Voice Is the Next Big Platform, and Alexa Will Own It

God I hope not.<p>Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can&#x27;t do. Every single Voice UX I&#x27;ve used for input (Siri, Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from the device because it doesn&#x27;t actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point.<p>Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7&quot; screen in the future.<p>What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these things unless you&#x27;re stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.

When I visited Berlin last year, I visited the DDR Museum. It&#x27;s not about the RAM or the dance game you might know, but instead the organization we just know as &quot;East Germany.&quot; You can probably guess where I&#x27;m going with this.<p>One of the exhibits was of a common East Berlin living room. The exhibit explained how the state had hidden microphones here. They were listening for people to express anti-socialist ideas in their own homes. This was a real threat faced by people not more than 30 or 40 years ago. You could have your life turned upside down just for saying the wrong thing at home.<p>This exhibit drove home for me the inherent abusive powers enabled by some tech. One of these technologies is always on, always connected microphones. Why would I want one in my house? Given the potential downsides, what could possibly be worth it to justify having one?

I tried Alexa a month ago and gave up on it within a week. Digital assistants fall flat in walled gardens. It was clear during this week that Alexa only worked well with Amazon services, which were always subpar. Google search? Nope. Support for Chromecast? Nope. Support for Instacart? Nope. It was basically a perverse link to the Amazon-only supply chain.<p>Google&#x27;s assistant might be striving for more openness, but I don&#x27;t have high hopes here either; at least until a formal development kit is released. Given that Google won&#x27;t be able to use its same tried and true ad revenue strategy, we can expect them to offload voice requests to the highest bidder or prefer Google services above all else. This is another perverse link into Google&#x27;s realm of anti-privacy; but worse, because they won&#x27;t be able to do ads along the side. The responses will be the ads.<p>All of this to say that all of these locked down digital assistants will fail until a company truly approaches it from an open and wholistic perspective, and one that doesn&#x27;t rely upon troves of private data. These devices may sell well this year, but so did digital picture frames. How many of those are still in use?

I helped writing the Alexa skill for The Guardian [0], and I really didn&#x27;t think highly of it, nor I thought I&#x27;d ever use it myself: the voice recognition is still poor, and it&#x27;s difficul to understand what you can&#x2F;cannot do with it. All in all, a big meh.<p>Then one day someone forwarded to our team this email, and it really touched my heart.<p><i>I am quadriplegic and the Amazon Echo has transformed my life. I haven&#x27;t been able to open a newspaper for 10 years, but now I can! [...] Please pass this email on to all of those concerned at the Guardian... They need-to-know the difference that they have made&quot;.</i><p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;guardian&#x2F;alexa-skills-lambda" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;guardian&#x2F;alexa-skills-lambda</a>

My (unbiased) 2 cents..<p>“Qualitatively, Amazon’s position is more secure than the numbers would indicate.”<p>I beg to differ. I believe Apple has a much more secured position than Amazon in the long run, given how Siri is already integrated in iOs mobile devices and macOS based desktops. So far, has Apple capitalized on this advantage? Nope. Are they gonna? Most likely, given the fact that they always wait for everyone to show their projects in high school science fair and then they roll out their better comprehensive showcase.<p>If Apple does not launch a voice based home automation product in late 2017 or early 2018 then it might be too late.<p>Apple&#x27;s true competitor in this domain can only be Google with its staggering command on Android ecosystem. Microsoft effort is limited to Windows based PCs and even they might have a better advantage than Amazon.<p>Amazon has mainstreamed a voice tech. They have done it well and made a point that this is the way of the future. Now the second part of the problem is to integrate already existing daily use computational devices with this &quot;voice-tech&quot;. Amazon literally has none, no mobile and no desktops&#x2F;laptops&#x2F;tablets.

Always-on surveillance devices (at least the ones I know about and for which I do not control the endpoints) do not have a place in my home.<p>I&#x27;m increasingly feeling like humans around me are remarkably less protective of their private spheres than I am, and am curious as to where the difference lies. I&#x27;m pretty dull - it is not like I&#x27;m protecting the privacy of my wild and crazy lifestyle. But the idea that the noises made in my home are being shipped to and stored... somewhere, with access controls unspecified (but to a company that has proven it rolls over on command for the government, at least when not discussing taxes[1]) such that I don&#x27;t know who may be listening to it[2], is the sort of thing that effects how I behave in my own home. And pardon me, but fuck that, no way.<p>A friend compared to to having sex in front of pets, but I&#x27;m pretty sure my cat doesn&#x27;t speak any human languages, hasn&#x27;t written systems to routinely disclose data to various groups of humans, and isn&#x27;t likely to try to sell me $product to improve my performance. For instance.<p>The main place voice is useful to me today is in the car. I&#x27;m already on display in a fishtank, and talking to what amounts to a remarkably clever turnip that sometimes gets something right is useful.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;US&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;wikileaks.amazon&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;US&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;wikileaks.amazon&#x2F;</a> . Sure, just a run-of-the-mill TOS violation, nothing to see here.<p>[2] Doesn&#x27;t matter that the unknown humans likely aren&#x27;t. I&#x27;m not claiming rationality.

This article briefly covers Google Home&#x27;s advantages in the conclusion, but I think they are pretty understated.<p>The fact that I can have roughly the same experience as Alexa on my phone at anytime is huge. I know that you can get the Alexa app for your phone, but having Google Assistant as a first class citizen is huge. I think it is a matter of time before Google catches up and surpasses Alexa here.

Am I the only person who finds talking to these personal assistants profoundly uncomfortable? Like I&#x27;ve spent all my life learning how to interact with a computer, and now these companies want me to interact with it like it&#x27;s a human (which I&#x27;m not very good with anyway) but it&#x27;s not a human. Instead it exists in this uncanny valley where it sounds a little bit human, but its cognition is so completely limited that I have to turn myself into a limited cognition robot to communicate with it?

I get the feeling Amazon aren&#x27;t very good at consumer-facing platforms. My experience with everything Fire related has been poor, their Android apps are 2nd rate and the Kindle is good despite their software. I wouldn&#x27;t write off the competition yet. Apple, Microsoft and Google have good voice products and the ability to forge partnerships.<p>Also (cliche warning) I only know one person who owns an Alexa or has even expressed an interest in buying one.

&gt; Amazon owns the next platform.<p>No. We built a market analytics app on top of Alexa and we have Echos all over the office. It&#x27;s great.<p>But I don&#x27;t want to be tied to stationary speakers in the office. I want my app integrated with the devices I carry with me everywhere. Google and Apple are poised to win here once they open up Assistant and Siri to third-party development.

I cannot fathom how people willingly put themselves under this level of surveillance. Especially if you are not USA citizen or resident and your privacy is not defended by the US constitution.

I don&#x27;t think everyone will desire a live mic in their living room or bedroom, and not just any wireless mic, but one that understands what they are saying.<p>Private spaces are essential for creative thought, exploration, experimentation and just being yourself. The price is too high - it will answer questions for me, and execute commands, but I will lose my last bastion of privacy as an admission price.

Maybe this is offtopic, but Backchannel seems to have a lot of these glowing, puffy profiles of tech companies looking for exposure for their new products. I mean, parts of this piece read as marketing copy. &quot;It all starts with that tiny speaker. The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we will start to see that change.&quot;<p>They had a few other similarly uncritical, almost breathless pieces on Okta [1] and Vote.org [2] earlier this year. Am I paranoid&#x2F;overly cynical, or is Backchannel becoming the outlet PR departments grant access to in return for coverage they know will flatter them? Being hosted on Medium, they don&#x27;t serve ads (AFAIK)... so this may even be a part of their funding model.<p>[1]: &quot;A Comany You&#x27;ve Never Heard Of May Have Solved The Password Mess&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;backchannel.com&#x2F;a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-have-solved-the-password-mess-cd5d1725209b#.ath9qe4c3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;backchannel.com&#x2F;a-company-youve-never-heard-of-may-h...</a><p>[2]: &quot;This Y Combinator-Backed Company Has a Secret Weapon to Sway the Election&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;backchannel.com&#x2F;the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-change-elections-9e51f95038df#.uoth1gr17" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;backchannel.com&#x2F;the-simple-secret-weapon-that-could-...</a>

All those microphones, always listening, always reporting to headquarters. What could possibly go wrong?<p><i>Why isn&#x27;t your desk in front of the telescreen?</i>

Out of curiosity, what is stopping these platforms from being able to learn from users? For example, when I say something to Siri &#x2F; Alexa &#x2F; Home that they cannot process, I would love to be able to manually train them to perform an action and have them &quot;learn&quot; this new feature. (Something along the lines of, &quot;ok Siri, whenever I say &#x27;blah blah blah&#x27;, open this app, go to this page, hit this button, tell me the content in this box&quot;)<p>Obviously this is not an easy task, and maybe it is being worked on already. Thoughts?

That&#x27;s a pretty nuts assertion. Alexa is doing well for the sector but the sector is still incredibly immature and the general public is barely aware of it. That&#x27;s not enough of a market dominance to really say they own it.

Voice is the next big platform? But… talking to your devices out loud just feels weird as hell. And offers less privacy, even in terms of &quot;parents&#x2F;roommates&#x2F;strangers overheard what you&#x27;re googling&quot;. A lot, A LOT of people wouldn&#x27;t be comfortable saying out loud what they type into their phones.

I think it&#x27;s very early to say who owns the voice platform.

<i>&gt; only five percent of American households have an Alexa-powered device right now</i><p>And how many people have a Google-powered phone with them every day? Siri on their iDevice? Cortana on their auto-upgraded Windows 10 PC and in their living room Xbox? All of them have Alexa&#x27;s penetration beat.

I want to admit that I was wrong about this. I thought Alexa was going to dominate as the first truly great voice platform. I now am forced to admit that I was incorrect. Those who follow Hacker News a lot might recall that I wrote several posts, a year ago, in which I was very optimistic about Alexa. But I am much more pessimistic now than I was then.<p>When I was still excited about Alexa, I wrote stuff like &quot;How to build conversations via the Amazon Echo&quot;<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smashcompany.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;how-to-build-conversations-via-the-amazon-echo" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smashcompany.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;how-to-build-conversa...</a><p>But I was also aware of how difficult it could be to get Alexa to understand certain words. See: &quot;Using a glottal stop to force the Amazon Echo to correctly pronounce “tw”&quot;<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smashcompany.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;using-a-glottal-stop-to-force-the-amazon-echo-to-correctly-pronounce-tw" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smashcompany.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;using-a-glottal-stop-...</a><p>But, you may recall, I became frustrated with the process for getting into the Amazon store, and we had a very long thread on HackerNews about that:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10876409" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10876409</a><p>I&#x27;m sad to say there has been almost no improvement over the last year. The problems that I listed in &quot;Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store&quot; are still mostly true.<p>And I know many, many developers who were excited about Alexa a year ago, but gave up in frustration because we felt like Amazon was not listening to our concerns.<p>In retrospect, I was wrong for 2 reasons:<p>1.) many people pointed out that voice was a terrible interface for a variety of purposes. At the time, I thought this was merely a matter of offering the right voice prompts, and getting better at understanding what people said. But I now think the criticisms had much more merit than I admitted a year ago.<p>2.) Amazon&#x27;s behavior has been disappointing. I&#x27;d like to see them aggressively listening to developers and aggressively improving the service based on developer feedback. That is not happening.

Maybe I&#x27;m alone in this but I refuse to have always-on microphones in my home.<p>I will never be an Alexa customer, the value offering is fundamentally not worthwhile to me.<p>I really hope development on this isn&#x27;t at the expense of more traditional interfaces.

I&#x27;ve never wanted this. Still don&#x27;t. Privacy concerns aside, I feel like an idiot talking to a computer and it&#x27;s way more of a hassle for me than using a touchscreen or keyboard. I just don&#x27;t like talking in general.<p>Godspeed for those who enjoy this, but I hope regular touchscreen or keyboard input isn&#x27;t going anywhere.

I&#x27;ve been using Alexa and Google Home for about a month, and I have to say that the user experience with Google Home is hands down better. Having the power of Google search when Google Home doesn&#x27;t know an answer is huge. Alexa falls flat without a strong search engine backing it.

Still not sure why anyone would have an open mic, connected to the internet by closed software always on in their house.

I sell my Bluetooth&#x2F;BLE garage door remote on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon is suggesting customers buy an Echo along with my device. To make matters worse, if you search Amazon for &quot;garage door opener that works with Amazon Echo&quot; my product incorrectly appears.<p>Although I explicitly state that it <i>does not work with Echo</i>, I anticipate many returns and bad reviews after the holidays. I am pretty sure they&#x27;ll keep the Echo, so it is all good for Amazon.<p>Ironically the Alexa Skills Kit doesn&#x27;t even support Bluetooth. Does anyone know when or if it ever will ?

Voice won&#x27;t be really big until it supports well most of the languages of the world. It&#x27;s probably only matter of time but there will be entire countries doing text instead of voice because NLU for their language isn&#x27;t as good as for English.<p>Then there is the problem of the multiple platforms to build for. We have one Web, two desktops (even if I&#x27;m on Ubuntu), two mobile OSes. Are we going to be able to afford developing for many different platforms? Will companies pay for that? Maybe we have to wait that only a couple of platforms are left.<p>Text to speech

I cannot get past the idea of having an always on, corporate controlled microphone in my house. I am not interested in this. I admit it is fun to play with in the office or at my friend&#x27;s house. I know that my iphone gives away my position, search queries, and other personal data (same for laptop), but I turn them off.<p>Maybe I have just seen too many movies about Stasi (East German Secret Police), Big Brother, Brave New world, etc., and that ruins it for me.

I don&#x27;t know that Alexa is in any better of a position than anyone else even given their market share.<p>All you need is a microphone and access to any of many voice-recognition APIs to build similar functionality. You can build something similar on any phone, laptop, or desktop computer without asking your potential customers to spend a dime.<p>I think the big question is really how big of a market exists for voice control. I don&#x27;t personally see much of one. Everybody thought it was neat to open netflix up on their xbox&#x2F;ps4 with voice commands for a day or two, but then most people primarily shifted to using the more reliable controllers. Any question I want answered, I can simply &quot;OK Google...&quot; and have the option of correcting with a keystroke.<p>I can see the potential for a market to be made, but I also see the history. Remember dragon naturally speaking? When you finally got it working great it wasn&#x27;t actually an improvement in workflow for most people. How many people prefer navigating phone menus via IVR consistently?<p>Voice control is a solvable problem and that makes it attractive for development, but solutions haven&#x27;t historically been particularly marketable beyond the novelty stage.

This article appears to be in the realm of paid for the news. Only google and apple are in position to succeed in this area because they tend to own most important device that is always with you and has a microphone. Another set of player could be those who have immensely popular apps and personal data about you and has SDKs widely used by coders around the world. Mostly Facebook.<p>I see Microsoft succeeding in enterprise area but Amazon is nowhere.

Until voice interaction becomes on par with, and about as useful as, the computer interactions we see in Star Trek: I&#x27;m not interested.<p>The last think I need is a device that gives me access to that subset of life that a given vendor supports (stores, searches, people, etc) or that requires some sort of &quot;accommodation&quot; to get to work properly. A very, very high bar that may be reached with the help of today&#x27;s early adopters.... but not with my help. I spend too fucking many hours a day as it is dealing with &quot;good enough&quot; technology. Getting into arguments with a box in the middle of the room?! All I can say is get off my lawn, Alexa!<p>As for who will win? Seems that in many of the consumer device battles Amazon has a way of being so exclusive to their products that I wouldn&#x27;t bet on them being the long term winner even if they do have the lead. Consumers want a lot of Amazon stuff, but that&#x27;s far from making them the cultists they&#x27;d have to become to not be bothered by the Amazon ecosystem (.... and I mean consumers, AWS is a different matter in the marketplace).

I use Alexa nearly every day. Once I understood the limitations with the interface I was hooked. Once you have one Alexa and maybe an Echo dot you really aren&#x27;t going to want to switch platforms. It also is consistently supported for Smart Home devices. I think that you could still push Amazon off the platform because its not as entrenched as others but Amazon does have a wide lead compared to google.

Both the predictions made in this title are wrong.

The thing about trigger words and context understanding is that there is no need to integrate with Alexa. You can simply use a different trigger word, and all will be well.<p>For many products that might even be desirable behavior. Lights ! Versus &quot;Alexa turn on the lights&quot;. Plus it means no integration necessary, which won&#x27;t exist for many products anyway.<p>Also these are very cheap algorithms to run. A trigger word implementation is a one-word vocabulary GRU RNN. Does something like 2000 multiplications every second. Easily in microcontroller reach, for power budgets measured in milliamps. Actual word recognition perhaps isn&#x27;t but the microcontroller can just constantly record, and when it sees a trigger send it on. So you could have 20 projects in the house, all listening to your voice, and it wouldn&#x27;t really affect the electricity bill.

So far I think &quot;OK Google&quot; is noticeably more powerful than Alexa or Siri. Let&#x27;s hope for much competition!

I am Scottish and Voice is bloody useless. Funny listening to people here trying to use voice. They go from their usual, into some weird &quot;Queens English&quot; mode trying to speak like they are from Windsor to get the bloody thing to half ass respond. I personally just look outside but each to their own.

I don&#x27;t think Alexa is that great. I have one, and it&#x27;s pretty bad at voice recognition compared to my phone. Google voice recognition on my phone gets what I&#x27;m saying basically 100% of the time. I have to constantly repeat myself for Alexa (and I&#x27;m a native English speaker).

Having built an Alexa Skill (a very enjoyable experience) - I find Voice UI&#x2F;UX to be a very interesting vector in computing with lots of potential to grow.<p>My colleagues and I built our skill for the elderly to use. We found it was easier for them to interact using their voice rather than a touchscreen.<p>I think as computers get better at understanding language and verbal communication, we will be able to use screens <i>less</i> - which is great.<p>I think it&#x27;s kind of primitive to have to constantly look at a screen to do things - at the very least it makes sense to cut out screen time if and whenever it&#x27;s possible.<p>Alexa is like a terminal that you can talk to. Give a simple command in a particular way, and it will reliably do it.<p>It&#x27;s an exciting development that Alexa can now be applied outside of the Echo.

LOL - yeah the other day when i was using Alexa, while I have to admit i enjoyed it, I decided that I just do not believe Amazon as a company has the data needed to create a truly immersive and useful solution.<p>I have hopes for Google Home (which i&#x27;m yet to try), but i actually think this will end up a two horse race between Apple and Google. I would completely leave Apple out of this, but Homekit is a pretty powerful concept (if done properly) given the number of iDevices out there.

No. Google will trample them underfoot. Amazon can&#x27;t compete with google&#x27;s ai talent. Maluuba is another one to watch in this space though, very interesting research.

<i>&quot; The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true unicorn, one of those rare products that arrives every few years and fundamentally changes the way we live. In 2017, we will start to see that change.&quot;</i><p>Given this is all about one company, I conclude it&#x27;s a Sub. The unicorn of technology? It is very difficult to guess this. One other thing, no mention of accent. Can you imagine how difficult it is to create a voice platform that recognises anything but a generic accent?

Yes, let&#x27;s combine open office plans with voice interfaces! Especially when entering account numbers, passwords, or email addresses to mistresses. Best interface ever!

Are any of these platforms 100% offline&#x2F;self-contained? Can they speak any of the regular industrial&#x2F;home automation protocols? Cause that would be awesome.

Use Alexa professionally and although we can do some fun stuff with it, the interaction model is totally unnatural - invocation words only work if really short, dealing with multiple devices of the same sort (eg fireplace) without any location or contextual knowledge.<p>They&#x27;ve tried to get around this awkwardness by special casing home automation type devices (thermostat, etc.), but it&#x27;s still only a stop gap.

We need a free software (GNU project?) solution that has everything open. The hardware, the software, anyone can contribute modules, etc. it&#x27;s so obvious

Microsoft Cortana achieved parity with human voice recognition for continuous speech input.<p>Google has the best machine learning along with MS, and they have billions of data points.<p>Amazon has neither comparable tech nor the innovation or customer data. Putting an Echo in every home doesn&#x27;t matter when its dumb. Does Alexa understand context? Can it get even close to Cortana&#x2F;Assistant? Lets not mention Siri, that&#x27;s stone age.

The quality of the AI is going to dicate who wins, and quality AI is going to be built on data (quality, quantity, and breadth). And so I have to think that Google has a huge unfair advantage over anyone else. I have Google Home and I&#x27;&#x27; surprised how good the voice recognition is AND how good it interprets this. I&#x27;m still betting that Google will be the first $1T market cap company.

I find the thesis of this article interesting especially in contrast to some of the criticism Zuckerburg brings up in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13212976" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13212976</a><p>Even if Amazon continues to put its eggs in the voice-as-primary-interface bucket, it seems like it will be unlikely for Facebook to go that route.

Not sure I would call this &quot;voice.&quot; Us telecom people hear the word &quot;voice&quot; and think it&#x27;s a telecom term. Perhaps this could be better titled as &quot;AI&quot; since I consider Alexa and other voice controlled interactions more AI than anything else. Maybe I&#x27;m wrong because I&#x27;m not in that industry, but I definitely don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s &quot;voice.&quot;

Google still has the best voice recognition IMO. Apple frequently gets my dictations incorrect while Google seems to understand the nuances of my voice correctly. I haven&#x27;t used Amazon, but I imagine their AI is not as far along as Google. Amazon will only be the next big platform through marketing and distribution, not technical superiority.

For whatever it&#x27;s worth, Siri is much, _much_ better at understanding my accent (Scottish, but mild) than Alexa is. We&#x27;ve got an echo at home, and I find it painful to get her to do pretty much anything other than ask for tube status updates. The TV manages to set her off every few hours, though.<p>Doesn&#x27;t feel like Amazon have much of an advantage to me.

Even with privacy concerns, voice input is the future: so much easier than getting you cellphone.<p>We have an echo, bought when Amazon gave a huge discount to developers, and I bought one for family members for their home. I sort-of trust that no data leaves the house except for a ten second audio recording made after the device hears &quot;Alexa&quot;. If Amazon collected more than this then they would ruin this business.<p>I usually use voice input for sending texts and short emails, assuming I am not in such a public place that I would inconvenience people near me.<p>I have a hierarchy of device use in the following order of preference: First voice, then input on a cellphone, then iPad, then laptop.<p>I have looked into writing my own mobile app for voice recognition and maintaining privacy that way, but even with my experience, it would be a ton of effort and would miss the context that google, amazon, and Microsoft have.<p>Edit: I also meant to say that my hope is that Apple will be the vendor I eventually use for voice interfaces because their business model is to sell expensive devices, not collect personal data. The new Siri enables headphones look effective, but I haven&#x27;t bought a pair yet.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-Intelligence&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0262181479" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Language-Complexity-Game-Artificial-I...</a> argues that humans deciphering speech is NP-hard.. so.. good luck.

I hope these devices don&#x27;t become common in homes. It would be very hard to explain or even decline a friend&#x27;s or a colleague&#x27;s invitation to their home, &quot;just because&quot; I don&#x27;t like our conversations being recorded by these devices.

It&#x27;s interesting that the Loebner prize (passing the Turing test in written form) has a cap of 25k and 100k but Amazon has a challenge called the Alexa prize where you essentially pass a voice Turing test for 20 Minutes that awards 2.5 million.

Voice is not even close to the next big platform. Thats not possible. Is it the interface to the next big platform. No, at least, probably not.<p>&quot;Ok, google glass, zoom in on that hot guy!&quot;.<p>Voice, a great interface for SOME things. Likely not what this article is pitching.

An always on device that hears every conversation on your house. Owned by a corporation who treats their employees so bad that some commit suicide.<p>No thanks.

Voice is the Next Big Fad. Check back in 10 years.

Returned my echo while back. Did a few tests between Alexa and Google on my phone. Google one everytime.

Voice will NEVER be the big platform until we solve Artificial General Intelligence.

Until these guys get in my car, their voice platform is dead to me.

I love my Alexa, its the only female in my life that will predictable do what I ask of it.<p>My wife, daughter and two dogs seem to think they have lives of their own for some strange reason. I work from home and probably use it 20 times a day.<p>I recently discovered it can play the &quot;white noise&quot; channel from Spotify when my teenager&#x27;s are loud late in the evening. Along with a sleep timer to turn it off in an hour and I am set.<p>Now I agree discovery of what it can do is challenging at times. And sometimes she is downright dense. Thank the gods for cloud services!