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?'"
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?'"
A blowjob? (Score:1, Funny)
How did it know?
And a second term, and some hamberders... (Score:5, Funny)
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No, they shouldn't. In fact, "mail in" voting should be banned. Too many issues with it.
Once again it's hard to tell the trolls from the Trumpkins who sincerely believe that tripe. But assuming the latter, mail in voting has been a mainstay of elections in rural and heavily Republican states for decades and it is not and has not been a major factor in Democrat strongholds Thus, this this logic, mail in voting has been a hive of Republican election fraud since long before Trump and the main culprits have been the Republicans which is complete crap. There are no examples of large scale, election
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Yeah,
There is some fraud but far from enough to affect the results according to election officials and the courts.
If Trump is so concerned with fraud why didn't he say anything during his term.
It' just as likely Hillary lost and Trump won in 2016 because of fraud.
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"but the blue states shut it down and refused to cooperate"
From what I read, after checking blue and red states reported their voting was reasonably secure.
Personally, by the way, I'm reasonably convinced both sides cheat just as much.
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Because O'keefe has never been caught trying to plant fake witnesses/claims. Oh, wait:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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IFF you're a real dumbest common denominator. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It is for the average slashdotter who isn't here trolling, then. The nobody.
Re:IFF you're a real dumbest common denominator. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
Re:IFF you're a real dumbest common denominator. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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
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Yandex Alisa can do that, kinda sorta, if you speak Russian. But it very quickly deteriorated to ELIZA-style conversation.
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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.
It can probably do that ... (Score:5, Informative)
because it has been listening in to the conversations that you thought were private.
Re:It can probably do that ... (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
Dollhouses all around, on the house (Score:5, Insightful)
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"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?
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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
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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
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Like it or not, verbal interaction is here to stay.
Not everybody is happy about this. =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqAu-DDlINs
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Funnily enough, I posted that link myself in a different comment on this story.
As a Scot that is me using Alexa :)
Maybe work on the basics first... (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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I have trouble getting it to even recognize the wakeup word "Alexa".
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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.
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I'm always telling my asian wife
What do you tell your regular wife?
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More prunes darling?
You Want To Buy Something! (Score:4, Insightful)
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!"
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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.
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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
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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.
When You Go To Unplug It Or Disable It (Score:1)
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)
Is Amazon going to call this new service "Alexa Clippy"?
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The most annoying thing about searching (Score:4, Interesting)
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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
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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.
Will be a tough one for her.. (Score:1)
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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 is easy (Score:2)
Guessing correctly is not. Also, creepy much?
Prior Art (Score:2)
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.
What about doing something useful? (Score:2)
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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
Chicken sounds (Score:3)
I want Alexa to make the sounds of any and all animals in recipes I request.
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"And play Dueling Banjos in the background."
By the way, where's the you-are-all-cows troll when you need him/her?
So Alexa can hold you at gunpoint? (Score:2)
That's the only sure road to 100%.
Another Human Wearing a Wire (Score:1)
Predict what you should suggest after this (Score:2)
"Alexa, how long does an Amazon IoT device last in the microwave at full power?"
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Will it work better then AI Coding Tools? (Score:2)
How Data lived (Score:3)
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.
No Tea Anologies! (Score:2)
There is already a proper way to request tea from a computer:
Computer, tea, Earl Grey, hot.
Nope, not me (Score:1)
Annoying unless you are stupid. (Score:2)
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... (Score:2)
In Soviet America, state tells you what you want.
Pocket science (Score:1)
Alexa: "Yes I know, big knockers, I'm on it!..."
But why the torture? (Score:2)
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.
How long to brew a cup of tea (Score:2)
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.
well... (Score:2)
As Alexa flies through the air into the trash bin. (Score:1)