[TWAndrews]

We got an Echo over the holidays, and watching my 7, 5 and 3 year old daughters interact with it has given me a glimpse of what bringing home a black-and-white TV in the 50s must have been like: Objectively it's pretty limited, but it (voice-driven interaction, rather than the Echo specifically) is so obviously the future it's striking.

Separately, I've told my daughters that they probably won't ever need to learn to drive--cars will probably do it for them by the time they are driving age.

They've put two and two together, and the other day I overheard them saying "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we want."

[aidos]

I've had the same experience. My 5 year old came down stairs the other morning and put on some music for herself (Bowie, even) which I thought was wonderful.

Though it was pretty funny/depressing hearing how broken the experience was this morning.

    "Alexa, play Moana" - "Here's songs by Nirvana"
    "No, Alexa, play Moana soundtrack" - "I think you might like music by Adelle"
    "What? Alexa, play the Moana original motion picture soundtrack" - "Playing Moana original motion picture soundtrack"

We're so close, but we still have a long way to go.

[jeeva]

The other night, sleepless and excited by having found a few commands around podcasts / reading kindle books back (apparently "read from my Kindle" is an Audible command, grr) I tried:

    "Alexa, play me a podcast"

Sadly, I got:

    "Here's a station you might like: Linkin Park"

...it even got my request right in the app. I have no idea how it managed that "fulfilment".

[jellicle]

Well, unless you ever annoy Amazon, bounce a check, charge back any purchases, or get put on any government no-drive list. Then you're walking for the rest of your life.

[aetherson]

I watched my friends' two-year-old stand in front of their Echo excitedly and yell "Alexa Alexa Alexa Alexa!" Her "toddler accent" meant it had no idea she was trying to say the keyword.

[slowmovintarget]

My toddler pronounces it "Uh-yexa" which won't activate. That's a feature in my mind.

"Uhyexa Order bears!"

"I found a teddy bear for $49.99, would you like to order?"

"Yes!"

"OK."

"Uhyexa, order ehyephants!"

Funny thing is, my toddler was babbling something at dinner and the Echo Dot picked it up and tried to do a Bing search for "Eva has more fries".

[drhayes9]

My four-year-old son is the same way. He talks to my Google Home all the time, asking it weird questions (which it sometimes answers! "Hey Google, are you a robot?" "I prefer to think of myself as your friend."), getting it to tell him jokes, turning our Christmas tree on and off via IFTTT and a WeMo switch. It's all very natural for him.

[sakabaro]

I think we still far away from "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we want.". It might or might not be possible. We need anyway several leap in AI innovations to achieve that.

[TWAndrews]

True, but it's plausible enough that 7 year-olds can connect the dots from existing or close-to-existing technologies.

[sjg007]

brb.. going to start self driving car company called "a lexa".

[Haydos585x2]

"Alexa, get a lexa car"

"A lexus car has been purchased with Amazon One-Speak™. You have been charged $72,040. Delivery will be between 7 to 14 days."

[prawn]

If they're not, make sure they're asking it things like the height of a giraffe or weight of an elephant. 3-5 year olds seem to enjoy that.