Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)
Author | Cheng Qian
Edit | Heart edge
Zhidong reported on April 24 that since the launch of the voice virtual assistant Alexa in 2014, Amazon has sold hundreds of millions of Echo smart home devices, becoming the global smart speaker sales king that apple, Microsoft, Google and other giants cannot shake.
Amazon has set off a wild wave of smart speaker landing with Alexa voice assistant as the center, and ambitiously promoted the plan to connect and control everything with voice interaction. But as founder Bezos retreats behind the scenes, Amazon's technology and business strategy around Alexa and hardware devices may undergo new changes.
Dave Limp, the top head of all of Amazon's hardware and Alexa voice assistant businesses, reports directly to current CEO Andy Jassy. Around the many hot topics in the field of smart home, Dave Lee of the Financial Times came to Amazon's Seattle headquarters and had a face-to-face in-depth exchange with Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon's equipment and services, including many dry goods.
Dave Lee of the Financial Times (right) and Dave Limp, senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon (left)
During the conversation, Dave Limp talked about Amazon's plans for Ambient Computing and the difference between environmental computing and the metacosm. Compared to other peers betting on metacosms, Amazon is more focused on real-world computing.
Environmental computing is a concept that smart home giants have been promoting for several years, but it is not as out of the circle as concepts as "whole house intelligence" and "metacosm".
It paints a picture of the future of technology: hardware, software and devices are everywhere, they can perceive and even anticipate your needs at any time, invisibly through data analysis, to provide personalized services; and when you don't need it, these devices will be "invisible", so that you are almost unaware of their existence.
Amazon sees environmental computing as a technological direction that will permanently change the shape of the world. Dave Limp revealed that Amazon will perform hundreds of millions of smart home operations every month, but more than 1/4 of them are automatically triggered by the device before the user has issued an instruction.
▲ Amazon released the Echo smart speaker in 2014
As tech giants scramble to the track, Amazon's focus on smart hardware shifts from achieving "everywhere" to needing to answer a key question: How does Alexa make money for Amazon?
Dave Limp responded to alexa's commercialization progress. He also spoke about Amazon's shift from the failed Fire Phone to the Alexa business and shared his thoughts on Amazon's home robot Astro's "killer app."
The Fire Phone, Amazon's first and only smartphone to date, was released in 2014 and the market performed badly. But this failure has allowed Amazon to open up the imagination of hardware and software beyond mobile phones - to build an alexa-centric smart device empire.
Amazon's home robot, Astro, launched last year, is one of the most exotic hardware products it has ever released. It's like a long-wheeled smart speaker with a screen, with all the features it supports, and it can patrol the overseers everywhere. (Amazon's first home robot, super cute round-eyed flat face!) 10 smart hardware is coming together)
Amazon's home assistant robot Astro released in 2021
Under the premise of not violating the original intention, Zhi Dongxi completely compiled this in-depth interview, and the following is the transcript of the interview:
The future of human-computer interaction: environmental computing
Dave Lee: How do you define "Ambient Computing"?
Dave Limp: It's another user paradigm for how people interact with technology. Typing with a QWERTY full keyboard, laptop or smartphone is a familiar and time-honored way to interact with technology.
Ambient computing is another way of interacting with technology, and it's different from typing as described above. Whether it is the elderly or young, they do not need to read instruction manuals, instructional videos, etc. to learn how to use this technology, as long as you stand next to it you can interact with it.
So when you walk into the room where the Echo (Amazon smart speaker) is located, you say "turn on the light" to control the light, the whole process is very natural, without you having to read the manual on how to turn on the light or how to play music.
It also has the characteristic that it disappears when it is not in use. This can lead to a role that can help family relationships, that is, to stop looking at your phone all the time. Many times, when I come home, my kids will wear headphones all over the house and fiddle with one or two electronic devices at the same time.
Dave Lee: It's everyone at home, but it's as if no one is there.
Dave Limp: Yeah, maybe it has something to do with parents. But here's the thing: Ambient Computing will keep you from looking at your phone all the time and enjoying your family time. This is also its broad definition.
For example, for us, the way to implement environmental computation is to install multiple Echo devices around your house. So when you want to play music, you're actually saying "play music" and enjoying it together instead of putting on headphones yourself to listen to the music. When you're watching TV, you can say "Turn on ESPN" and watch a sporting event with your family. Then when you don't use it, it disappears into your life, so, looking at it this way, technology isn't omnipresent.
Dave Lee: Do you think it's mostly voice-controlled? Are there other ways to interact with environmental computations besides speech?
Dave Limp: Interestingly, we're trying to reduce communication with Alexa. I remember when people first saw echoes, their eyes lit up. Their expressions were like: "Oh my God, it's almost like magic". But if Alexa can proactively predict and complete your actions, you'll find it even more incredible.
We will carry out hundreds of millions of smart home operations every month, but more than 1/4 of them are done by Echo before the user's instructions are issued, the user does not do anything, needless to say "turn on the lights" or "open the door", "set the thermostat", etc., these instructions will be automatically triggered, if this can happen in the future, it is what I think is the most amazing.
It's like the best assistant you've ever had: when you're delayed at the airport, they might rebook your ticket for you. You would say, "The flight was delayed, but now I'm on another flight and it's really amazing!" ”
Dave Lee: At the moment, alexa can't do that?
Dave Limp: Not exactly, but it does take the initiative to do certain things in your home. If you turn off the porch lights for 30 consecutive days, and then on day 31, you forget to turn off the lights, Alexa will help you turn them off. We call it "hunches," and Alexa will have a hunch that will premonition your behavior and turn off the porch lights. As AI becomes smarter, these capabilities will become richer.
Dave Lee: Can you tell me about the other potentials of environmental computing outside the home?
Dave Limp: I think wherever you want to free your hands or don't want to be distracted, there's a place for the use of environmental computing. This happens in some workplaces, and I think cars are a great example.
Alexa devices have sold hundreds of millions of units, and the start has nothing to do with smartphone failure
Dave Lee: I've heard Jeff Bezos and you both say that the smartphone Fire Phone is one of the few products that Amazon has publicly declared a failure. So, does Amazon think of environmental computing as: "This is the next platform, and if we missed a smartphone, we certainly wouldn't miss this"?
▲ The First Smartphone Launched by Amazon in 2014, the Fire Phone
Dave Limp: I don't think the shift in this business is conscious. I think what we're trying to do as a company is build devices that are deeply coupled to services. By the time other companies in the industry started to think about it, our business was already paying off. Starting with the Kindle (e-book reader), the device not only looks good, but also fits deeply with bookstores.
As Amazon does, if you take a lot of risks at the beginning, it's inevitable that you'll experience some failures. So it's not that our smartphone business has failed and we suddenly decided that we have to do something else and have to succeed in this area, we're just exploring both at the same time.
I've heard a lot of people say, "Don't send your phone out, it's never going to work." But I've also heard about the same number of people saying, "Don't ship this device with a microphone that's similar to a Pringle potato chip can, because that's not going to work, it's crazy." ”
However, we've now sold hundreds of millions of Alexa-equipped devices, and another smartphone project hasn't been successful, and I'm going to take that risk again for smartphones. As long as I can get an Alexa, I can fail five times in a Fire Phone, and the math is that simple.
Third, environmental computing or metaverse, who is the next generation of computing platform?
Dave Lee: Let's talk about your thoughts on the next computing platform, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta and focused the company on metaverses. For me, that means more technology: I want to go somewhere in the virtual world, and I need to put this VR headset on my face. In terms of basic implementations, environmental computing and the metacosm seem to be the opposite, how do you see the difference between these two technologies?
Dave Limp: I think it starts with your definition of the metacosm, because it means different things to different people. If I ask my kids, they might think of it as 3D games Minecraft (Minecraft) and Roblox, while others might think of VR experiences, or ar (augmented reality) experiences.
It seems to me that the universal description of the metaverse is to connect people in different places, sometimes virtually, sometimes mimicking the real world.
What we're trying to do now is make the real world here more acceptable to people. In fact, there are a lot of things about environmental computing all around you, and I think what we invented in the world of environmental computing will have a lot of application scenarios, and it will also apply to many scenes in the "metaverse", and we also have reason to believe that there are voice assistants in the metaverse.
Dave Lee: Do you think it's a big market like Zuckerberg thinks it's?
Dave Limp: I haven't spoken to Zuckerberg about how big he thinks it is. I do think that if the internet industry can do this, it has a chance to push smartphones further, but the technology to achieve this does not currently exist, and it can only be in the form of VR glasses at present.
About half of users use Alexa to shop
Dave Lee: There's always been a question, how will Amazon make money from Alexa? You can shop with Alexa and you can say "add some eggs to my shopping list". But not many people seem to be doing that.
Dave Limp: No offense intended, but this data is wrong. A lot of people use it for shopping, about half of it.
Amazon's small Echo Dot device
Dave Lee: Half of Alexa users have bought things with it?
Dave Limp: Yeah, or use some shopping features like add to list or reorder and so on. This is one of our fastest growing use cases. Obviously, this is very helpful for Amazon.
But I also want to talk about a lot of other things that're happening on Alexa that help make a profit — sometimes to us, sometimes to developers. There are a lot of people on Alexa who are using Spotify (a music streaming service). Spotify has an ad-supported version, and there is also a subscription-supported version. It's fantastic and we're very supportive of it. We also have a music service and a lot of people are using Prime Music as well.
Dave Lee: Have we found a way to make a profit for Alexa?
Dave Limp: No, I think for developers and for ourselves, we're going to find more ways down the road. But I feel that in the last few years, the progress has been tremendous.
Dave Lee: I've seen your deal with Teladoc (a paid service for phone calls with doctors via Alexa). This is an interesting use case.
Dave Limp: I think there are many use cases that are natural, and let's think about what the world will look like after the pandemic... We're going to be working more from home, but we're also redefining the way we communicate with people, especially with loved ones, and so on.
Our idea of having virtual healthcare is always as far away as Polaris and difficult to achieve. But the pandemic has accelerated the process, allowing for a simple use of technology that simply calls the doctor via an Echo Show or other device. This looks good.
Amazon Echo Show adds a screen for video calls and streaming
Another example is that we all want to be closer to the people we love. But it was more difficult than ever because we couldn't travel... In my own case, my dad is older, he's still energetic and I care about him. So we have a project called Alexa Together. The idea was that I could connect my Alexa experience with him with his permission. That way I could know he was active that day.
Alexa would feel his presence, know he was up, and I would feel at ease when I received the message in my inbox in the morning. This is a good manifestation of environmental calculation: he doesn't have to do anything... Just a little "warmth" to know that he is up and can move freely is worth millions of dollars.
Home assistant robot: more like a pet than a computer
Dave Lee: Let's talk about the robot Astro. I watched the press conference. Some people say it's like R2-D2 (the robot in the Star Wars movies), and some say it's Wall-E, Pixar's robot... What is Astro's sales pitch?
Dave Limp: I'm not sure if I can give a sales pitch. We've been developing devices in all its forms for years, and it's one of those devices that, in a weird way, becomes part of your family. If on one side is pure technology, utilities, and personal computers, and on the other side are pets such as cats and dogs, Astro is closer to a pet than a personal computer.
Amazon's Astro home assistant robot
I know that sounds a bit exaggerated. But strangely enough, it became so important as part of our family. By the way, when we offer it to other people – only in a few families – their feedback is similar.
Dave Lee: Can you roughly say how many there are?
Dave Limp: We can't reveal, very little, not a big number.
Dave Lee: Less than 100?
Dave Limp: That's more than that, we're far less than 1 million. We do this to learn and get good feedback to make the product better. It's right in your home and has a lot of practical value.
Some people have Ring and Blink (smart home camera systems) and I didn't do that, I just installed a camera that monitors the wine cabinet. Other than that, I don't want to have a camera in every room in the house. But when I left for the holiday, I really wanted to see the house.
Now, with this camera on the wheel, it can move, it can drive itself, it can patrol, and it notifies me of any anomalies. It's really fun and reassuring.
(Astro even) begins to understand where you hang out in the room and it will hang out in the right place like a dog.
Amazon's Astro can patrol several areas of the house in the absence of the owner
During the Christmas holidays, when we were decorating the Christmas tree, I had a pleasant experience: it played Us Christmas music. It's pleasant because you don't need to have an Echo or Bluetooth speaker out there, or put on headphones... That's the environment experience.
What is Astro's "killer app"?
Dave Lee: But does it have a killer app? I haven't heard many practical applications. Security is interesting, but does this require the use of a home robot? Especially a $1,000?
Dave Limp: I'm skeptical about "killer apps" because I think it's a long-gone paradigm. The utility of one thing is made up of many things. When we first launched the Echo, people gave me the same question: What is a killer app?
Dave Lee：...... People are still asking this question.
Dave Limp: I understand, but I can tell you that people interact with Alexa billions of times a week on the Echo, billions of dollars. If I show you what they're doing, the music is great, it's popular, but not this one thing, it's thousands of things, and it changes every day.
It could be your child asking homework questions, it could be a kitchen timer, or it could be your alarm clock. The combination of all these factors brings utility. I think the same goes for smartphones... In the beginning, your phone was just a voice call, and I can't even remember when the last time I called. It's evolving, and I think the same thing is going to happen to Astro. I'm pretty sure – we can talk about time frames, 5 years, 10 years or 15 years? Robots will appear in people's homes. I'm pretty sure.
Dave Lee: Everyone's home?
Dave Limp: Everyone's home. Over time, everyone will have a different version of the robot because there are too many tasks and things you don't want to do, or you don't need to do. Security is a good example.
Dave Lee: The perfect home robot in most people's minds is a robot that mops the floor, dumps a trash can... Do some chores that Astro can't do right now. Astro's technology is still far away.
Dave Limp: I have a robotic vacuum cleaner. I think the dishwasher is a very simple robot because it automates the daily tasks that no one wants to do.
I don't think one robot can solve all of these problems, and I don't underestimate the value of robots' personality and companionship. There will be practical robots, like we just described, one that will mop your floor, one that will wash your dishes, who may dump your garbage, and these will also be good robots. But there are also robots that are used to accompany them, and they have personalities and can also provide value.
Dave Lee: Astro is a leap forward in privacy commitment. Is there a great demand for consumers to achieve "let more of us (Astro) into your room"?
Dave Limp: I think we've thought about privacy at a fundamental level. Astro is a great example of that. We over-indexed the amount of computation inside the robot, so the vast majority of things in the robot happen locally, and they never go to the cloud.
The vast majority of things are optional. If you don't want it to recognize you, you don't have to pick it. We've also added privacy protections to our hardware. If you mute it... All visible light cameras are basically turned off.
Do we have so much privacy protection? More than that, we will continue to do so. But I feel it's safer to keep Astro at home than to leave someone else's smartphone at home.
Dave Lee: One of the "North Stars" in your job was inventing a computer similar to Star Trek.
Dave Limp: It's the (Gene) Roddenberry of the '60s. We're talking about a truly visionary dreamer.
Dave Lee: But most people would think that by 2022, we're going to have that.
Dave Limp: I can't predict the date we'll meet the North Star. Not next year, not the year after. That's 5 or 10 years from now.
But if you go back 7 years ago, I put the original cylindrical Echo in front of you, with only Alexa's features and sounds on the product, put it next to the (latest) Echo Studio... It's orders of magnitude smarter than when we first released it.
That's the essence of this golden age of computer science that has taken us down this path.
Conclusion: From ubiquity to ambient computing, how much room for imagination is there for smart devices?
As the originator of smart speakers, every autumn, Amazon will launch a large number of hardware devices, from smart speakers, smart doorbells, video call devices to drones and home robots.
During amazon founder Bezos' tenure as CEO, Alexa was one of Amazon's most highly regarded projects, having more than 10,000 employees two or three years ago. The smart device matrix around Alexa's voice assistant carries Amazon's biggest hardware ambitions to date.
Although Amazon has painted a grand blueprint for the "environment experience" for the future of human-computer interaction, as of today, the common functions of smart devices such as smart speakers still seem to stay in the operations of playing music, setting alarms, making phone calls, etc., and even the Alexa shopping function connected to Amazon's e-commerce business has not really set off a new online shopping trend.
Today, the freshness of voice interaction has passed, the sensorless experience of the Internet of Everything is not yet mature, and both Amazon and other tech giants are drawing new smart device stories.
According to recent foreign media reports, Amazon's layout may be extended to extended reality (XR)/augmented reality (AR). According to a job posting from Amazon, it wants to hire "software engineers — XR/AR, XR/AR devices," a job that will include "conceiving and developing key software and architectures for new smart home products."
Original link:
https://www.ft.com/content/3d5bdfa8-d85e-41e8-b2d5-fadf8948cbba?shareType=nongift
Source: Financial Times