The tech giant’s flawed business model for its popular smart devices has cost the company a fortune and thousands of jobs.
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I went rooting in a drawer where the Echo Dot I bought years ago had been gathering dust. Having found it, and set it up to join the upgraded wifi network that hadn’t existed when I first got it, I asked it a question: “Alexa, why are you such a loss-maker?” To which she calmly replied: “This might answer your question: mustard gas, also known as Lost, is manufactured by the United States.” At which point, I solemnly thanked her, pulled the power cable and returned her to the drawer, where she will continue to gather dust until I can think of an ecologically responsible way of recycling her.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...up-a-10bn-loss
It's an "it".
It has no AI. Even Machine Learning is a dishonest term.
See also The Diamond Age.
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In the US, according to Business Insider, Google Assistant currently leads with 81.5 million users, followed by Apple Siri’s 77.6 million tally. Alexa, with 71.6 million users, now occupies third place but even the thought that the other two are also losing money on their gizmos will not provide much consolation for the Alexa team as its unit is slimmed down.
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No mention of Cortana? Poor thing!
The fact is that all of these are Speech to Text front ends connected to search engines and databases. Like the the Young Lady's Interactive book in "The Diamond Age" it's a bit fraudulent. They rely, as all so called AI does, on human curation. Hence the huge staff requirement. It if was just software development then fifty people would be a lot at this stage.
We have had voice recognition and control on PCs for over 25 years without an internet connection, no "Cloud". Even 15 years ago stand-alone gadgets had voice control. But it's not efficient nor ever going to be reliable, and it's not just a case of technology.
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"Hey Jill, what's the command to erase this disk," shouts Jack.
"Format C," replies Jill.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," shouts Jill
All the discs in the room start formatting.
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AI generated art?
A fraud. It's a parasite using a human curated database.