Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/29/85-year-old-italian-grandmothe.html
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Hey Gogol, what happened to my nose?!?
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Where are my sedatives?
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My 8-month old niece can’t say any intelligible words yet, just a lot of baby babble, but she’s figured out that if she yells “ALALA” that the Echo Dot lights up and talks to her.
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So it begins…
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Amazon’s already on this…
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My (non-tech) wife got one. For a while, she would walk over to it, put her mouth about an inch from it to issue voice commands (like we used to have to do with microphones on a tape recorder). And she was very polite. “Google, if it’s not too much trouble, could you please tell me what the temperature is?”
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Wonder what Alexa would make of Grampa Simpson?
For that matter, what about any person with dementia? This is one gift my MiL will NOT be receiving – brrrr…
I usually use one of the espeak female Scottish voices for text-to-speech on my Pis.
Yeah we got one for Christmas, then my work gave me one as well. We watched a movie on TV a few days ago and even across a large room, google kept interrupting with “I’m sorry I don’t understand that”.
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I’ve said it before, let’s put one of these in every room of every funny farm in the country and just see what happens.
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This was hilarious, elderly people are much funnier than they are given credit for. I wonder does anyone of that age use it on a regular basis or just as a gag when they first get it?
Thank Baphomet that’s not real. The Silver Edition is substantially less ugly than the regular Echo. That’s not a benefit. The Echo should remain an eye sore for easy visibility.
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Some experts in the field are working on tasks that might make it helpful for people in the earlier and middle stages (and for their caregivers).
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That’s one of the few use cases of such tech where I can see the pros outweighing the cons.
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I wonder if the results would have been better had she spoken to it in Italian?
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I don’t know if that would work. Does Alexa have a 360° camera to observe and interpret hand gestures?
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Helping MiL with remembering what’s going on that day, or who she’s talking with is okay. I’m worried about other functions like the aforementioned ‘Order 2 tons of creamed corn,’ Or ‘I want to email that nice person I’ve been talking to who has that investment idea.’
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