Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy At Amazon's AI event in Las Vegas this week, the company introduced Alexa Conversations, a new way to code skills that support more natural conversation and participate in multi-topic interactions. Alexa Skills are third-party extensions to Amazon's chat bot. Developers register their own wake word or custom phrase – so, for …
Only a waffle?
My experiences with Amazon advertising I'd fully expect ads for toasters upon recognising toast making in progress.
Computers have long gotten past the business of cutting out some of the drudgery of human existence and moved onto filling up that empty space with mundanity.
I know that the intent behind these tips is often envisioned by a genuine desire to help (as long as they aren't trying to sell you something), but I've never had a suggestion like this where I didn't want to add an option 4:
Shut up and go away you piece of shit. I have a computer so that it does what I tell it to do, when I tell it to do it. If I wanted your opinion on the matter, I'd program it into you with a god damn sledgehammer. Never offer my any advice ever again because I already have a mother who tries teaching me to suck eggs whenever I meet her.
*ahem*
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"ALEXA: I have ordered an Uber for arrival one hour after the items arrive. I have also located 3 popular dumping sites, would you like me to select one?"
"popular" dumping sites? Might as well just call the cops. Surely a properly clever Alexa would find you the least popular dumping sites.
Once again, AI reinforces its stereotype as the delusional wet dream of marketers, who continue to tell themselves that end users will abandon all human instinct and start opting in to voice-activated advertisements. Even Indian tech support workers continue to be on the order of 1 million times more intelligent than our most advanced AI. When will journalists drop the notion that this underdeveloped technology is of any meaningful value to any but the tiniest minority of end users?
-- in relatively simple phone tree applications. I can't imagine wanting a stand-alone "AI" phone tree in my home. If I want to raise my blood pressure then I'll read the news, for God's sake.
Interesting: did you know that a very deep gold mine in Colombia penetrated Hell, and the overwhelming noise the miners heard was the sound of screaming from the guy that invented call waiting? Makes the rest of us smile.
I imagine there's a place in Hell waiting for voice-assistant AI-fiddlers, too.
"Therefore, it is winner takes all for whatever Alexa comes up with when you order something generic like travel, everyday home items or local services like a plumber or electrician. You will not see the equivalent of the 10 blue links offered by search engines, which at least give some semblance of choice."
How did I not see this before? This beats browser dominance by lightyears. Soon enough companies will pay the assistant's masters (not you) to give THEIR product/service top listing for a given search. Which will of course give the Alexa/Cortana/BigBrotherBot drivers immense power to decide what products succeed or fail. Think the top ten browser results are influential? Try being the first suggestion Alexa makes.
Instead of finding you the best match for your needs, Alexa and friends will show you the product that paid the most to be seen. Far from bringing us the world, these abominations will limit choice and steer us where their masters want us to go. Fick das.
"Anything more sophisticated is hard to code and arduous for the user, which is why those customer service bots that attempt to triage your support call are so frustrating"
And there I was thinking they were deliberately coded like that so it was only possible to deal with the few things the "service" provider was prepared to do anything about and/or avoid challenging their marketroids rose-tinted perception of how well we all thought of their attempts.
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