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Amazon's Next Big Bet is Letting You Communicate Without a Smartphone, Says Alexa's Chief Scientist (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The next big function to take off on Amazon's Echo devices will be voice or video calling -- which is a way Alexa can reduce the need to have your smartphone on your at all times, said Rohit Prasad, VP and Head Scientist at Alexa Machine Learning. "If you have not played with calling and the video calls on Echo Show, you should try it because that is revolutionizing how you can communicate," Prasad said in an exclusive interview with CNBC at an Alexa Accelerator event in Seattle Tuesday night. (The event is dedicating to developing new voice-powered technologies.) "When you can drop in on people who have given you access -- so I can drop in and call my mom in her kitchen without her picking any device -- it's just awesome." (Amazon added the ability to call mobile numbers and landlines for free onto Echo devices a few weeks ago.) Amazon doesn't have a smartphone that lets customers bring a digital assistant everywhere -- like Apple's Siri and Google's Assistant -- and communicating through Alexa devices is one way of reducing the need for a personal handset, Prasad said "I can easily drop in and talk to my kids," Prasad says. "They don't have a smartphone so that's my easiest way to talk to them. It's yet another area where Alexa is taking the friction away."
So I guess we all end up with landlines again...
Your mom probably has one. She probably doesn't have internet anyway so Amazon is useless here.
I WANT distance from Amazon!
I WANT a barrier against impulse buys!
Did Orwell's 1984 stop being a basic high school literature requirement in the last 20 years?
I am continually baffled by the number of people mindlessly signing up for an active listening (and soon, viewing) device in their homes.
You can just see the incremental push for "new applications" which will ultimately require continuous listening, viewing and remote transcription.
to communicate?
Al^H^H Computer. Hello Computer.
So no opportunity to let the person hit an answer button? What if they are having sex? If you don't care about privacy go for it
Needs are things like water, food, shelter and clothing.
This "need" for a smartphone is more accurately described as Fear Of Missing Out. And, like the monster under the bed that little kids are afraid of, is entirely manufactured in your own mind. Humans survived for millions of years without the "need" for a smartphone at all times. It's probably healthier to leave the thing at home from time to time and enjoy a walk outside, a good book, and being out of touch.
Everyone needs to rush out and get an Amazon Dot.
So they ported Skype to their shitty hardware?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
MIGHT have something to say about that. ANYTHING that disrupts their business, they will fight, obviously. Maybe if they DROPPED their data rates, it wouldn't be so bad.
Often it's with people that are in the same room as I am - no hardware required.
Anybody else tired of huge companies trying to force solutions on us that we don't need?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Who doesn't have a smart phone with them at all times? If that's Amazon's market, it's shrinking fast.
So is Amazon trying to position Drop In as a sort of alternative home security solution to check in on your house / spy on your family and tenants? Otherwise, I don't really see the appeal of having someone just connect into your home without a minimal confirmation by the receiving end. If anything, I just see a whole lot of room for creeping control: parents stalking their children, roommates tracking each other, overbearing significant others demanding monitoring access. Of course, there's also the question of hacking or even an easy way for governments to intrude... Seems a bit too much for me. Amazon Echo Show Drop-In Feature is Really Creepy
Yes but Millennials have never had a landline so it's "revolutionary" to be able to make a call from a fixed device without carrying around a smartphone. By the way, have you heard about the new free, wireless music streaming service that doesn't need data called "FM radio"? It's revolutionary!
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Pretty soon this technology will be so prevalent that to make a call to anyone in the world, all you have to do is shout "call [name]". The nearest spy node will hear your request and connect you to the node your friend is closest to.
calls I can't prevent by turning off my phone.
I would like there to be at least a small barrier to communicate with me so people will stop to think about what they are saying and if it is worth the effort to say it. Hive mind is pretty dystopian IMHO.
love is just extroverted narcissism
You're welcome
Needs are things like water, food, shelter and clothing.
This "need" for a smartphone is more accurately described as Fear Of Missing Out.
It's much more serious than that. I can't poop without a smartphone. Without one, I'd explode.
"If you have not played with calling and the video calls on Echo Show, you should try it because that is revolutionizing how you can communicate," Prasad said
Who actually believes this swill?
where the receiver is wirelessly powered by the stream itself: AM crystal radio! It's a century old!
Humans survived for millions of years without the "need" for a smartphone at all times.
Homo sapiens evolved between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago.
Source: Wikipedia
As if any normal person needs to have their smartphone with them all the time. I already solved this problem. I don't carry my phone around the house. Nothing on that phone can't wait until I pick it up again.
So Amazon is trying to say that their tech is going to power the shipboard communications of our starships?
But snark aside, it actually would be a pretty impressive feat, if you think about it. You tell the local device who you are ("Picard...") and who you'd like to connect with ("... to Riker...") and the device communicates with the broader network, automatically geo-locates your intended recipient, activates the communicator on their end, replays your query for them to receive ("Picard to Riker.") and they respond. (... "Go ahead.")
And we're almost there, technologically speaking. Neat.
Not really true - phones have been pretty necessary for decades. Everything from emergency services to scheduling appointments or contacting customer support.
Apple has done this for several years. If you're iPhone is on the same network as your other iCrap devices, you can answer a call/text/video message on your ipad while your phone is in the other room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My only problem with Amazon or Google doing it is you know they will be constantly listening and looking for ways to sell your personal info to any company / government willing to pay a $1.
Occasional access to a phone, sure, but it's not now, nor has it ever been, a necessity to have one constantly available.
Even now, there are lots of people who have no permanent phone service at all.
You've just described convenience, not need. Even the emergency services, most often you can take care of by yourself or with a friend/family member.
The person who calls hmself 'Luthair', in his comment, doesn't get it at all:
phones have been pretty necessary for decades. Everything from emergency services to scheduling appointments or contacting customer support.
None of those things require a smartphone, or even a wireless phone. A landline would suffice.
I find that most people find excuses masquerading as 'reasons' why they 'need' a smartphone, but they rarely hold up under scrutiny, eventually being revealed as 'want' and not 'need', and reasons to be lazy.
I do not have nor is it even remotely likely I'll ever have a smartphone. They're a security nightmare, completely incapable of being secured against intrusion in even the most basic ways, due to a complete lockdown of the OS and the software loaded onto the phone. Worse, many of them have been found to be completely compromised right out of the factory. Then there's the documentable fact that wireless companies are constantly logging and spying on everything you do, where you are, and so on, and documentable proof that government agencies, leveraging the aforementioned lack of security, can push spyware onto anyones phone they choose to, and listen in and watch everything you're doing, everywhere you go. Couple all this with the fact that most smartphones can't be completely turned off, can be remotely turned on, and that you can't remove the battery in many of them, and you have a recipe for never having your privacy, and never having anything on your smartphone secure against intrusion. No thanks, I'll pass.
People to allow a telescreen err echo in everyone's homes that allows them to record and listen to everything in ones house.
I will NEVER own one and i'm happy to admit I plucked out the microphone on my firestick's remote.
I remember the first 25 years of my life and just how awful it was not being able to communicate!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I can't wait for people to call me on speakerphone through their Alexa. If I'm lucky I'll hear the background echo and know I'm on speakerphone. If I'm not lucky I'll share some embarassing secret to whoever is in earshot of their device. "Hey Ma, thanks for calling. Yes, I'm regular again! Thanks for the tip on that hemorrhoid cream by the way"
Engineer?
Marketeer?
I was born in the 70's. I somehow made it all the way till the late 90's before I got a mobile phone, and even then it was more for convenience and by no means a necessity. I went to a smartphone later when I got a 3GS used.
I used the phone plenty before it was mobile. Calling friends, family, customer support, scheduling appointments, colleagues, etc. My desk phone at work or home phone were used for communication daily, multiple times. I even worked a customer support desk a while so I used a phone as a tool to generate income. But none of these phones were smartphones.
In terms of emergency services, you could generally count on being able to find a pay phone, or in the era where cell phones were becoming more popular, you could flag someone down or someone would stop. Or if you were home you had a land line. There was also some self-reliance. If you got a flat, you changed it yourself, it wasn't an "emergency", it was just something that happened and the reason you kept a spare. If your car up and died, and you couldn't revive it you would find a phone somehow and call AAA , a friend/family member to get you or bring tools, etc. You didn't need a smartphone, you cold get by with either a regular mobile phone, finding someone with a phone, pay phone, or asking to use a land line. People were generally OK with letting a stranger make a call if they were in obvious distress. If they didn't quite trust you they would ask for the number and dial it for you, since long distance charges were a thing. Or you could always call collect.
Try living without a smartphone in our society today, do it, I challenge you. If your surrounding environment demands it (society in this case) then it is necessary for survival.
It's not a necessity yet but you'll find that if you expect a certain standard of living, it's a necessary tool to maintain that standard of living. Forfeiting technology progressions almost always lowers your standard of living.
Right; I agree that at least a cell phone is a necessity, now that payphones are gone; and a smartphone could be considered somewhat of a necessity if there's a chance you'll be lost somewhere since you can no longer just go in a gas station and look up addresses/locations in their phone book; but it's certainly not a necessity to have it with you at all times.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Who is holding the gun to your head?
When you're at home, you can talk to your family when they're also at home.
Pure genius, I say.
The millennials don't know that feeling, that we old farts had for a hundred years of so.
My phone sat on a table being charged from Friday till Monday morning. I didn't die, I didn't miss anything of importance, and I actually got more done. My wife and I are considering having a phone cutoff of 8PM where we turned them off entirely. I'm also considering leaving my phone in my car during the workday because honestly, it's more of a distraction than something that helps me get work done. I have a desk phone, and my co-workers and important family members know the number, or they could always just call the front desk and get transferred if they really need to find me.
I've also dropped off a lot of social media platforms, too. They consume inordinate amounts of time, take away time I can concentrate on other things, seem to develop into interruption machines one way or another, and have low-quality content and experience. Reading a book, learning a new programming language, woodworking, exercising, playing a game with my kids, sailing/kayaking, riding my bike, snowshoeing, hiking, learning to cook a new dish (from a dead tree cookbook), visiting my library, participating in a community event, taking a photo walk, chatting with a neighbor or mowing my lawn are all examples of richer life experiences than are provided by social media, and none of them require a smartphone. True, there are ways in which a smartphone could augment some of those experiences, but it's by no means a requirement to enjoy them.
I have no quarrel that a smartphone is an amazing device. It quite literally puts the Internet in your hand, plus calendar, email, you can call people, there are useful apps, etc. It's a transformative technology versus the way things were done before and it's very convenient. What I'm getting at is that it's important to realize that it's not necessary to one's existence, despite the millions being spent on advertising to convince us otherwise. I guess I'm at a point in my life when I feel comfortable in telling "society" to go fuck itself while I enjoy some time away from my phone. I'll come back and use my phone again, but on my terms. I'm the master of the phone, not the other way around.
I do not have nor is it even remotely likely I'll ever have a smartphone.
So "I don't have a smartphone" has become the new "I don't have a TV" thing to be proud of !~~~
Jokes aside....
They're a security nightmare, completely incapable of being secured against intrusion in even the most basic ways, due to a complete lockdown of the OS and the software loaded onto the phone. Worse, many of them have been found to be completely compromised right out of the factory.
On the other hand, there are viable alternative :
- Sailfish OS by jolla is an example of a system that is not locked down, vast parts of it are opensource (under copyleft licesne), most of the remaining not yet copylefted parts are "source available" in practice due to being written in QML + Javascript, and only a few bits are actually closed source (the alien-dalvik android compatibility layer, predictive text and microsoft exchange client).
Currently they are launching a new official version for the Xperia X smartphone, in partnership with Sony's Open Devices program.
There are even ways to run android app using opensource component (currently SFDroid, with Andbox aimed by the community somewhere in the future).
That covers your problem of "The OS that came with my phone contains crap and I'm not even allowed to remove it, because I'm shut off admin access on my own hardware".
And if you are not comfortable with blobs (like the platform driver) running on your phone (nearly all current chipsets). Or even worse - the remote-blob running baseband modem working as a the chipset's northbridge and being in charge of sensitive component like RAM (like on most Qualcomm chipset) ; there are alternatives too :
- Purism has managed to finance their Librem "sort of crowdfunding" campaign and will build a smartphone based around opensource.
Yup, indeed, it's an awfully old and under-powered chipset (currently prototyping with i.MX 6, with hopes to more to i.MX 8 if that one gets similar upstream vanilla kernel support). But this chipset will run 100% copyleft opensource code, and the problematic parts (like modem) will be isolated in separate chips that don't have access to any sensitive part (can't see the main system RAM, unlike Qualcomm's modems) and will be restricted to only talk over a standard protocol with the main system.
That covers you problem of "NSA can remotely turn on my phone and start spying on me". Just flip the hardware switch and disconnect the modem, the rest of your phone will continue to work as *you* intended.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Of 1984 written in as one of the articles in a porno magazine.
Millenials and their ancestors have been fapping to it for almost 20 years now.
At least that is all I can assume because it seems 20-60 years olds are living the dream known as 1984 today, and all I can do is try futilely to find a few hundred people willing to abandon all hope so we can go create somewhere where privacy is still respected. Because America, EU, Russia, China, it ain't, and most of the other places have issues of their own.
Amazon, you're funny!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yes but Millennials have never had a landline so it's "revolutionary" to be able to make a call from a fixed device without carrying around a smartphone. By the way, have you heard about the new free, wireless music streaming service that doesn't need data called "FM radio"? It's revolutionary!
You beat me to it !
Not true. Humans in fact have died in vast numbers throughout the ages, and the single most common factor of all times until very recently has been that no one had a smartphone with them, lest all the time. And ever since most of us do o the population growth has increased even more. So I offer that the judgement on your hypothesis therfore, statistically speaking, is still out. :)
When you can drop in on people who have given you access -- so I can drop in and call my mom in her kitchen without her picking any device -- it's just awesome."
He and I have different definitions of "awesome". For example, I think it's rude to simply drop in on someone at home w/o prearranging it or calling first - not even, or especially, by my mother. So, I would never enable or use this feature - nor would I ever have one of these spy devices in my home.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
People already don't make voice calls anymore. How exactly is this supposed to "revolutionize" anything? I'm certainly not going to be more likely to interrupt someone's day with a voice cal (how rude!) simply because I can do it with my voice instead of pressing a few buttons on my phone.
Try living without a smartphone in our society today, do it, I challenge you.
I know a number of people who manage it without any difficulty whatsoever.
I do not have nor is it even remotely likely I'll ever have a smartphone.
I do have one, and I really enjoy having it. It's extraordinarily convenient.
But it's far from a necessity. I agree with you, people should be honest with themselves about this: it's a very handy tool, but people have them because they want them, not because they need them.
and you have a recipe for never having your privacy, and never having anything on your smartphone secure against intrusion.
This is actually an easy problem to solve. There are a wide variety of stylish phone cases that double as faraday cages. If your phone is in one of these, it can't talk to anything. Or, you could go cheap and wrap the thing in aluminum foil.
Alexa, send this text to what's-his-name: blah blah
None of those things require a smartphone, or even a wireless phone. A landline would suffice.
A landline suffices if it is available. But landlines, payphones in particular, have since been removed from places where they used to be available, on grounds of insufficient revenue to continue maintenance once enough users had switched to mobile phones. And once a landline is no longer available, it no longer suffices.
Couple all this with the fact that most smartphones can't be completely turned off, can be remotely turned on
With most modern PCs supporting wake on LAN, how are they substantially different?
Is that you Donald?
so, the little internet-connected camera in my home can have any random asshole who figures out how to spoof onto that list watching me?
no thanks. i don't know what planet the amazon engineers live on, but it's certainly not this one.
Humans NEED social interactions.Technologies that facilitate social interactions are just as important as technologies that facilitate the production of food, shelter or clothing.
Because it is so convenient to have Alexa-type or "Ok, Google"-type technology, more and more people will adopt it. So, we Slashdotters who are aware of the technological and techno-political implications of the loss of privacy are fighting a losing battle, if we merely ignore this or decide that we won't buy an Amazon Echo or turn off the microphone permissions on our smartphone. Not only do we miss out on rather amazing technology (which, granted, is not that great a sacrifice), but we can't avoid being at least indirectly affected by our society as a whole which is embracing the whole Please-Spy-On-Me trend. It's not practical to refuse to go to your sister-in-law's family dinner just because they have Amazon Echo turned on inside the home.
So, we the technologically literate/elite need to take an active role in shaping the way technology interacts with society. It's going to be hard doing the "society" part, so we should work on the "technology" part.
We are okay with technology that's under our control. When we realized that signing up for email meant some central email server was going to handle a huge chunk of our private communication, we didn't shy away from email; we overlaid PGP on top of it. Wen we saw that syncing our personal devices via iCloud meant giving our data to a big corporation, we ran our own private OwnCloud server instead.
So what we need to do is to replicate, not just the Amazon Echo little microphone thingy, but the server that's behind it doing all these things. We need a FOSS replacement for a speech recognition server. That way, we can still retain the capability of voice command, without giving up our privacy to do so.
I'm not sure that speech recognition ("SpRec" --my own monosyllabic abbreviation) in the FOSS world is all that advanced; after all, sprec makes a lot of money, and I don't think corporations are ready to part with their proprietary research. Fortunately, a quick Google search shows that there is hope: some FOSS sprec programs are out there, though still in their infancy (Simon, Kaldi, CMU Sphinx, HTK sprec).
I would call on all the technorati out there to recognize sprec as one of the areas where we need to develop. Where there is a lot of corporate ingress into a big developing market, FOSS needs to be there as well to counterbalance corporate interests. Witness what happened with the popularization of GNU/Linux, Firefox, etc.
Thanks for your attention. Please spread the word.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Well, good thing I work in an office with work colleagues I've known for nearly two decades, I video/phone conference with colleagues in other countries I've known nearly as long, I live with my wife and kids, I play games with friends, attend events in my community, am a member of a community sailing association and have a landline telephone to call my mom and siblings. None of those things needs a smartphone.
Yet, it does seem like you use a lot of technologies, from sailboats to video conferences, to facilitate social interactions. Why bother singling out smartphones for criticism? I don't need a sailboat to make friends, but I don't post comments about putting down sailboats.
It's possible to have the positives without the negatives - just ignore all notifications until deciding you care. Smartphones with no notification light make this easy, as does putting it on silent mode. I have had a smartphone since before the iPhone (Windows Mobile 5, the future was here!) and am thoroughly confused by why everyone is constantly staring at them. In a social setting it rarely leaves my pocket or car. And I do social media.
Smartphones are another case of "everything in moderation".
I'd leave the phone in the car at work if I didn't occasionally need to text about lunch.
Quote from the article : "a way Alexa can reduce the need to have your smartphone on your at all times" That's why I singled out the smartphone.
Humans survived for millions of years without the "need" for a smartphone at all times.
Homo sapiens evolved between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago.
Source: Wikipedia
He said Humans, which are really that old.
you just need to go outside and talk to real people. Oh wait...
Back in the days of dial up, people who use internet are big company employees, universities and nerds. It is not surprising these tech literates are more privacy/security aware.
Who's on the web2.0 now are 8-80 yro with a smartphone, vast majority are layman. Sure there are smarter one among the millennials who still care about privacy/security, but their voice will be drown within bazillion of ignorants.
TLDR: millennials aren't dumber than Gen Xers. Dumbfuck among gen Xers simply are too stupid to get on the web back in the days.
Not true. I don't have a cell phone nor a fixed line. I live in a rural area and life is just fine the way it is?
Judge me all you like but i think phones are luxuries we can afford without.
... so I can drop in and call my mom in her kitchen without her picking any device ...
What creepy perv came up with this idea and thought it would make a good bullet-on-the-box?