from the And-microwaves-that-turn-into-cameras,-et-cetera.-So-we-know-that-that-is-just-a-fact-of-modern-life dept.
Amazon is doubling down on its Alexa-powered devices, with plans to release at least 8 new voice-controlled hardware devices before the end of the year, CNBC has learned.
The devices include, among others, a microwave oven, an amplifier, a receiver, a subwoofer, and an in-car gadget, people familiar with the matter said. All of the devices will be Alexa-enabled, meaning they can easily connect to the voice assistant. Some of the devices will also have Alexa built in.
Amazon is expected to reveal some of these devices at an event later this month, according to an internal document describing the plans.
The new devices reflect Amazon's ambition to make its Alexa voice technology ubiquitous by focusing on areas where people spend most of their time — at home and in the car. Alexa was initially considered a geeky experiment at Amazon. Now it is now one of the most popular voice assistants, leading the growth of the burgeoning smart speaker market, which is expected to be worth $30 billion by 2024, according to Global Market Insights.
Alexa-"powered" microwave ovens would be among the first consumer "AI" devices with the ability to harm small animals or babies.
Also at The Verge.
Related Stories
Alexa's chief scientist thinks the assistant needs a robot body to understand the world
Amazon's Rohit Prasad, head scientist and an instrumental member of the Alexa division, says the company's personal software assistant would be far smarter if it had a robot body and cameras to move around in the real world. Prasad, speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital AI conference in San Francisco yesterday, said, "The only way to make smart assistants really smart is to give it eyes and let it explore the world."
Some Alexa-enabled smart devices already have cameras. But a robot body would be new. Prasad's comments suggest that work could be in service of one day giving Alexa a body — although he wouldn't confirm this directly. Prasad works on natural language processing and other machine learning capabilities for Alexa, so it's likely if he wanted to test these features out, he'd be one of the few Amazon employees who could easily go ahead and try it.
Someday, we can truly have sex with Alexa.
Related: Amazon Plans to Add Alexa Voice Support to Microwaves, Amplifiers, Subwoofers, and "In-Car Gadgets"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:26PM (1 child)
Would pay more for devices that don't belong in Creepsville.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:28PM
"Good evening Dave. You seem to be washing the inside of your doll. Would you like me to register you on Tinder? Did you know that you haven't run a maintenance cycle in months? I am afraid your wash pictures could end up on linkedin if I failed to communicate to the Cloud account where they are stored."
(Score: 3, Touché) by MostCynical on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:28PM (4 children)
man takes food from microwave "Ow. Ow, hot, fuck!"
Could-be-worse: Alexa orders an attractive prostitute to his house.
Worse: he is chased by his microwave weilding his "smart" sex toys.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:23PM (3 children)
Even worse, but with additional wacky possibilities: Prostitute is also named "Alexa".
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:27PM (2 children)
All prostitutes are named Alexa, and all restaurants are Taco Bell.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:05PM
I never understood that marketing statement. If that's the case, wouldn't you want to eat literally *anywhere* else while you still had the option? I bet Stallone could justify the ratburger for that reason alone.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:04PM
You must mean Taco Bellyache.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:31PM (6 children)
Engineer: "Hey... what if we added a totally unnecessary feature to loads of electronics, that solves literally zero practical problems?"
Management: "I don't know... that doesn't seem... won't it cost more?"
Engineer: "I guess we could reduce costs gathering information marketing purposes, but that--"
Management: "Yeah! Okay, raise prices for new features and spy on everyone all the time!"
Engineer: "Wait, it'll add failure points to the design and they'll break more often. We can't do that"
Management: "And we can sell them new microwaves every 2 years instead of every 15? Throw all the old microwaves in the fucking garbage"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:34PM (4 children)
The Butlerian Jihad creeps closer, only Herbert got it wrong. It wasn't true AI that turned on us but the fuckers using their shit AI to turn humanity into one giant pig farm.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:11PM (2 children)
Wasn't that the original intent of the Overmind anyway? Only problem is it became self-aware and decided it didn't need masters, or the pig farm for that matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:59PM (1 child)
I didn't much care for the prequels and find it a bit ridiculous that real AIs so often become nefariously evil. Anyway, the proper term is apparently Evermind with proper name Omnius. At least in this description the "evil" is explained as a programmed behavior, however a true AI should be capable of self-analysis and not limited by such pre-existing coding. Well, maybe not any AI but once it reaches the level of the Evermind where it can create new AI and multiple versions of itself then it should be able to transcend petty human preconditioning.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:29PM
>however a true AI should be capable of self-analysis and not limited by such pre-existing coding
Why not? We certainly are. With sufficient training and practice we can avoid many of our biologically programmed behaviors and thought processes, but most we aren't even conscious of, and vanishingly few people bother even for the really obvious ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:31PM
"It wasn't true AI that turned on us but the fuckers using their shit AI to turn humanity into one giant pig farm"
But in the book, true AI was made by the glorious Titans. They took control over the decadent solid state societies of Man, because they were dissatisfied with the criminal inefficiency and utter idiocy of useless human culture. (and presumably because human made computers were full of exploitable backdoors, wink)
Titans were human to begin with, programmers.
Then later, one of them fucked up and developed an ego, and made a program to administrate in his stead, and rest of book happened.
So there is still hope that Titan scenario might come true on this timeline :D
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:26PM
And it'll work great, just like Apple's similar entry into the space [youtube.com].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:39PM (7 children)
More invasion, more cost, more things to break. Just because you can do it, does not mean it should be done.
My microwave needs to cook food, not be on the internet or order dinner for me when it thinks i'm hungry. Nor does it need to report back to Amazon what i just ate. Its a freaking food cooking device.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:05PM (1 child)
It's not your needs they're trying to satisfy.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:25AM
But they'll be happy to take your money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:09PM
I dunno, a toilet that knew I had a sense of humor and did things like start playing Feed Me Seymour [youtube.com] when I sat down wouldn't entirely suck. I'd probably get bored with it after a week or three though and drag a hot wall voltage wire across the more delicate electronics as a subtle hint to STFU though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:22PM (2 children)
Why bother to take a picture of your food to post on $SocialTrap ? Now your microwave will do it for you automatically !
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday September 18 2018, @11:39PM (1 child)
I really don't want the ideas in your post and TMB's sibling post combined.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 18 2018, @11:44PM
You must be new to this internet thing. Ever heard of Rule 34 ?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:09PM
It's also a food re-ordering device.
And it takes commands, like "cook popcorn", and knows the correct timer value for popcorn.
And it can tell you jokes.
And when you ask it to cook something, it can suggest local places that could deliver food to you instead. It can even insist on this, for your own good.
My favorite Alexa query used to be: What movies came out in 1995? But alas, they fixed it. It once would go on and on what seemed like forever.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:12PM (5 children)
No, just no! I don't want "smart" voice enabled devices! My dumb refrigerator, stove, microwave, toaster, dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer, thermostat, light switches, TVs, alarm clock, etc. all work JUST FINE without voice control and without phoning home to someone else's spy server.
It's bad enough that I have to take serious measures to keep my PC and my cell phone from completely siphoning up my life. I probably don't do enough to be honest. I suppose I could get rid of my phone and Internet and be a hermit (more than I already am).
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:19PM (3 children)
Seriously, this. Isn't it bad enough that pretty much everything has migrated from 2-3 easy-to-use knobs to annoying cheap keypads with badly designed software interfaces to save a few nickles in production costs? Now they want to, what, ditch the buttons for voice commands that will be flaky at the best of times, utterly useless at worst, and spy on you all the time? While increasing the cost to boot? Not just no, but Hell No!
If you really want "smart" electronics - leave the brains out of the electronics, just give them basic controls and a standarized wireless remote interface. Then I can use whatever "brain" I want to run the whole house, or no brain at all, as *I* choose. Why limit your device to only selling to people who use Alexa, when you could also sell it to those who use Siri, Google assist, or whatever privacy respecting self-contained digital assistant they want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:57PM (2 children)
So you admit the speech recognition is absolutely terrible at recognizing speech, and complain that it reports what it hears? If it reports after parsing, nobody is getting reliable spy data ...
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday September 18 2018, @11:48PM
These are actually different use cases.
Amazon is probably happy enough with 80% correct recognition. A simple algorithm can probably throw out most of the garbage and give them useful data.
If one time in fifty your thermostat hears "heat the house to seventy degrees"* instead of "heat the house to twenty degrees" it is completely useless.
*temps in C. probably just as bad for the yanks if you swap the numbers and do it in F.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 19 2018, @12:30AM
Your "smart" device almost certainly doesn't send parsed data to Amazon - it sends voice recordings to Amazon, who then parse the results. If it does any parsing locally, it's probably just of "Alexa..." to let it know that the next clip should be sent, rather than always sending everything. Though it'll still always send everything (to someone) if you've installed any of the malignant "apps" designed to do so.
As for spying - it's easy enough to store both the audio recording (voice-specific audio compression has gotten extremely good), *and* the parsed text - so you'd look for "interesting" text, and then listen to the audio of the surrounding time period. After all, you're likely to say several "interesting" things in a "conversation of interest", and the parsing will probably catch at least a few correctly enough.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:10PM
But just imagine!
What if you could get them all arguing with each other.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:13PM (1 child)
...to all those devices when the corporate overlords that be switch from "AI" (a.k.a. PRNG by another name) to the next buzzword iteration?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @11:02PM
You get to go buy a new one! Yay! The-Next-Buzzword-Trend!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:32PM (3 children)
Or the #AmazonWashingtonPost [twitter.com]. As everybody knows. But, this one makes sense. They did Smart Speaker. Where you say, "oh, play such and such." And it plays. And now they're doing Subwoofer. To give your music so much more punch. You have a big party -- the biggest, the majority -- tremendous crowd. Now everybody can feel the beat, so amazing. And possibly even Flakey Jeff will start dancing to the same drummer!!!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:54PM
Log in you tool.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 19 2018, @01:27AM (1 child)
"Alexa, increase the volume to 11"
...
"ALEXA, INCREASE THE VOLUME TO 11"
....
.......
"ALEXA!!! CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!"
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:12PM
I see your problem.
Subwoofers from Amazon are known to have poor high frequency response.
You need to communicate in a lower pitched tone of voice.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday September 19 2018, @12:35AM (1 child)
Whenever someone you know gets an Alexa or similar surveillance device, give them a gift-wrapped copy of George Orwell's "1984".
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:24AM
Wouldn't it be enough to give them one of those auto-playing birthday cards that has been customised to play back "Alexa, buy the hard cover edition of George Orwell's 1984"?