r/LowStakesConspiracies • u/michellefiver • 3d ago
Certified Fact Alexa is getting stupider
I asked Alexa to set an alarm for 12 midday and she asked me "do you want that for 12am or 12pm?" Forcing me to clarify when it was implied in the initial request. First time she's asked me that to my knowledge, usually she just sets the alarm at the correct time.
Earlier today I asked "Alexa play Cut to the Feeling", and she started playing a completely different song, not a single word of that song's title was the same as what I asked for. (I can't remember the song she played but she confidently announced the artist and song she was actually starting.) Previously she would play Cut to the Feeling by Carly Rae Jepsen.
Alexa is getting stupider...
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u/qft 3d ago edited 2d ago
Try asking her what time college football games are, then check it against your phone. She will get the time wrong, the time zone wrong, then if you ask her the same question again the answer will change.
Also the Plex integration was removed. It was driving me batty when it stopped working right until I realized that. "Start plex on fire TV" would search for the app in the store, which would show as installed, instead of starting the damn app
It's little things but pretty noticeable to me. If I ask for a simple task or a simple question, the answer should be accurate. It's pretty worthless otherwise.
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u/CakeHoleKing 3d ago
Alexa now happily makes up Vue Cinema locations
Curious how she ALWAYS gets cineworld correct.
I reckon the service is being paid by companies to hallucinate rivals that don't pay
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u/supergnawer 3d ago
The thing about these assistants is, you don't own them, and the owner can and will change them at any moment. So you can't really get used to them, same way as you can't really get used to a social media UI staying familiar. To me it makes them just useless toys.
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u/c0okieninja 2d ago
I stopped using my Alexa when I moved, updated my address on her, and she still gave me weather alert notifications for my old city, four hours away.
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u/Nahtan 3d ago
It's Alexas way of capturing more of your voice recordings to help train her. The more words she hears, the more she learns.
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u/Subject_Slice_7797 2d ago
I will admit that I am personally responsible for a huge part of Alexa's training on various curses and swear words, when "living room lights off" instead causes music to play in the bedroom again...
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u/HistoricalRelation62 3d ago
following on from you, OP. I think the reason for this is that they are slowly integrating Alexa to be an A.I. (or the version of AI we have at the minute. Constantly hallucinating things, being generally wrong, feigning mishearing us, etc. If you do the same thing with an AI as you describe, a similar thing happens.
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u/unwaveringwish 3d ago
The AI version of Alexa that Amazon is forcing to integrate into the Amazon website drives me bonkers! It’s probably AI related
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u/ComprehensiveMetal39 3d ago
I ask for the same song, from the same speaker, from the same distance, at the same time of day, every evening (it’s white noise for my children to sleep to). She invariably gets the request wrong, or says she doesn’t understand the request.
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u/PinTweak 2d ago
You should see what Gemini on Google devices is like. Holy moly it's absolutely ridiculous. The worst thing is, it never asks for feedback when it messes up, only on the rare occasions it gets something right. I'm sure that's not accidental...
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u/EngineerWithAVulva 1d ago
My Google home doesn't answer any of the questions I used to regularly ask it anymore. I think it's making it obsolete because it wants me to use Gemini but I haven't enabled it
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u/ChipCob1 17h ago
It's stupidly bad. The other day I asked it to stop playing the radio, it replied that it wasn't connected to the internet. It then said that nothing was playing and finally it stopped streaming the radio but then told me that it couldn't control my devices.
It quite clearly wasn't ready to be rolled out and the only way to roll back to Google Assistant is to completely delete your home and create a new one from scratch.
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u/LeftCat6512 2d ago
Alexa is playing a song I don't recognise "Alexa what is that song" and I get "hmm I don't see anything"
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u/Tiny-Sandwich 2d ago
I switched to Alexa after Google dumbed down the assistant so much that it wouldn't respond to basic commands.
Alexa has been rock solid for me for the last 3 years with regards to smart home automation, but asking for any information based commands fucking sucks.
Both Google and Amazon lobotomised their assistants.
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u/fellationelsen 2d ago
U realised it was useless very first day. "Play the album Nevermind by Nirvana" and doesn't know what the fuck to do. It's a useless gimmick and always has been.
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u/TooLittleGravitas 1d ago
You are right, Alexa is wrong. There is no such time as 12am or 12pm. This is a hill I will die on.
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u/gromit1991 2d ago
I just tried "set an alarm for 12 midday" and it did it; "alarm set for midday".
However, several times I've asked for "lights on" in a room. It did it but then said "I'm sorry, I can't help you with that" even though there were no other words said nor any background noise.
UPDATE: 😂 I just said "cancel 12 midday alarm" and it responded with "12pm alarm canceled"!
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u/michellefiver 1d ago
It started with me when Alexa started having a new voice which according to others here is part of "Alexa+"
Maybe they haven't rolled that out in your area
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u/ChangeAUsername 1d ago
I think the lesson to learn here is to not co-opt your human behavior to a bot that is powered by using you for data acquisition.
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u/michellefiver 1d ago
Yeah I'll just throw away and burn my smart speaker, that'll solve the problem
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u/ChangeAUsername 1d ago
I was not trying to be rude to you. We are all learning these new tech behaviors in real-time. That being said you yourself identified that the functionality of the system you are using is getting significantly worse.
I don't think there is currently a solution that would satisfy your desires either outside of what I said. Which after rereading doesn't sound exactly not-rude, but it doesn't sound all that mean either. It would at least work until the next update of Alexa if/when they fix the inability to actually listen to everything you said and then not request further clarification.
Hypothesis:
From my knowledge of how systems like this are made and coded, it was most likely added due to many humans inability to understand when 12:00 am and 12:00 pm are. Most likely an engineer went overboard when trying to "upgrade" the system to ensure it doesn't set an alarm for midnight when someone asks to set it for 12 pm.
What then happened might be that the database parser "heard" what you said and defaulted to a "clarify with user" default action. From what you typed it looks like you specifically said midday and not am or pm which is pretty ridiculous from our viewpoint. Then the AI "logic" has it ask a recursive question because it might be hardcoded to ask a second time in a different way "just to make sure" because the AI doesn't understand that humans don't mix up midday and midnight, they just mix up 12 am and 12 pm.
Conclusion:
The failure of logic on our part makes the computer look like pedantic jerk, which makes it insanely annoying from a human viewpoint, but obnoxiously logically from a data based CPU algorithm/auto-complete based AI viewpoint. All because it "technically" did what it was supposed to do and clarify in another manner due to the propensity of humans to again follow a failure of logic based on the am/pm system. That being that the number increase sequentially from 6am to 7am up to 11am then suddenly go from 11am to 12pm. Making it a normal failure of logic to assume that 12am would function as a number following in series of 11am, and not acting like a 0pm for an entirely different number series.
It is actually kind of interesting to see errors in AI functionality like this happening.
In the future when features like this "just work" when our grandkids are using them they will have no idea what it was like dealing which such absurdities.
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u/31eedraw 2d ago
Not the main issue but this triggers a pet peeve: there isn’t any such thing as 12am or 12pm. Our am/pm markers are from Latin terms for before noon or after noon. 12:00 is exactly noon, so cannot be before or after it. Similarly, 00:00 is precisely 12 hours before and after noon, so 12pm is logically ambiguous.
OP actually said it in the precise and unambiguous way: 12 midday (ie 12 noon). Alexa followed up with a set of options that could only reduce clarity.
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u/Embarrassed-Cut-599 2d ago
I asked Alexa to '"Cancle timer" earlier today and she started counting to 10 🙃
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u/Exact-Monk-1990 1d ago
I'm sure I read that Amazon put a fortune into R&D in the belief that Alexa would be used for shopping, music etc and make them loads more money and sales. But 90% of us just use it for light bulbs and kitchen timers, so they started to cut R&D funding. So yeah, it genuinely is getting dumber.
With advancements in AI it feels even dumber. ChatGPT can do so many things and my Alexa takes about four attempts on average to turn on a lamp. LOL
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u/EntertainmentQuick47 1d ago
This applies to Siri as well. Nowadays Siri doesn’t even give a shit, half the time it doesn’t do what you asked and if it does, it just does the bare minimum. I remember that bitch used to talk your ear off.
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u/mickAMMO 3d ago edited 3d ago
"Set an alarm for midday''
Or "Set an alarm for 12 noon''
Or "Set an Alarm for noon"
Or "Alexa, 12pm"
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u/ChanceBoring8068 20h ago
I’ve long suspected that tech platforms are deliberately conditioning us to be more accepting of responses that aren’t quite what we wanted. The endgame is you searching for a product m and being shown a slightly different product with a higher profit margin
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u/ChanceBoring8068 20h ago
I used to be a grocery delivery driver. Funniest thing I saw was a woman arguing with Alexa while taking her shopping to the kitchen.
“Alexa, Play Lewis Capaldi”
“…”
“ALEXA! PLAY… LEWIS… CAPALDI!”
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
At this point a barely walking baby ran through the house babbling
“A-ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba”
Alexa picks it up.
“Now playing Baby Shark”
So I quite like the idea that Alexa is actually really smart and already self aware, it just plays favourites.
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u/mangonel 3d ago
Me: "If I wanted midnight, I would have said midnight, you stupid machine"
Alexa: "OK. Alarm set for midnight tonight"