Give Alexa a brain!

AI is where the computer writes the rules based on it’s database of cause and effect. :wink:

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Try to explain that to my wife. At least I can program Alexa to actually listen to her, instead of aggravating me in the middle of the night…

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Ha…and all of it’s better than"Honey I’m cold" = Honey, will you get up out of bed and go down the hall and set the thermostat warmer?

What AI is is…complicated…and ever-changing.

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This type of speech recognition + AI is handled by a company that aims for an upper-end market.

The demos make me envious, but I have no idea if it really delivers as promised…


https://www.josh.ai/

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Cool. What could go wrong?

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I want to walk through of a JOSH.AI home.

Mic always on is my biggest fear in this whole concept. NSA paranoid ? maybe - just think it is a little “creepy” in some ways

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It would be nice if at some point this could be configured so that all voice recording and interpretation is kept on a local server so that a warrant would be required to search it.

Heck … the NSA can (supposedly?) turn on your cell phone microphone anytime they want to. Doesn’t make it right.

Most appropriate solution is strong privacy laws that prevent any agency from requesting personal records from any cloud provider under any circumstances. … i.e., I feel the 4th & 5th Amendments are inseparable, and the right to avoid self-incrimination should include diaries, notes, emails, voice recordings, cell phone tracking, etc… But, alas, the US Constitution is being decimated rather than strengthened.

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100% agree !
Fine lines between our convenience and breach of privacy. I only want the data collection used for my personal benefit, NOT ANYONE else’s. Sounds like I want my cake and eat it too I know.

Local storage - servers in bathrooms wasn’t it ? Keep control of it, and bleach when needed? haha.

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I couldn’t care less if someone other than me benefits from data collected about me, nor is there any good reason for me to. What I do care about is that collection being used to my detriment. The difference is a significant one.

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Google’s " On this day " is interesting, see where I was 1,2,5,7, years ago. Logging into my Google maps and seeing every step I’ve taken for the last 7 years ? You know there are marketers ( and prosecutors ) drooling over this info.

No doubt. But the question for me is always, “Was this done without my permission and/or can this harm me in any way?” If the answer to both is “no” (or at least, “not likely” for the 2nd part) then I’m not concerned. In fact I actually stand to reap a small…but not non-existent…benefit from marketers more efficiently targeting me for ads and what-not.

A) I see less stuff that’s not of any interest to me.
B) I see things that are of interest to me that I might not have otherwise known about, at least not as soon.

If something like the Echo were uploading my private conversations, or even just select bits of data about them, without my knowledge or permission then I’d be quite upset. But it doesn’t. Google is a lot more nosy about tracking your activities, that’s true. But I can pick and choose most of what I want to allow it to track, some of which is actually quite useful to me (it learning my daily commute routes so it can warn me about traffic conditions ahead of time, for instance).

Yes, there are very valid concerns about privacy and electronic surveillance these days, but for me most of that danger is posed by governmental entities (or private entities that facilitate that surveillance on the state’s behalf).

I agree. I think if you are a dissident or a bad guy, this stuff would be bad. But for us law abiding citizens it’s not as bad as the media makes it out to be.

I regularly go into my google history, maps, all of it, some I delete, just because I’m there, but a lot, maps in particular, I like. Seeing where I was and routes I took is cool for refreshing my memory, and even nostalgia. Like, oh I was there, I remember that! Some cool things I’ve done with my kids that I for some reason forgot about for example have been renewed in my shriveled brain because of maps history!

I wouldn’t say I fully trust Google to be 100% secure with this information, obviously some goes anonymized to third parties, that’s a plus as @dparker mentioned if it introduces you to something that could be useful. The negative of that is minor, I delete the occasional email I don’t care about, big whoop. If that data falls into someones hands and it’s not anonymized, do I care? No not really, I don’t do anything (or have enough money) to be worth anyone spending time to assault me or steal from me. And even if they wanted to, there are many other almost as easy ways to do whatever they may want, so this is 1% of the picture to me. If that makes sense. My credit card companies have been great about any perceived theft, always pro-active, so I’m not at all worried about that.

This all rely’s on the fact that I KNOW it’s happening though. That’s really the biggest point in my mind. I will gladly “sell” my data to possibly save a buck/be more convenient/in some way benefit me. Heck, most of the internet we use is free because of this basic concept. I’m cool with that vs paying a fee for EVERYTHING. My life just isn’t interesting enough for anyone else to care about, but for some reason marketing groups keep thinking they know me better than I do. :slight_smile:

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I was playing with it, just to see. I went back and found what day ( time ) I got my first Android phone ( HTC Hero) and what time I went for my walk to the mailbox and to get a pack of cigarettes the next day. Accuracy was not that good back in March 2010. Trail showed that I started about 100’ from my house ended about 50’ from the mailbox… I was walking through the woods and not down my driveway, which I know is wrong. Scroll through the years and now I can see myself walking around room to room in my house. ( Yet Geofencing still tags me as home almost 1/2 mile away )

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Awesome, see this sort of thing makes it easier for me to just forget stuff, I can always look it up later on Google! Where’d I leave my phone the other day, look it up on Google!

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I’m not sure these things are even desirable. Husband comes in after taking out the garbage:
Wife: “how is it out there?”
Husband: “it’s cold.”
And Alexa turns the heat up two degrees, even though it’s already warm inside. lol

Alexa would then have to listen to every conversation, at all times. Then we’d have to trust it to distinguish voices amid a din of noise, pick out which voices it should obey and which it should ignore, and hopefully it got all the words and contexts right. So many times, humans misinterpret the intent or mood behind what’s being said - and we’re going to trust the interpretation of our intents to robots built by computer geeks, who are already notorious for their awkwardness among other humans?

No thanks. I will be happy to have robots remain ‘command’ rather than interpretive entities.

That could only happen if the husband comes in and tells Alexa that he has taken the trash out, in which case, Alexa would hear the wife, and would respond that “the temperature outside is 25 degrees”…

This is what is wrong with so many user interfaces. My experience is that Corporate America doesn’t want to pay for human factors people who know UI design.

That being said, some UI issues are downright comical :joy:

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IFTTT can help give Alexa a brain. Not as above, but for tasks it already does.

I just got news that a friend died :frowning: I simply spoke it: “Alexa, ______ chapel in _________ city, 1230pm Friday”.

Alexa confirmed this, and added it to my linked google calendar.

The IFTTT recipe then grabbed the event, and loaded it into Todoist as a task/appointment. So wherever I am, it will tap me on the shoulder and remind me of the appointment.

Of such simple things is life made easier. Alexa really solves the biggest issue around task management, which is data input.

I am very much looking forward to these interactions becoming more intelligent over time. The ideal followup for this, for example, might be “I’ve added that. Are there any other items?” I had that going using Autovoice on the Android tablet, can’t wait to hear it on Alexa

Sorry about your friend Glen.

We are working on the conversational aspects of Alexa to make it a more pleasurable and personable experience. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but merely fill in the gaps that are there. We’ve made progress, which you will see soon.

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