Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
One fantastic use of Alexa is for those of us who have aging parents that have dementia. Before my mom died, I used this to converse with her in her memory care facility. She had forgotten how to use a telephone, but she could still speak out "Alexa, call David" and seconds later I'd answer this automatically placed call to my cellphone and she'd hear me on her Alexa speakerphone. And I could contact her by saying "Alexa, drop in on mom" and
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No, it's abusive and my mother couldn't have used it. My sister (using 3G on her iPad) and later the care home provided Viber (secure & private and on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android, owned by Rakuten, same as Kobo is). Chat & video.
She needed the video. She died from dementia this year, almost 90.
Earlier she had labelled "speed dial" buttons on her landline phone.
The last time I met her she'd moved to my sister's house (about 2 days before hospital and then after to care home) she knew what the phone was for but didn't know which way up to hold it. My dad would never have used Alexa. He did use email up to about a year before he died and Kindle till last week as well as landline phone. He wasn't interested in using a mobile. He was over 90 when he died.
Either Alexa will become dumber only answering/doing already programmed stuff, or be shut down. The current version needs too many people. It also is inefficient in energy use (servers + internet) compared to speech tools in a local device (it's called speech recognition, but it's pattern matching).
Sticking head in sand and refusing to admit this not a real implementation of SF, but a fraud and serious issue of privacy, especially in countries with deficient consumer protection (Amazon in USA gives info to Police, CIA, FBI without warrant!) or deficient democracy. It doesn't matter if it's called AI or not. The fact is that it's not economically viable and that will cut it back, not consumer protection (though eventually the EU will notice, the only organisation that cares about consumers).