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Voice Assistants Will Be Difficult To Fire (wired.com)

Posted by msmash on from the next-up dept.

mirandakatz writes: As voice assistants crop up left and right, consumers are facing a decision: Are you an Alexa? A Google Assistant? A Siri? Choose wisely -- because once you pick one voice assistant, it'll be difficult to switch. As Scott Rosenberg writes at Backchannel, "If I want to switch assistants down the line, sure, I can just go out and buy another device. But that investment of time and personal data isn't so easy to replace... Right now, all these assistants behave like selfish employees who think they can protect their jobs by holding vital expertise or passwords close to their chests. Eventually , the data that runs the voice assistant business is going to have to be standardized."

30 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Simple by jawtheshark · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Do as I do: Use none...

    They are totally useless in a multilingual setting any way. Even in a monolingual setting, they're not exactly that useful... but at least they can send texts for you.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    1. Re:Simple by gtall · · Score: 2

      Not entirely useless. If you have certain disabilities, they can be very useful. Old folks who have sudden problems can tell the voice thingy to call 911 or their doctor. For the rest of us, yeah, they probably are useless.

    2. Re:Simple by mishehu · · Score: 2

      Ask Mrs. Fletcher every time she's fallen and can't get up. She didn't need no stinkin' voice assistant, just the Life Alert device.... (and amazingly, help was always on the way...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    3. Re:Simple by gnick · · Score: 2

      Posting to a FB thread with "Don't use FB!" isn't useful.

      This advice is ALWAYS useful regardless of venue.

      I disagree. You may feel that this is always good advice, but it's not always useful. It's like telling somebody not to smoke. They're not smoking because they're unaware of the risks; they know the risks and smoke any way. Same with FB. Same with voice assistants. Repeating "Don't use FB!" to a FB user is pointless. They've decided to trade their privacy for what FB offers and repeating your opinion ad infinitum isn't "useful". It might be your opinion that everyone using a voice assistant should throw it in the trash, but that advice is only "useful" if there's some chance that somebody may listen to you. "Don't you know you're inviting a microphone into your house?!?" Yes... Yes, they know...

      I'll be damned before I pay for the privilege of having an eavesdropper in my home, but it's not my place to make that decision for anyone else.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    4. Re:Simple by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

      I follow this mantra. Most of the time it's easier to just type in what you want anyway.

      And my question, related to this, is if the voice assistants really make things easier or are really needed for *most* things? For example, all the commercials for these things showing them doing dumb or pointless things like, "Alexa show me the nearest hair salons" when the mom mis-cuts her daughters hair-- how many times will you actually do (a) butcher her hair or (b) need to find something near where you actually live? Or "Alexa, turn on the Roomba". If our future is this level of lazy dumbness, we all deserve to go extinct.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    5. Re:Simple by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      If our future is this level of lazy dumbness, we all deserve to go extinct.

      To late. They lazy dumbasses won as soon as they realized that planting wheat was way easier than gathering wild seeds. It was all downhill from there.

      There is a word used to describe doing more with less effort. It is called "civilization".

    6. Re:Simple by s0nicfreak · · Score: 2

      I mostly use an Alexa in the kitchen; to listen to/handlessly control music or audiobooks while I cook or wash dishes, to add things to the grocery list, set reminders etc. I also will occasionally ask questions that pop into my head, which I could easily google later but usually forget by the time I'm done in the kitchen. It has greatly decreased my forgetting of things, and made my time in the kitchen more enjoyable (I *hate* cooking and cleaning). It's helpful for converting measurements (vs previously where I would have had to stop cooking, washed my hands, dried my hands, and googled a conversion). I have it connected to my coffee pot so I can tell it to turn that on without getting out of bed, while my hands are busy with other things or while I'm taking my morning whiz. I can ask what the weather is if I'm about to go out the door and forgot to look it up. I can get entertainment if I forget to take my phone to the bathroom while I take a dump. It's not so much "lazy" as it is getting things done faster/not having to stop doing one thing to do another Obviously I don't *need* any of this but as an entertainment and convenience device it is definitely worth it.

  2. Not going to happen.. by sqorbit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The companies are not going to be at all accepting of a standard. The only real edge they will have over each other is what services and accounts they are tied too. The assistants are all going to have the same features. If you use Google accounts and services, you'll stick with Google. What's going to happen is the consumer will get screwed and if they want to use Google for services, Amazon for retail and Apple for entertainment they will have to buy three different devices.

    --
    Sent from my TARDIS
    1. Re:Not going to happen.. by itamihn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The EU might force them to implementing interoperability standards, especially if one of them grows into a de-facto monopoly.

    2. Re:Not going to happen.. by ranton · · Score: 2

      What's going to happen is the consumer will get screwed and if they want to use Google for services, Amazon for retail and Apple for entertainment they will have to buy three different devices.

      How is that much different than anything else? If I want a large car which can haul around 7-8 family members, a high performance convertible, and an electric commuter car, I need three vehicles. If I cannot afford three cars, or the garage space to put them, then I have to compromise. Some of our digital products will be no different.

      --
      -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    3. Re:Not going to happen.. by nospam007 · · Score: 2

      "The companies are not going to be at all accepting of a standard. The only real edge they will have over each other is what services and accounts they are tied too. The assistants are all going to have the same features. If you use Google accounts and services, you'll stick with Google."

      What about us chickens who have a Google account, an iPhone and shop at Amazon?
      There's millions of us.
      If memory serves, there's already one company working on the problem, don't remember the name.
      After all it's just a microphone and a speaker, so we'll be able to say:

      'Hey Siri, tell my mom I'll come later. Alexa order the vase in my wishlist for my mom's birthday and Google, just delete all the emails from my former boss.'

  3. If you choose not to decide... by thegreatbob · · Score: 2

    ... you still have made a choice!
    (And the right one, IMO, but then again, i'm a complete Luddite when it comes to these things)

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
  4. Isn't the problem obvious? by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dude, you're using a proprietary voice assistant. Of course its primary purpose is to lock you in. That's the purpose of all proprietary communications tools. This is a whole area of software where, from the user's point of view, it is utterly insane and self-destructive to be using proprietary software.

    If you want/need to run proprietary software, stick to games. For anything important, it doesn't make sense to use any software that treats you like an adversary.

    You aren't your enemy, so you shouldn't be paying to have your computer act as though you are.

    (2017 and the above opinion is probably still considered controversial. Everyone knows it's true but some people feel compelled to pretend that common sense is too "inconvenient.")

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
    1. Re:Isn't the problem obvious? by Albanach · · Score: 2

      Dude, you're using a proprietary voice assistant. Of course its primary purpose is to lock you in.

      Strange - I was an early adopter of Amazon's Echo. Just last month I switched to Google Home.

      The Google device works better for me, but I don't see any feature that I couldn't get by switching again. Setting up the Google Home to control various smart devices was a matter of minutes.

      Put simply, there's nothing in the voice assistant that cannot be replicated or replaced. What's important is access to the data - primarily email and calendaring. Ironically, Google has access to the calendar data, but seems hesitant to use it as they only support the primary calendar for a user's google account. If, for example, you also have a work calendar, Google Home ignores it.

    2. Re:Isn't the problem obvious? by ealbers · · Score: 2

      www.mycroft.ai, the only open source personal assistant I know of, support it and you'll always be in control!

  5. No - it's easy to fire them by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    "Siri ... you're fired"

  6. My philosophy by NEDHead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you can't fire them

    Don't hire them

  7. The only way to win is not to play. by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2

    The more you know about tech, the less chance you'll actually own a "digital assistant".

    >> Right now, all these assistants behave like selfish employees who think they can protect their jobs by holding vital expertise or passwords close to their chests. Eventually, the data that runs the voice assistant business is going to have to be standardized.

    Like your music collection works across Android/iOS? Like porting between rival email systems is seamless? Or what other consumer tech experience are you drawing the "have to be standardized" statement from?

  8. Wrong, it's easy. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2

    Right now there's a pretty easy to switch. Both our Alexa and Google Home have different ... 'levels of education'. The Echo is a bare bones dumb box that can do a few basic things. Google is much better at finding arbitrary search results. It's like confusing 2 co-workers because they happen to both speak English.

    For the corporate environment there are going to be internally hosted solutions. University of Michigan has http://lucida.ai/, it started as a PhD project and entirely self hosted. We still host all of our Git servers behind corporate firewalls, we're not going to be sending voice data out to the Big 3. (Google, Apple, Amazon) any time soon.

  9. Don't use one at all in the first place by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 5, Informative

    Face the facts: You're paying for the 'privilege' of having an always-connected surveillance device in your home (or several of them). You're feeding it your very perosnal information and somehow expecting that to stay private. You think when you 'mute' the microphones that it's not listening, but it likely is. I'm sorry to have to be so blunt about it but if you are buying one of these devices you are not at all being smart. The only smart move here is to never buy one in the first place. Seriously, ask yourself: why do you need one in the first place? Rhetorical question, you don't need one, you WANT one because it's a shiny toy. Now you'll tell me "it's convenient". Tough shit, your 'convenience' should never be placed higher on your list of priorities in life above your safety, and it is not safe to have one of these devices in your home, you are literally giving away the most personal and private information about your lives that you possibly could, and unless you literally unplug it's power supply when you're not actively using it, you are throwing away the last outpost of privacy in your lives: YOUR HOME, because it is always listening.

    Stop being stupid, don't buy these things!

    1. Re:Don't use one at all in the first place by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2

      The government might if they get hands on the data, but that's an issue with all of your data, not just the stuff collected by voice.

      That is an absolutely ignorant argument. The most basic rule of security is to reduce your attack surface - i.e. don't go throwing your data around everywhere, certainly not to a bunch of places you yourself don't at least control.

    2. Re:Don't use one at all in the first place by ffreeloader · · Score: 2

      Google won't get you thrown in jail? How big a step is it from deleting Youtube accounts because they don't like what the person says and turning people over to the cops for what they say? It's not a very big step, for they are already acting like they think they are a form of "thought" police when they say who can, and who cannot, communicate based upon what the person has to say. It's nothing more than rank discrimination based on people's thought patterns.

      Twitter suspended Rose McGowan's account because she has been very outspoken about the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Is that not another tech company thinking it is the "thought" police? It sure looks that way to me.

      And, Google has messed with former employees being able to get jobs because of their politics. How about what they did to James Damore? They have displayed this kind of behavior, punishing people for thought, repeatedly.

      Trust Google, or any large tech company for that matter? You have to be kidding me.

      --
      "while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
    3. Re:Don't use one at all in the first place by ljw1004 · · Score: 2

      Seriously, ask yourself: why do you need one in the first place? Rhetorical question, you don't need one, you WANT one because it's a shiny toy.

      Because I'm working in the kitchen with my hands covered in food, my toddlers are playing in the nursery two floors up or in the basement, and with an Alexa I can easily start a video chat (without using my hands and without them having to press buttons) to let them know they have to come down for dinner, and to see what they're up to. Wiring this old house would be gnarly so I'm stuck with something that communicates over wifi and range-extenders.

      If you have other suggestions for something that meets these needs, I'm all ears! I've not found one.

    4. Re:Don't use one at all in the first place by ffreeloader · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, it's called walking. It's been working ever since human being have existed. It has great health benefits, and it's free.

      --
      "while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
    5. Re:Don't use one at all in the first place by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Isn't it just a matter of time before somebody loses a civil lawsuit or goes to jail based mostly on "assistant" recordings?

      Eventually they will manufacture new markets for those based on always-recording models. Helping old people, kids, some other "safety" justification and people just get used to the idea that it's always recording and transcribing everything.

      Before too long people will start suing Amazon/Google for *not* calling the cops, alerting the authorities, etc, when something bad happens in a monitored environment.

      So these devices will end up with some kind of 911-like compliance requirement and if you have an argument with a housemate you wind up having the cops show up.

      I really don't get why anyone has one of these things. It's literally a Black Mirror episode.

  10. No need by Moof123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, go outside and go for a walk or something that actually makes you happier.

    We went from stores full of stuff being too much of a hassle to drive to and needed things delivered to our doorstep. now it is too much of a chore to pull up a browser to order crap, so we get voice assistants to do it for us. How effing lazy are people? How hollow are their lives?

    go ride a bike, walk in the woods, talk with a human, or almost anything else is better for you than holing up with Alexa or Siri to try and fill your void of an existence.

  11. "Smart" is marketing-speak for "treacherous" by jabberw0k · · Score: 2

    The same goes for so-called "smart" so-called "telephones" -- which exhibit the same always-on, all-snooping behaviour. The only smart thing to do with one is send it to the crusher.

  12. Re:Better to Wait by ichimunki · · Score: 2

    This is all a non-issue.

    Unless the devices all do exactly the same things, none of the data is even that relevant from one service to the next. Even recognizing the speech itself is a statistical inference process that relies heavily on what words might actually be uttered in the context. This is highly dependent on what the device can do, and what words are used for that activity on that device. And on some level, the results of a service's speech recognition engine are something of a trade secret that I'm not sure they should be required to share.

    Even something as mundane as "Play my classic rock playlist on shuffle" is only going to be transferable if the backend music services are ALSO made to follow the same rules for open standards and transferability. Because if I have a "classic rock" playlist set up in Amazon Music, but not iTunes, Siri is not going to be able to a damn thing with that command except get it wrong.

    While it would be nice if Alexa allowed me to download a tarball of all my interactions (including the sound source files), my history is not hidden from me. It's available through a clunky online interface already. Can't imagine that a quick script couldn't help scrape all that data down into some usable form. But usable for what really is the question. I suppose it might be fun to load the data into a DB and run an analysis of how often Alexa can't figure out which lights I wanted to turn on/off... might help me tune up my light names to assist speech recognition process... but loading that information into another assistant? Not something I'm concerned about.

    None of this should be construed as opposition to regulatory mandates that would require any and all services that collect input and data from us from providing us a way to retrieve that data in a reasonable package form. Especially as the inputs become more and transient in nature, as with spoken commands to a digital assistant, our own ability to keep track of what we "shared" with the service diminishes. Of course, easily available to me is also more easily available to others and it's one more access point that has to be secured and monitored.

    --
    I do not have a signature
  13. Re: Team Alexa by mydn · · Score: 2

    "Job's done!"

  14. Voice assistants, job security is only temporary by zmooc · · Score: 3, Informative

    As of may 2018, in Europe the General Data Protection Regulation will come into effect. This effectively makes consumers owners of their data again. That includes requirements for explicit consent for very specific reasons as well as an explicit requirement for those processing such data to enable the consumer to download that data in an open and computer-readable format. Fines for non-compliance reach as high as 20 million euro or 4% of worldwide revenue, whichever is higher.

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    0x or or snor perron?!