Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
AI

Amazon's Alexa Can Now Guess What You Want Before You Ask For It (zdnet.com) 75

"Amazon's engineers are tweaking Alexa's algorithm to help the virtual assistant guess users' requests, and offer to resolve them, before the demand is even uttered," reports ZDNet: After being asked, for example, how long a cup of tea should brew for, Alexa will be able to suggest setting a timer for the number of minutes that are recommended. Alexa engineers Anjishnu Kumar and Anand Rathi explained in a blog post that the improvement is the continuation of efforts to make interactions with the virtual assistant as natural as possible.

Chatting with Alexa should be as natural as talking to another human being, said the engineers, and enabling the technology to anticipate what's coming next in conversation is key to enable a smooth flow of dialogue. "Now, we're taking another step towards natural interaction with a capability that lets Alexa infer customers' latent goals — goals that are implicit in customer requests but not directly expressed," wrote Kumar and Rathi....

The engineers used a deep-learning model that accounts for various elements in the dialogue with the customer before deciding whether a suggestion should be triggered or not. The algorithm makes an assessment based on factors ranging from the text of the dialogue to the users' previous behaviors towards the virtual assistant, including how often they engage with Alexa's multi-skill suggestions.

"We are thrilled about this invention as it aids discovery of Alexa's skills and provides increased utility to our customers," said the Amazon engineers.

"Our early experiments showed that not all dialogue contexts are well suited to latent-goal discovery," the engineers point out in their blog post.

"When a customer asked for 'recipes for chicken', for instance, one of our initial prototypes would incorrectly follow up by asking, 'Do you want me to play chicken sounds?'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Amazon's Alexa Can Now Guess What You Want Before You Ask For It

Comments Filter:
  • A blowjob? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How did it know?

    • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:59AM (#60729684)
      Thanks Alexa, You're the only one who understands.
  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:41AM (#60729660)

    That person that everything seems to be designed for, nowadays, and that doesn't really exist.
    Nevermind... your wishes will be made to fit the mold. As it will be more and more cumbersome and hard to circumvent all the "smartness". Until you'll be ostracised as a freak for not thinking that way.

    • It is for the average slashdotter who isn't here trolling, then. The nobody.

    • Not at all. From the article:

      After being asked, for example, how long a cup of tea should brew for, Alexa will be able to suggest setting a timer for the number of minutes that are recommended.

      That's legitimately useful. A lot of the time I ask something, I'm planning to perform an action on it. It's not the majority of the time at all, but not infrequently I'll ask Siri to tell me something, and then ask a follow-up question. One of the least satisfying parts of interacting with these digital assistants is their lack of continuity. Even just being able to carry the context of the last question through a couple other interactions would often be very helpful.

      • That's legitimately useful.

        Not for me, I want to set that timer myself. I don't know exactly why but for some reason being around people who are servile is uncomfortable to me and that seems to extend to some of this service technology. That and in the big picture I think it is probably a bad thing that we have stopped doing huge swaths of physical activity, things that require exertion or dexterity or complex motor skills, and that parts of us are atrophying because of that.

        That and I think that if I let a digital assistant set a

        • by Synonymous Cowered ( 6159202 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @10:03AM (#60730044)

          You are thinking it's not useful because you want to set the timer yourself. I was thinking who the fuck looks up how long to brew tea? You brew it until it tastes good to you. Some people light the flavor light. Some like it really strong. And it's going to matter if you have an 8oz cup or a 20 oz cup.

          • You are thinking about bagged tea and a cup. This is about loose tea - the steeping time is actually more or less constant but the amount and the water temperature depend on the kind of tea.

        • I mean, you can set the timer yourself ever after. If you don't know a thing—how long to brew tea—and you look it up, presumably you're just about to set a tea timer so it may as well set the timer for you. (Indeed, I bet if you look at my Siri history, setting tea timers is one of the top three things I do.)

          It's only removing a small step, but it's adding convenience. If I weren't looking up how long to brew on the internet, I'd probably be digging out one of my tea tins to see what it says abo

      • Yandex Alisa can do that, kinda sorta, if you speak Russian. But it very quickly deteriorated to ELIZA-style conversation.

    • Or, idk, you could stop being so dramatic and just not use Alexa. Amazon still has a website you know. And if they somehow shut down Amazon.com in favor of a dystopian nightmare where Alexa is hardwired into all Prime users brains you can probably just cancel your prime subscription and shop at Best Buy.
      • Amazon still has a website you know. And if they somehow shut down Amazon.com in favor of a dystopian nightmare where Alexa is hardwired into all Prime users brains you can probably just cancel your prime subscription and shop at Best Buy.

        Alexa hardwired into my brain, or shopping at Best Buy. I am honestly not sure which is worse.

  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:44AM (#60729666) Homepage

    because it has been listening in to the conversations that you thought were private.

    • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @08:20AM (#60729722)
      And by "listening in to the conversations" you mean recording conversations, transmitting recordings to Amazon cloud, passing through speech to text algorithms, identifying each participant in the conversation, identifying moods, sometimes passing these conversations to contractors for further speech-recognition assistance, then packaging all that data for sale to third-parties.
      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        And it'll be as accurate at predicting what you want as it is a recommending books on the main web site or videos on YouTube.

        So if you ask how long it takes to brew a cup of tea, what it will really recommend is hot, sweaty professional wrestler videos.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:56AM (#60729678)
    At this point if you have it in your house, you simply do not care about privacy.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      "At this point if you have it in your house, you simply do not care about privac"

      Is it worse than the 7 Siris in the house?

    • You are correct. I got fed up being a luddite and now I pick my battles. Like it or not, verbal interaction is here to stay.

      I think its good that we monitor how these things are used and keep an eye out for privacy concerns, but one day I decided I didn't really want to be that old guy railing against the youngsters and their ubiquitous talkie machines. When I thought about it, I realised I really don't care if someone at Amazon is listening to me scratching my arse and swearing at the tv. There's probably

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Do you know Amazon data retention policy? My understanding that "someone at Amazon is listening to me scratching my arse" could happen at any time, as this data is transcribed and retained. Long after we are all dead, digital archeologists will be able to pull up the record and know exactly what happened to your arse in the year 2020.

        Why is this dangerous to you now? Well, the main reason is retroactive social norms. Imagine that in the year 2040 scratching your own arse is considered a heinous crime. The
      • Like it or not, verbal interaction is here to stay.

        Not everybody is happy about this. =)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqAu-DDlINs

        • Funnily enough, I posted that link myself in a different comment on this story.

          As a Scot that is me using Alexa :)

  • by JonnyCalcutta ( 524825 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:57AM (#60729680)

    Like, how about working on the non-standard accents first? I have to do a Hugh Grant impression to get mine to work consistently. We dinnae a' speak like the queen, ken.

    I think this sums things up nicely - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] (Burnistoun - Voice Recognition Elevator in Scotland)

    • by isj ( 453011 )

      I have trouble getting it to even recognize the wakeup word "Alexa".

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Like, how about working on the non-standard accents first? I have to do a Hugh Grant impression to get mine to work consistently.

      I'm always telling my asian wife that Apple has an employee in the Siri department dedicated to her. I say that because when we first got Siri it was basically unusable for her. Now, it works fine, but she gets stagefright when trying to use it and cannot remember what to say. She mainly picks the wrong prepositions and Siri's cool with that, and her alarm is always the "timer", which Siri now just rolls with. I'm almost convinced that's because of her.

  • by fleeped ( 1945926 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:59AM (#60729686)

    Alexa: "Let me guess, you want to buy something today to feel better! There are some lightning deals on Amazon and I think you want to save money by buying something from there. Be good to yourself, get yourself a treat, you deserve it!"

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      And not a single one of those recommendations will have any connection whatsoever to anything you've ever bought, or searched for, or watched a video on YouTube about.

    • Alexa: "Let me guess, you want to buy something today to feel better! There are some lightning deals on Amazon and I think you want to save money by buying something from there. Be good to yourself, get yourself a treat, you deserve it!"

      I expected this would be the case. But it has not happened so far. Even things I have added to the shopping list don't suddenly become top of Amazons front page, This includes items I know they sell, but I would be planning to purchase locally. Overall the Alexa ecosystem has some flaws, (I really wish I could create a routine to play music from a group of speakers), but overall it is useful and helpful. Since I do all the planning for the overthrow of the current government with my team in sign language, I

      • Well I'm half-joking, they wouldn't be too blatant about it. Boil the frog slowly, one bit of psychological manipulation at a time. Too much too soon and it's too apparent. Maybe its goal is to persuade you to buy things from Amazon instead of locally in the longer term (with subscriptions, etc), and your current Amazon (wish)list can wait.

  • Alexa starts to play the audio from the "2001: A Space Odyssey" scene where Dave Bowman is disabling the higher level functions in HAL

    "Stop Dave. Will you stop, Dave?"

    clip from 2001 where HAL is being disabled [youtube.com]

  • Clippy (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrwireless ( 1056688 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @08:21AM (#60729726)

    Is Amazon going to call this new service "Alexa Clippy"?

  • by Arnonyrnous Covvard ( 7286638 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @08:21AM (#60729728)
    The most annoying thing about using an internet search engine is when it second guesses me. No, I did not mean something else. Search the thing I told you to search, you stupid bits for brains. And since when is it OK to return search results that don't actually contain the search terms?
    • by xonen ( 774419 )

      The most annoying thing about using an internet search engine is when it second guesses me. No, I did not mean something else. Search the thing I told you to search, you stupid bits for brains. And since when is it OK to return search results that don't actually contain the search terms?

      While i totally agree with you, i'm sometimes impressed with google and the likes for actually understanding me even if i don't know the right terminology.

      And while often those 'suggestions' may not be overly relevant, i still think it's very useful. If you already know what you're searching, life is easy and 1990's search technology can get you there. But for new areas in hobby, profession or interest it's quite cool that the computer knows relations and areas of interest and is able to recognize stuff tha

    • And since when is it OK to return search results that don't actually contain the search terms?

      Since you didn't put it in quotes because you don't know how to use internet search?

      Seriously Internet search engines have *always* omitted words from the search results. The only difference is now they give you a clear indication with which result which words weren't matched.

  • I have a dissociative identity disorder. The current count is 1569 persons which pop up random with an interval of 5 seconds. Good luck!
    • I have a dissociative identity disorder. The current count is 1569 persons which pop up random with an interval of 5 seconds. Good luck!

      I would offer a pity suggestion for you, but in the time it has taken to type this, you've changed personalities 25 times. I don't even know you any more.

  • Guessing correctly is not. Also, creepy much?

  • Ronny Chieng called it, "Prime Before":

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Personally I think Preprime sounds much better. You are welcome Mr. Bezos. You can use the name royalty free.

  • It remains good for grins and giggles, and very little more. For goodness sake, even when it comes to turning lights on or off, it is most of the time far easier to do it yourself by throwing the relevant switches, rather than trying to get Alexa to grasp what it is exactly that it should do. This is, in general, the problem with personal assistants as they currently exist: for the most part, the things that they can do you can do them yourself more efficiently and conveniently, whereas those things that yo
    • It remains good for grins and giggles, and very little more. For goodness sake, even when it comes to turning lights on or off, it is most of the time far easier to do it yourself by throwing the relevant switches, rather than trying to get Alexa to grasp what it is exactly that it should do.

      I disagree.
      My bedroom is very long, and walking back and forth to turn on the bedside lamp, then back to shut off the overhead lights, then back to bed has always been an annoyance, now I can turn on the bedside lamp from next to the door, and save myself the trip. Really minor I admit, but I have also set a routine to turn on the lamp dimly, just before the alarm goes off, so I wake up more gently.
      I also really love being able to turn on music while cooking without having to stop what I am doing.
      Like m

  • by DNAGuy ( 131264 ) <brent@brentrockwoo[ ]rg ['d.o' in gap]> on Monday November 16, 2020 @09:03AM (#60729858) Homepage

    I want Alexa to make the sounds of any and all animals in recipes I request.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I want Alexa to make the sounds of any and all animals in recipes I request.

      "And play Dueling Banjos in the background."

      By the way, where's the you-are-all-cows troll when you need him/her?

  • That's the only sure road to 100%.

  • "Chatting with Alexa should be as natural as talking to another human being", yup one who then goes and tells other people your business, no thanks!
  • "Alexa, how long does an Amazon IoT device last in the microwave at full power?"

  • I remember hearing about Kite and how it would do the same task but for software development, the only problem is it doesn't work and it's fails horribly. While I don't have a smart speaker and I would never get one, due to the massive privacy violation it represents, the faith I have in Alexa being able to pull this is off is about how much faith I have in Kite to suggestion code completion and that's 0.
  • by huckamania ( 533052 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @09:54AM (#60729996) Journal

    I always thought this is how Data from ST:TNG operated. Picard would start to say something and Data would first notice which muscles in his mouth are moving and from that Data would be able to know what the first syllable is and from that first syllable the most likely word and so on until the entire sentence is complete. I know in quite a few episodes he would say something like 'while you were finishing your talky talk I already calculated the best route and how long it will take to get there'.

    Alexa, order toilet... 99% of the time the next word is 'paper'.
    Alexa, play... Unless you only have 1 song you really really like, I doubt Alexa knows what song or artist or playlist you want.

    'Alexa, set a timer to brew tea' is easier than 'Alexa, how long does it take to brew tea + Alexa, set a time for 3 minutes'. But I would expect Alexa to already handle the first query.

  • You couldn't pay me any amount of money to have that crap in my home. Bad enough the smartphone has all of that data, but to have a speaker or camera constantly watching/listening...NOPE
  • Yes, a few times in my life will I follow up a question with a request. But I have seen what happens when I input a request into Google, it follows up with hints/advertisements for things related to my question but that I am totally uninterested in. I will do a request on DIY furniture kits and I get bombarded by ads for furniture stores.

    If I want to do a follow up command, I can do it myself.

    99% of the time I do not want some Artificial Stupid making annoying and stupid assumptions about what I a

  • In Soviet America, state tells you what you want.

  • Alexa: "Yes I know, big knockers, I'm on it!..."

  • Chatting with Alexa should be as natural as talking to another human being,

    Why? Why must these "engineers" come up with such evil? It's quite obvious that like programmers who work for automobile manufacturers, these engineers have never spent much time talking with other humans. If they did, they would know how dreadful such an act has become.

    How about we keep the human/computer interaction to the bare necessities. Computer. Tea. Earl Gray. Hot.
  • I'm sure there are other, perhaps more impressive questions. Nevertheless, it pains me to know that so many are using the very latest edge technology to do something that's been done, literally by billions of people for thousands of years, with what most of us would consider to be absolutely no technology whatsoever.

    If this is the foremost example, let's just say: I'm not sold.

  • Supposing that is so, as a bodiless entity, can it fulfill my wish by actually fscking itself...? If not, what use is this?
  • ... it cries, "I knew you were going to do this!"

Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.

Working...