Running AI is so expensive that Amazon will probably charge you to use Alexa in future, says outgoing exec

Alexa is so bad though. Who's going to pay for that?

We need to move AI from the cloud to our own hardware running in our homes. Free, open source, privacy focused hardware. It'll eventually be very affordable.

AI is being touted as the solution to everything these days. It's really not, and we are going to find that out the hard way.

Alexa is more like a telemarketer disguised as an assistant. Every interaction is followed by a “by the way . Its a shit experience so I stopped using mine.

So they expect that people pay for being spied upon and seriously data mined?

So they get massive amounts of free data for Machine Learning, but want to charge users for supplying it?

Alexa has a feature where you tell it you're leaving the house and it will listen for smoke detectors or breaking glass, alerting you through your phone if it detects something. Amazon is putting that behind a paywall next year.

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I already don't use it, you don't have to sell me on it.

Alexa isn't nearly good enough to pay for. I basically use it for timers, math, weather, and conversions.

Lol, pay a subscription to have a device in my home that spies on every single thing we say? no fucking thank u.

...charge me to use Alexa?

I already avoid it like the plague.

I have doubts alexa is using AI, seen how dumb it is, but well

Good luck, I guess? Got the first Google home, at first it was great, I was asking it tons of questions. Then the questions stopped, used it for turning on the lights and other automations. Then I installed Home Assistant and the only command Google Home got was to set a timer to know when to pull things out of the oven. Eventually I stopped doing that.

At the moment all Google/Nest Homes have their mic cut off, I only use them to stream music in my house from my NAS via Plex. So yeah..

How to make me go back to buying shit in person, by Amazon.com

Something tells me that they'll still listen to you for free.

Their using the public to train AI. Then charging the public for the AI it trained.

They thought people would be like "Alexa, but me a ton of shit on Amazon" but people just use it for timers and the weather

Ok. I'll be the weirdo. If it's actually useful, I would pay for it.

Not if it's just the parlor trick that it currently is.

I use Alexa as a way to use an old speaker system. I wouldn't pay to use any "smart" speaker systems. They are pretty dumb and I've already paid once

Oh no!

I'll just have to install a weather app and use the timer on my stove instead of using Alexa.

They're never going to be satisfied with the amount of money that have.

We upgraded our technologies so much that it'a becoming unsustainable for us, so we are increasing prices.

All I want alexa to do is turn my lights on and off, set timers, and show me my own pictures. And it can BARELY do that without fucking it up. Everyone I know wants the same, they expect nothing more from it. "AI" features of Alexa aren't t needed or wanted by anyone I've talked to about it.

My Home Assistant Voice is getting really close to displacing Alexa.

Has Amazon considered making a stationary AI?

They won't be charging me, because I don't buy shit from Amazon, and don't use their spy platform.

Well so far my Google Smart speakers have two functions:

• Voice activated timer
• Wi-Fi speaker that I only ever cast to with my phone, never actually talk to them.

Don't think I'll miss that if they decide to charge for it.

Running AI may be currently expensive, but the hardware will continue to improve and get cheaper. If they institute a subscription fee and people actually pay for it, they'll never remove that fee even after it becomes super cheap to run.

As someone at a company still using free AI credits in their commercial products and hasn't figured out how he's going to price the shit when the credits are up.... this AI market looks a lot like Uber subsidies..

We're seeing this all over the tech and tech adjacent space. Can't grow forever at a loss, especially not with increased interest rates and a potential economic downturn.

My guess, if you want to have decent services we're going to end up needing to pick few (or a suite of the basics) to pay for on a monthly basic and cut out all the "free" stuff that is/will get enshittified.

I don't understand this. Hasn't Intel or Nvidia (or someone else) been making claims about their next CPUs having AI functionality built-in?

Na, once ml inference and training chips are purpose built it'll be built into devices. AI models are the mainframes of today

They're already trying this, sort of.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/22/23885332/amazon-echo-show-8-photos-edition-digital-frame-price-fee

They know charging for total access will cause a riot, so instead they're enshitifying the whole experience and holding access to the current non-shit experience hostage with monthly fees.

I think at this point with so many tech giants introducing ads to their services and increasing subscription prices, I think we can expect some kind of subscription fee to access assistants with the AI/LLM capability. It would make sense to offer a 'basic' version of these services for free since people have already invested in the hardware, but wouldn't be surprised if these companies suddenly block us from using the smart functionality suddenly unless you pay.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The emerging generation of "superhuman" AI models are so expensive to run that Amazon might charge you to use its Alexa assistant one day.

In an interview with Bloomberg, outgoing Amazon executive Dave Limp said that he "absolutely" believes that Amazon could start charging a subscription fee for Alexa, and pointed to the cost of training and running generative artificial intelligence models for the smart speaker's new AI features as the reason why.

Limp said that the company had not discussed what price it would charge for the subscription, adding that "the Alexa you know and love today is going to remain free" but that a future subscription-based version is "not years away."

Generative AI models require huge amounts of computing power, with analysts estimating that OpenAI's ChatGPT costs $700,000 a day or more to run.

Limp, Amazon's senior VP of devices and services, announced he would step down from his role at the company after 13 years a month before the launch of the new products.

Insider's Ashley Stewart reported that former Microsoft exec Panos Panay is expected to replace Limp.

The original article contains 298 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 39%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Let's see if they will make real money with their AI, now.

https://youtu.be/nwPtcqcqz00?si=QNG8ElAz7yZDGQUx

All I picture is this.

im actually surprised companies havent tried to charge for voice assistants already considering pretty much everything you say to them gets sent to some service somewhere

I no longer use mine for much but to control one light with an illogical switch placement. I could pretty much replace her with The Clapper™️

Rip Bozo, no one will sub for your knock off siri. Aside from a certain cub set of consoomer cattle.