[HN Gopher] Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment
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Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment
Author : franczesko
Score : 20 points
Date : 2024-03-31 22:05 UTC (55 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.androidpolice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.androidpolice.com)
| wnc3141 wrote:
| I too have noticed Google home's voice recognition has declined,
| but can't understand how the technology could become worse.
| pstrateman wrote:
| The voice recognition wasn't being done locally was it?
|
| So presumably they just have stopped using as many resources
| for the recognition.
| dcchambers wrote:
| It's amazing how on the one side of things we've got OpenAI,
| Llama, Gemini, Mistral, etc making mind-blowing LLMs that feel
| truly like the future.
|
| And at the same time we've got Siri, Alexa/Amazon Echo stuff, and
| Google Home stuff that already feels dated and is actively
| getting worse with each passing year.
|
| Funny that these two things are happening at the same time.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Why has nobody glued ChatGPT or equivalent to a home smart
| speaker yet?
| addicted wrote:
| Because it's expensive?
| blademaw wrote:
| Because you need a reliable way to convert human speech into
| a structured representation of actions that the smart device
| can execute so the LLM can interface with the underlying
| system. For most smart devices this is probably locked away,
| and combined with issues like hallucination, lack of training
| data for the action representation, etc., it's hard to say
| whether such technology would be reliable enough for stable
| use.
|
| We've seen a similar thing with big companies putting in LLM
| chatbots for customer service -- turns out LLMs can go off
| the rails really easily with the right prompts.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > It's amazing how on the one side of things we've got OpenAI,
| Llama, Gemini, Mistral, etc making mind-blowing LLMs that feel
| truly like the future.
|
| > And at the same time we've got Siri, Alexa/Amazon Echo stuff,
| and Google Home stuff that already feels dated and is actively
| getting worse with each passing year.
|
| Initially, _when they were new_ , also Siri, Alexa and Google
| Home felt mindblowing and "truly like the future". My bet: in a
| few years these LLMs will feel similarly dated.
|
| Concerning your "is actively getting worse with each passing
| year" point: do you remember these HN posts from the last
| months where people were complaining that ChatGPT and GPT-4
| have become worse than they were initially? In other words:
| it's already happening. :-)
| hotdogscout wrote:
| What product or service do people expect from a smart speaker?
|
| Mobile phones can be an investment if you don't have one but
| smart devices are for comfort and entertainment, not production.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I use my HomePods to play music, control the lights, get
| weather information as I'm preparing to leave home, answer
| basic questions about business hours... etc. One pair also acts
| as my audio out for my AppleTV. A HomePod is nothing without an
| iPhone though.
|
| I would have little to no use for an Echo.
| myself248 wrote:
| "turning out to".... @internetofshit was registered in 2015.
| Everyone saw this coming.
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