Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) chief technology officer is working toward a day when people can control almost any piece of software with their voice.
The company on Wednesday rolled out the technology powering Alexa, its voice assistant that competes with Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) Siri, to developers so they can build chat features into their own apps, CTO Werner Vogels said in an interview. The service, Amazon Lex, was in a preview phase since late 2016.
[...] Processing vast quantities of data is key to artificial intelligence, which lets voice assistants decode speech. Amazon will take the text and recordings people send to apps to train Lex - as well as Alexa - to understand more queries.
That could help Amazon catch up in data collection. As popular as Amazon's Alexa-powered devices are, such as Echo speakers, the company has sold an estimated 10 million or more. Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPhones and other devices with Siri.
[...] As with other cloud-based services, Amazon will charge developers based on how many text or voice requests Lex processes.
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-rolls-chatbot-tools-race-181632556.html
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Alibaba's version of the digital personal assistant will be available on August 8th only in China and without a display:
Alibaba's "Tmall Genie X1" will go for 499 yuan ($73) to the first 1,000 people during a one-month trial, coming in below Apple's $349 HomePod and the roughly $180 Echo. Its biggest competitor, Tencent Holdings Ltd., is developing a voice-activated digital speaker that could hit the market within months, Tencent President Martin Lau said in a May interview. And on Wednesday, Baidu Inc. showed off its own "DuerOS" personal assistant.
Taking a page from Amazon.com Inc. and Google, Hangzhou-based Alibaba's speaker offers voice-controlled services from music streaming to newscasts and calendar-booking, according to its website. Importantly, the gadget -- powered by the AliGenie system -- may eventually simplify shopping for the Chinese e-commerce giant's 450 million active buyers who turn to the website for everything from cherries to makeup.
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Related:
Amazon Rolls out Chatbot Tools in Race to Dominate Voice-Powered Tech
Amazon Dominates Voice-Controlled Speaker Market
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:33AM (1 child)
Tired of being persecuted for speaking, I don't talk to anyone anymore. People never want to hear what I have to say, so I just don't say anything.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:33AM
shut up nigger
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:37AM (2 children)
Amazon will charge developers based on how many text or voice requests Lex processes.
Which is the important bit. Your app business is now prisoner to the whim of Bezos. Something as history has show.. will be abused.
That leads to the next question. How far has free and open source recording come?
Which software is recommended?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:13AM (1 child)
they are always trying to recruit me, they even invited me to a job fair in Portland.
I won't work for Amazon because of what Bezos did to the Washington Post, and because Amazon won a supreme court case that found that its workers were not owed pay for the time they wait to be searched as they leave work.
I even turned them down when I was homeless.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:51AM
What did Bezos do to the Washington Post?
Anyway I more and more get the impression that Bezos is just a modern slave driver with a empty soul.
As for recruitment. Demand that they offer living quarters in order to work for them. Either if it's a apartment near work with low rent or a low rent house loan for a low priced house nearby. Everything such that you don't need to sign away most of your salary to just live or your time to just get to work. Their response would be interesting.. ;)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:04AM (1 child)
short headlines suck.
Back in the day I thought voice recognition would be A Good Thing (tm). Then I found out companies wanted to use my questions to invade the hell out of my privacy.
/ not a single voice recognition thing is in my household
// including my phone.
/// I'll take the extra 10 seconds to text type, thank yew verry much
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:39AM
TNG era, you say. OK. This Dilbert strip ran the day before TNG season 7 episode 21 "Firstborn"
"Well, look who got a voice-controlled computer." [dilbert.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:39AM
Yah no I said it all in the Re:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:42AM (3 children)
Can I say that idea's like this are the anti internet freedom != domination
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:44AM (2 children)
Drink moar
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:58AM (1 child)
If your buying please send beer money to...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:03AM
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:10AM (1 child)
My recently purchased Mac Mini comes with Siri. So far I haven't asked her anything. What shall I ask?
"Siri, I want to kill. I mean I want to kill. I want to see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. I want to kill, kill, KILL!"
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:43AM
Kill la Kill [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:32AM (2 children)
I was hoping for more refinement and specialized speech processor chips that were very speaker dependent... so that if I spoke, the computer would recognize both the phrase and it was me speaking... if someone else spoke the exact same thing, unless they sounded damned similar to me, it would be unrecognized.
I have seen some processors for Arduino that seem to be speech recognizers, but I have yet to mess with any. Anyone else mess with any of 'em?
Intended use is to monitor my house... especially my bedroom ... and put my system into a defensive mode when so ordered by as much as saying a particular phrase. A few high voltage discharges ( neon-sign transformer / Jacob's ladder kinda stuff ) can be very visually intimidating and I think could likely cause an intruder to reconsider hanging around to see if he can find the human-sized bug zapper. ( Yeh, I know... best run it from a UPS. ).
Psy-ops. Hollywood style.
The other intended use is to throw the powertrain control module I am building for my van into various imminent shutdown modes should I utter a phrase like "please don't hurt me!". The system will then follow instructions - that unless countered by later phrases - will do things like hijack the transmission controls and shut down the fuel pump, causing the engine to pull vapor into its high pressure hydraulic fuel injectors, which will then require about a thirty minute to one hour bleeding procedure to be done before the engine can be restarted. Even they get the engine going again, with the PCM in control of the transmission solenoids, I can have the PCM purposely lock up the transmission so just as they try to put it into gear, it will stall out the engine. It will take them so long to figure out what I did that they would probably much prefer finding another target to mess with.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:27AM (1 child)
What would a speech processor do differently to a conventional CPU?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:49AM
This whole thing is supervised by an Arduino. Selected for its trustworthiness, its simplicity, as well as its miserly power consumption... especially when sleeping.
But an Arduino loses terribly on raw processing power.
So, I offload as much stuff as I can onto dedicated sub-processors.
Intention is failure of subprocessing systems will not lock up the Arduino. Just trip failure flags.
Nor can one malfunctioning subsystem affect other subsystems.
Another thing is I need very high levels of task fidelity. Meaning each subprocessing unit has a particular thing its watching. In my case, the most time-critical thing is two variable reluctors telling me how many gear teeth have passed on the engine drive crankshaft, as well as the differential rear end. I want to count every last one of 'em. They are used to sense speed, engine tach, transmission slippage, fuel consumption, mileage, engine load, and possibly more.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]