How Smart is Your Smart Assistant?

[malliekm]

According to MarketWatch...

[renegade600]

of course those that own their own search engine will be the best when it comes to answering questions.  they can fix it to make it easier for their own devices to find answers.  they also have the ability to make it harder for other devices to find answers.  the article and test is junk science. 

[malliekm]

Scrooge! 

[mike27oct]

Since when is MarketWatch tech savvy? 

Don't care which deviceccan best answer stupid questions; that's not why I bought the gadgets. My tests confirm GH has the edge on Music, Echo next.  As for questions, all of them told me which teams play Monday night football, so what else do I need to know today?   

And what is up with GH telling me a stupid story from news just because I test that it is working with a simple hello command.  It is getting on my nerves with this antic.

[jwlv]

That's not the first time GH did that.
Back in March GH advertised Beauty and the Beast as if it was newsworthy.

[malliekm]

Well then I'll refrain from posting the news article I read today that said Amazon has sold 3X more AIs than Google as of Sept 2017.  I'm sure that's junk science too  

[renegade600]

Well then I'll refrain from posting the news article I read today that said Amazon has sold 3X more AIs than Google as of Sept 2017.  I'm sure that's junk science too  

could be because that was months ago  :-) 

[mike27oct]

That's not the first time GH did that.
Back in March GH advertised Beauty and the Beast as if it was newsworthy.

Well, if they keep it up their devices will be banished tp "sold on eBay".  The stupid news stories are often repeated, too.  It did so today .

[smeg]

Anyone who doesn't think these things are going to start advertising is fooling themselves.Of course they will, it's just a a matter of time. Let them get a bit more ubiquitous and see what happens. I find it amusing that re media/people  got so upset about the Beauty and the Beast thing. Didn't seem overly obtrusive to me.  Depending how it is implemented it could actually be a good thing.

Heres an example of how advertising could /should be implemented imho.....

I buy Tide pods to do my laundry. Amazon knows this and also the interval between purchases(roughly). Lets say I order them every two months(roughly). So, I ordered some on the 1st of January and here it is almost the end of February and I ask for my morning briefing. At the end of the briefing Alexa says "Hey John, just a heads up, Tide pods are $4 dollars off for the next thee days. If you are running low order soon. Have a great day!"

I would welcome that because that is the kind of thing an actual assistant would do. Amazon gets their advertising and I save $4. Winn - win.

Now on the other hand if I ask for my morning briefing and in between the change from NPR to BBC I get an advertisement  for Billy Bobs towing service that would not be acceptable. But people being "up an arms" because, at the end of their morning briefing, Google mentioned that Beauty and the Beast was opening that day (which by the way was like 8 seconds) is a little silly to me.

[mike27oct]

They just might be testing the sneaking in ads, which is NOT ok with me, but I am sure people said that about radio and TV in their early days.  Nevertheless, when GH has said to me more than once after I have said hello to check if it is working, and it says "Hello, I just have to share this with you -- back in 1998, in San Francisco, a court ruled a policeman could have his ventriloquist dummy with him in his patrol car."   Good Grief, what;s this, I thought.

is a bit "interruptive" and over the top, and not anything "essential" I need to hear.  If I start hearing crap like this after turning on lights, asking time or weather, it just might be getting worse and time to pull the plug.

[renegade600]

I would not be surprised, with all the ads I have been seeing lately on amazon prime, it is the sign of the times.