Question

Personal agent technologies such as Alexa and Google Home listen to everything that is said waiting for their trigger word. What trade-offs does this convenience provide the user?

Answer 1

Answer: The speech recognition technologies in the personal agent technologies help the users to communicate with the devices through speech just like a human being. But at the same time this technology offers a number of draw backs as they are not accurate and they often work based on their trigger words and hence at times take faulty instructions. Thus the users of such devices often have to struggle in order to make these devices take instructions and find it difficult to effectively communicate with them just like humans. Thus there is a clear trade- off between accuracy and convenience. Often it is more difficult to use the voice recognition by these devices as compared to operating them manually. For maintaining accuracy the users have to make more efforts and talk slowly and distinctly as compared to their normal speech. The customers often have to pay a higher price for getting such devices as compared to normal manually operated devices. Hence there is also a trade- off between price and convenience.