watch TV while I’m busy it’s easy to tell Siri to open Disney+ on the living room TV. The TV turns on, Disney+ opens and I can even have her show or movie start, from one voice command.
When we set our alarm system when leaving the house we have to make sure the door we are going out of is shut, open the control panel, hold the button, wait for the signal and then leave. I usually skip all that, get in my car and then tell Siri to l set the alarm. I have Siri disarm the system as we pull into the driveway which saves me a few seconds and having to listen to the beeeeeep when we walk in. It also means I don’t have to worry about my daughter rushing in before me and then I have to drop everything to disarm manually.
Others have already listed a bunch of things earlier in this thread. Setting alarms, turning lights on/off, changing thermostats, opening/closing shades, conversions (it can be monetary or weights and measures), translating, quick math, getting definitions, playing music, answering trivia queries, getting sports scores, telling jokes, the list goes on.
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It (voice assistants) will get better as time goes on, but Amazon doesn’t have a OS, or high end SOC’s to make it happen long term like Apple, the tech isn’t there yet, it’s going to a long slow iterative process (an Apple strong point). Which is why I don’t get upset by the performance of any of them.