Slashdot Mirror
Only a Small Percentage of Users Buy Stuff Through Alexa, Report Claims (arstechnica.com)
Analysts have been aggressively optimistic in their predictions about the growth of consumer shopping via virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa, but a new report claims that only a small fraction of Alexa device owners shop with voice commands. And most of those who do only try it once or stick to a limited range of products. From a report: Two people who have been briefed on Amazon's "internal figures" told tech business publication The Information that only around 2 percent of people who own Alexa-equipped devices like those in Amazon's Echo line have ever made a purchase with Alexa. Of that 2 percent, about 90 percent tried it once and did not attempt it again after that, one of The Information's sources said. And even those users who regularly use Alexa to shop mainly do so for small purchases like household supplies.
The first type is the most common - people who bought them because they were cheap and looked like a fun toy. These folks all played with it incessantly for a week or two, then put them away (one such friend told me he isn’t even sure where he put it).
The second type are people like my sister. She set it up and still uses it regularly - but only to play background music in her living room. She’s never used it for anything else and is not interested in learning how to do so (although I did teach her younger son how to get it to fart).
The only people I am aware of ever using the Echo for ordering anything are the guys on TWIT.
#DeleteChrome
I don't have any of these (spy) devices, but can't imagine I'd actually shop for stuff using it - certainly not things I hadn't already purchased before - because there's no way to review the items, like you can using a browser, to ensure it's really what you want. For things I've previously bought and am simply re-buying, like laundry soap, it might offer some, small, convenience, but not enough to have an always-listening device on my house. These things have always seemed more like a solution in search of a problem.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The very first thing I did was disable the ability to buy things with my echo. Who knows *what* I'd have ended up with!
"Hey Alexa, buy me a Toy Yoda"
Alexa: "one Toyota will be parked in your driveway by morning, it will cost 32 thousand dollars"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The truth is the Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. are remarkably unintelligent and undiscerning. They can do very constrained and stereotyped tasks fairly well, but introduce a minimum of ambiguity, and they start spinning their wheels badly. Even when dealing with simple queries, their lack of understanding is irksome - e.g. if you tell any of them "Do not, under any circumstances, give me the weather forecast" they all promptly and efficiently give you the weather forecast. It will be some time before these gadgets become useful for significantly more than grins and giggles and party games.
I am not sure. Credit card shopping and the Internet did solve real issues, or improved existing experiences in significant ways. As things stand today, shopping with Alexa is a painstaking experience, that requires much more time and effort from you in comparison with what it would take if you just did it yourself. This is true, to a large extent, of almost anything that Alexa can do. It's cool to be able to command Alexa to turn on the dining room table light but, most of the time, it will be simpler and faster for you to flick the switch yourself by hand. Alexa, and the other digital assistants are 98% toys and 2% useful. Maybe they will eventually evolve into something really useful, but they have a very long way to go to get there.
https://xkcd.com/1807/
#DeleteFacebook
My heart sinks when I phone an organisation and it wants me to use voice commands. In my experience they often can't even distinguish between "Yes" and "No". Even when I try loud and exagerated, like " YEEEEES! " and " NOOOOOH! ". Yet I speak with a clear "educated" English accent (and this in the UK). How the hell Scotsmen from Aberdeen or the immigrants who can hardly pronounce English get on I can't imagine.
The most stupid thing was phoning BT (the phone company) to report a faulty line. You have to describe to a robot why you are phoning them, but this was (obviously) over a faulty line with crackles and buzzes going on. I was yelling " FAULTY LINE!! ", and it was saying "I'm sorry, I did not catch that. Did you want to pay your bill?". Idiots, you'd think they would have a special number for line faults and have a person answer; I dumped BT after that shitwreck.
Do some people really try to do shopping like that?
Know why milk is always in the back corner of the grocery store? ... the store owners want you to go all the way through the store, past every aisle, and maybe think "as long as I'm here"...They manipulate you and you don't even realize it.
I realise perfectly well what they are trying to do, and it so annoys me that I'm damned if I will do it. Another example is UK motorway service buildings where you must run the entire zig-zag gauntlet of coffee shops, confectionery stalls, gambling arcades, and tat shops (all over-priced) to reach the toilets. That's why when I stop for a piss I prefer to park in the lorry area which often accesses the place via a back door short cut, or even has a separate lorry drivers' shithouse.
The Clapper is only two decades old. The X10 System is four decades old and much more useful. It's the original electronic home automation system.
I still use X10 to control more than a dozen lights with timers, day/night detectors, motion sensors, and manual controls. I control a few fail-safe appliances with it too. The modules and controllers are cheap and plentiful, you can still buy them new if you wish. The protocol is completely open and there are myriad computer interfaces. Most Free/free HA software will readily use X10 modules.
X10 lamp modules were a little wonky with CFL bulbs, but the massive shift to LEDs has solved that problem. LED bulbs work 100% with 30+ year-old X10 modules including dimming. The only real downside is no two-way verification (with standard modules), and the vampire draw is higher than modern stuff. (I think. Could be wrong there.)
The best parts? 100% Under my complete control with no mandatory "cloud" connection or privacy leaks or Internet-exposed firmware that will never be updated. You don't need a EULA to use it or read a Privacy Statement to see what they are stealing.