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Amazon’s Echo Is Showing Us the Future

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Amazon’s Echo Is Showing Us the Future

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For months, I heard about Amazon Echo, the voice-controlled, cylindrical device that serves up news, sets alarms, makes lists, turns on music and lights, and more.

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Being the geek I am, I bought one as soon as it was available, and placed it in my kitchen, which is the center of our household.

Echo is dead simple to set up, and so far its speech recognition has been pretty good. At the moment, its actual capabilities are limited, but I am sure that will improve over time.

When I first started talking to Echo, I had this flash vision of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here I am, alone, speaking to a device that spoke back. I know that Siri, Cortana, and Google Now do the same thing on a smartphone, but there was something about talking to Echo that was a bit spacey. 

A few weeks back, I wrote that the next major battle between Apple, Google, and Microsoft will be around artificial intelligence, not user interfaces, and that things like voice and speech will become an important part of this new AI’s interaction with users. I should have added Amazon to this mix since it is very clear to me that with Echo, the company is on the same page as these other tech giants. I believe it sees AI and speech as a new battlefront to bring interesting information, utilitarian productivity, home automation, and even shopping experiences to customers in a new and novel way. 

Although I technically bought the Echo  to research how voice and AI is being used in this type of application, I have been surprised by how useful it is out of the box.

Normally when I buy something like this, my wife rolls her eyes, and says we don’t need it. But even she is a fan and uses it to put things on a shopping list, a killer app since she often tells me she needs to buy something but never writes it down. Now she just tells Alexa, the term used to activate the Echo, which adds the item to the iPhone Echo app. 

She also asks Alexa to set a timer when she is cooking, requests weather information, inquires about top news stories, and can even get road conditions ahead of a journey.

Now, I know that we can do all of this on a smartphone, but that requires taking the smartphone out, firing up a specific app or asking Siri, Cortana, or Google Now. But with the Echo, you get that info while puttering around the kitchen and family room.

Interestingly, there is a similar correlation to what happens with the Apple Watch  ($300.00 at eBay)(Opens in a new window)  and my iPhone; I am taking my iPhone out of my pocket much less. But with the Echo, Amazon is on to something much bigger.

I believe that Amazon’s longer-term concept is to create a whole home server that can be accessed from any room in the house to provide a larger spectrum of apps and services. There is an optional remote that you can use in another room. But in the future, it would make more sense for Amazon to create satellite boxes or “Little Echos” that could be placed in all the rooms of the house to interact with the main Echo server. Imagine walking into the house and saying “turn on the lights” or “turn the thermostat to 78 degrees,” or “unlock the back doors.” I believe the bigger vision is for the Echo to be the control point for home automation, and with “Little Echos,” all one needs to do is speak from anywhere in the house.

You can expect Amazon to get light switches, door locks, appliances, and more connected to the Echo so it becomes the central control point for an eventual home information and automation system. If I were Apple, Google, or Microsoft, I’d keep an eye on Echo.

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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/amazons-echo-is-showing-us-the-future