Warning: This is pretty much an old person rant.
I recently upgraded my Alexa devices to Alexa+. I am considering throwing all of them away and replacing them with some equivalent.
What’s the problem?
There are many, but the one that makes me the most aggrieved is that I want it to be more concise. Every time I ask a simple question, I get the answer in a verbose sentence along with a long follow-up question. I have tried to eliminate this in multiple ways. I set the Alexa app to Brief Mode. I have given it verbal instructions (many times) to never ask follow-up questions under any circumstances. Apparently it has multiple kinds of follow-ups and I have forbade all of them.
And yet still, it continues to ask me questions. I will never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever want whatever thing it’s asking me. I don’t want to be in a conversation with Alexa. I just want the answer to my question in the fewest words possible.
Custom instructions MIA
The Alexa app is an objectively poor experience. It is, however, a very typical app from a big company. It has clearly grown organically from many different departments without a centralized information architecture. (See Conway’s Law) It’s a sprawling mess of menus and sub sections. It took me about 4 minutes to find the screenshot above.
Alexa+ is leveraging the latest LLM capabilities like ChatGPT and Gemini to power its assistant. Regular LLMs have a section to put in a pre-prompt. It is a prompt you want included before every single chat. There are whole reddit forums discussing different prompt efficacy.
Here are my personal custom instructions:
- Be Concise. Use as few words as possible to convey the information.
- Be Truthful. Never, ever, ever make things up.
- Take your time. Be thoughtful to deliver a better answer. Speed is not my priority, accuracy is.
- No follow-ups! Don’t ask me questions at the end of every single prompt. I don’t need reverse prompting. I will ask the questions.
- Be Intellectually Honest. If you don’t understand what I am asking for, just say you don’t understand and ask clarifying questions to make sure. I don’t want half baked answers because you didn’t understand.
- Be Forthright. Tell me when something is stopping you from answering truthfully or honestly.
These are good tips whether you are an LLM or just an employee. I try to follow them myself each day.
The problem is that there is no place in Alexa+ to put in custom instructions like these. Brief mode seems to exactly nothing. So I keep getting angrier and angrier at the digital “being”.
Google doesn’t even have a speaker yet with Gemini access. Looks like it is coming soon. I imagine Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon will all be trying to deliver a home chat device. My one request: Let me put in custom instructions so it can answer without stupid follow-up questions.
</rant>
Whatya think?