Microsoft's Satya Nadella Shown Up By Confused Cortana Assistant

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was a little embarrassed at a Salesforce conference today when he tested the company's personal virtual assistant during a presentation. Slightly fluffing the question 'Show me my most at-risk opportunities', Nadella was dismayed to find Cortana offering him a Bing page with the search term 'Show me to buy milk at this opportunity'. Two further efforts to discover the exposure of his shares failed to achieve their aim, and eventually the CEO of Microsoft gave up. The fact that he stumbled over his first attempt at the question seemed to floor Cortana, which uses the 'Einstein' AI engine, and which has been more praised for its accurate speech recognition than its ability to understand what an array of interpreted words actually mean.

Comments

Cortana has been worse than Google for me.

[hackwrench]

I tried to tell Cortana "Windows Media Player" and it couldn't get that right.

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't make silly! His Indian English is desiring no correction.

What did you mean to say?

[hackwrench]

You probably shouldn't use Cortana to dictate your Slashdot posts.

Obligatory

[Neo-Rio-101]

Dear aunt, lets set so double the killer delete select all

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

Consequences of laying off Windows QA staff

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you mean that letting Terry Myerson obliterate the entire Windows QA org in the 2014 Microsoft layoffs might actually have consequences for quality? I'm shocked; absolutely shocked, I tell you.

Show me to buy milk at this opportunity

[bobthesungeek76036]

I mean it was a Salesforce.com audience...

and?

[meglon]

And people wonder how "open the pod bay door" got turned into "please jettison me into space to eat hard vacuum." HAL obviously was a microsoft baby.

Bullshit Bingo?

[Irate Engineer]

Maybe they should teach Cortana how to play Bullshit Bingo so it at least have a humorous error during these sales meetings. It will just sit quietly for a while, and then in the middle of the meeting it will just shout "BULLSHIT!"

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eastern Indian people are incapable of pronouncing the letter "t". That's why you'll always hear them say something like "thirdeen" instead of "thirteen".

Re:What did the question even mean?

[PPH]

"show me my most at-risk opportunities"

They must be talking about that hot blonde staff assistant we just hired. The one that all the other guys are going to be making a move on soon.

Re: Cant see why this is a problem.

[MrNaz]

Aah. So you've identified the missing feature in Cortana. It needs to add to its AI engine a list of all junkets and other commercial events, and cross match them with the user's current location. So next time a question is asked, it can process it using the appropriate vocabulary for the occasion.

Later, in an workshop for MBAs:
User: Cortana, tell me how to leverage synergies while focusing on our core competencies in a manner that maximizes shareholder value through enhancing business efficacy?
Cortana: By sitting in your office and formulating massive spreadsheets that don't really do anything other than create impressive charts that you will embed in your PowerPoint slide deck and present at the next stockholders' AGM.

Re: Did he throw a chair?

[MrNaz]

Yea? Well when I was working at Microsoft they wouldn't allow me to attend a funeral, even though I WAS THE ONE THAT DIED! That's why I'm still here posting.