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The era of open voice assistants

(www.home-assistant.io)
878 points _Microft | 8 comments | 20 Dec 24 00:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.398s | source | bottom
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lxe ◴[20 Dec 24 04:42 UTC] No.42468351[source]▶
Here's what I'm looking for in a voice assistant:

- Full privacy: nothing goes to the "cloud"

- Non-shitty microphones and processing: i want to be able to be heard without having to yell, repeat, or correct

- No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed. Since everything is private and local, this is now doable

- Conversational: it should understand when I finished talking, have ability to be interrupted, all with low latency

- Non-stupid: it's 2024, and alexa and siri and google are somehow absolutely abysmal at doing even the basics

- Complete: i don't want to use an app to get stuff configured. I want everything to be controlled via voice

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danparsonson ◴[20 Dec 24 04:55 UTC] No.42468394[source]▶
> No wake words: it should listen to everything, process it, and understand when it's being addressed

Even humans struggle with this one - that's what names are for!

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1. antonyt ◴[20 Dec 24 05:07 UTC] No.42468438[source]▶
Yeah, I’m having a hard time imagining how no-wake-word could work in practice.
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2. fragmede ◴[20 Dec 24 06:44 UTC] No.42468837[source]▶
after setting up the system, if I say "turn the ceiling lights to 20%", who else would be changing the lights?

But also, post-fix wake word would also be natural if it was recording all the time. "turn on the lights, Google", for instance

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3. ethbr1 ◴[20 Dec 24 13:18 UTC] No.42470838[source]▶
Like that really annoying friend who jumps in every other sentence with "Well actually..."
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4. marcosdumay ◴[20 Dec 24 15:56 UTC] No.42472167[source]▶
I have a coworker that set up an Alexa an year or so ago, I don't know what was the issue, but it would jump into Teams meetings after every noise in his house.
5. TheCoelacanth ◴[20 Dec 24 17:04 UTC] No.42472751[source]▶
Someone in a TV show that you're watching?
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6. lukifer ◴[20 Dec 24 19:06 UTC] No.42473855[source]▶
This is one advantage of a system with a constrained set of commands/grammars, as opposed to the Alexa/Siri model of trying to process all arbitrary text while in active mode. It can simply ignore/discard any invocations which don't match those specific grammars (and no need to wait to confirm that the device is awake).

"Computer, turn lights to 50%" -> "turn lights to fifty percent" -> {action: "lights", value: 50}

"My new computer has a really beefy graphics card" -> "has a really beefy graphics card" -> {action: null}

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7. danparsonson ◴[20 Dec 24 23:21 UTC] No.42476125[source]▶
Sure, if the system is set up to only respond to very specific commands that humans would not respond to, I guess that could work. I was thinking more about the other way around, where a person might speak to someone else in the room and be overheard and acted upon - "turn on the lights!" could be a command for the computer controlling the room, or the human standing next to the Christmas tree, for example.
8. joshstrange ◴[21 Dec 24 12:53 UTC] No.42479383{3}[source]▶
I’ve never had Alexa control a device via a TV show’ audio but playing back a video of me testing my home automation (“Alex, do X”) triggered my lights.

I’d love a no-wake-word world where something locally was always chewing on what you said but I’m not sure how well it would work in practice.

I think it would only take 1-2 instances of it hearing “Hey, who turned off the lights?” in a show turning off my lights for real (and scaring the crap out of me). Doctor Who isn’t particularly scary but if I was watching Silence in the Library and that line turned off my lights I’d be spoked and it would take me a hot minute to realize what happened.