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1. Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:11:50 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

   This is another one in a growing collection of sort-of retrospectives about voice assistants, with most of them focusing on the fact that they're just not making any money, especially where Alexa is concerned;

   https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/amazons-big-dreams-for-alexa-fall-short/

   And nobody involved seems to be asking the tough questions, such as whether there's actually enough of a market out there for voice assistant 'skills’.

   It's kind of like AR/VR; a nice gimmick, useful for some people, but not the sort of tech that tech bros desperately want it to be.

   So they're jumping headlong into ‘AI’ assistants instead 🙄

   • 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸 (phenomx6@fedi.pawlicker.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:11:48 JST 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸

     in reply to
     @sindarina voice bots worked for tech illiterate boomers at least like my mom
   • Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:11:49 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

     in reply to

     Like, seriously, just look at this bit;

     “Nadella can afford to be blunt: Microsoft’s recent introduction of AI chatbot ChatGPT to its Bing search engine means the company is now seen as a leader in the field, having previously been mostly forgotten by the majority of Internet users.”

     He can afford to rag on voice assistants because everybody is buying into the chat bot hype just like they bought into the voice bot hype the last time, even though there's no actual there there, and I'm not sure there ever will be, at least not in the foreseeable future.

   • 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸 (phenomx6@fedi.pawlicker.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:13:44 JST 🌲Number 1 Pleroma Criminal on XBL 🇵🇱|🇺🇸

     in reply to
     @sindarina Yandex is the best right now because it removes the fewest results these days.
   • Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:13:45 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

     in reply to

     Which means that this is likely to be trash, too;

     https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ai-powered-chat-helps-bing-make-a-small-dent-in-googles-search-hegemony/

     Bing is a niche player because it's not a great search engine. Pretty much all of its users use it because Microsoft makes it the default, using methods that would never fly if they didn't also own the operating system underneath.

     Once the hype wears off, so will most of this supposed growth, and it'll be back to only being used because it's difficult for the average Windows user to avoid it.

   • Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:13:46 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

     in reply to

     And now they're at it again, all racing to be among the winners in the chat bot ‘revolution’, vying to be the one who unlocks ‘the next interface’, never stopping to consider that, if they train it on garbage, its output will be trash as well 🙄

   • Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:13:47 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

     in reply to

     Also, let's not forget that, for voice assistants, the tech industry largely poisoned its own well; it doesn't matter if they're actually any good if a growing number of people simply don't want your always-on microphone in their vicinity, because you have repeatedly betrayed their trust.

     That's why it doesn't matter if, say, Facebook actually spies on you via the microphone in your device. Enough apps tried it that it has left the average user wary, especially once it became apparent that pretty much every voice assistant had those teams of underpaid humans in faraway countries, listening.

   • Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:13:48 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

     in reply to

     That's not to say that it doesn't have its uses, mind. There are plenty of people for whom voice bots have brought a level of accessibility that they did not have before, for example, but that, like most tech, is more of an accidental side effect, at least for Amazon's version of it, since accessibility was never the actual goal.

     It was enabling impulse buys, vendor lock-in, and so forth; Amazon wants something you can talk to because it removes barriers to purchase.

   • Sindarina, Edge Case Detective (sindarina@ngmx.com)'s status on Monday, 13-Mar-2023 00:13:48 JST Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

     in reply to

     It's ad tech, essentially. An alpha-quality product that got pushed out there for the rest of us to test, without most of us being aware that we were actually guinea pigs, and that the ‘magic' was enabled by either large teams of underpaid humans listening to voice clips, or large volumes of low and mediocre quality data to give the appearance of intelligence, while the users once again made to test it for them.

     That's why it's free, or cheap.