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

Cant see why this is a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

He asked a basically nonsense question. If i ask "why is a fish?" and cortana doesn't understand, is this news?

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[viperidaenz]

When he tried again, twice, without messing up the question it still failed to understand the question.

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[Darinbob]

All business related questions from executives tend to be nonsense or gibberish.

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: 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:Cant see why this is a problem.

[Dunbal]

I think Satya should just trust to karma and accept the answer that Cortana gives him.

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[Dunbal]

Of course slashcode doesn't like so many caps but here goes anyway:

MELON MELON MELON

+++OUT OF CHEESE ERROR+++

?REDO FROM START

With apologies to the late Terry Pratchett.

Re:Cant see why this is a problem.

[aaaaaaargh!]

I kindly disagree. A truly intelligent response would have been:

"Oh go fuck yourself, you useless corporate drone!"

The Milk Was Most At Risk

[Greyfox]

The milk was past its use-by date and was very much at risk. Cortana correctly realized that it would be bad for meat creatures to try to consume it and was trying to direct him to get a fresh one.

Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk

[Dutch Gun]

This isn't the first time faulty speech recognition has embarrassed Microsoft during a live demo. Anyone remember the last time this happened?

To be fair to Cortana, how exactly do you respond to "Show me my most at-risk opportunities"? What does that even mean? Who talks like that?

Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk

[tnk1]

Well if you're in Salesforce, when you are working with a sales person, they open what is called an "Opportunity". It's a document used to track the progress of a potential sale through the pipeline.

If I was a sales guy, I might have a customer who has just decided to order the 1 TB storage upgrade to Application X, which the customer already owns. The sales rep opens a new opportunity for the prospective purchase, links the existing customer information to it and tracks that through to the end.

Someone like a CEO would run their own reports based on how all of the company's opportunities look on a regular basis, especially deals which are at-risk of not closing, so this all makes sense in context. Generally your sales forecasting is provided by creating reports based on your opportunities and the tracking information within. A percentage is assigned to an opportunity to show how far it has gone, with 100% being Closed Won.

tl;dr, it's a sales opportunity tracking ticket in Salesforce. Which is probably why he was using that lingo at a Salesforce conference. Presumably Cortana would have had access to his Salesforce accounts somehow. Or, more likely, a fake account with humorous "at-risk" customers like Apple and Google or something.

Props, though

[Anonymous Coward]

Props for attempting voice recognition in a live demo. Most people don't even trust a network connection for a demo.

What did the question even mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, "show me my most at-risk opportunities"? Show me your what now? I'm pretty sure I'm human, and I'm pretty sure I speak English and have a fair knowledge of "stuff", but I honestly have no idea what this sentence means. Opportunities that are at risk? Does that mean a chance to win a free lunch that is ending soon?

If someone said "show me my most at-risk opportunities" too me I would probably consider that I'd misheard and look for near-fit sentences that made sense too. At the very least I'd ask them to repeat themselves to confirm that they were, in fact, speaking gibberish.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[tomhath]

It's definitely salesman jargon ("What potential customers are most likely to not complete the sale"). That's a big problem for any speech recognition, words have different meaning in different context.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[Brett Buck]

Cortana finds gibberish double-talk incomprehensible - just like the rest of us!

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:What did the question even mean?

[Bite The Pillow]

Here it is used in context:

Supply lines today are longer, and more complex than ever, and it is vital to proactively identify at-risk opportunities in your supplier base to prevent costly delays and disruptions. With global capabilities, extensive industry experience, and multi-cultural expertise, SAI Global can help you quickly identify critical supplier non-compliances, and target program investments where theyâ(TM)ll have the greatest impact.

It is business jargon, understood by the kind of people that Microsoft has the best relationship with - mid to upper management.

So what you said was "I have no idea about business. When someone says things that are outside my experience I assume there is no meaning, and all of business is therefore meaningless to me."

There is a certain amount of truth to that, but it's no different from developers talking about DRY and Single Responsibility Principle, and the like. I want my code to be dry? How does it get wet? Does that mean the drought is ending or just beginning?

We have a common language, known as jargon, that makes communication more efficient. As does every industry. If you don't understand it, you can ask an actual question, or you can sound like an anonymously retarded window-licking asshole brained fart sandwich. So kudos for posting anonymously, and wasting 5 peoples' mod points. Because obviously the are just as much fart sandwich, and would have up modded something just as ignorant. Might as well be 5 all in one place.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[bloodhawk]

all you are showing is a lack of knowledge of business. anyone that works in sales or business would have no issues understanding the sentence.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[lakeland]

It's standard sales jargon and so would be well understood at Dreamforce (salesforce's big conference). Leads are people you've met which might want to buy something in the future. If you feel a lead is starting to show meaningful interest then you mark them as an opportunity. Opportunities have sizes (how much can you sell to this person) as well as risk (how likely am I to land this sale).

So "Show me my most at-risk opportunities" makes perfect sense - give me a list of opportunities which have been assigned to me where their risk is is in say the top 5.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[FranTaylor]

So "Show me my most at-risk opportunities" makes perfect sense -

The software worked perfectly, the piece of junk he is holding in his hand is his most at-risk opportunity.

Re:What did the question even mean?

[Nyder]

all you are showing is a lack of knowledge of business. anyone that works in sales or business would have no issues understanding the sentence.

And this is why it failed. Cortana isn't working in sales or business.

I just wonder why the fuck the person didn't actually try asking his question some time before the conference to test it out? This is like compiling some code, give a person the *.exe when you never bothered to run it yourself to see if it works. Sure, you think it should work great, but it probably won't. You have to test it first. Or even worse, Nadella is a CEO who actually believes the hype wagon his company spews, and doesn't bother to actually use the products his company makes.

Idiot got what he deserved.

Cortana has been worse than Google for me.

[hackwrench]

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

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...

Not cortana's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fool would try to do a public demonstration of something he hasn't tried successfully multiple times before.

Re:Not cortana's fault

[Bite The Pillow]

No, it is Cortana's fault, because clearly it is intended to understand and is supposed to be ready for prime time.

It was probably tested many, many times in various rooms, maybe a car. But never in the real world, on a stage. And that's where Microsoft keeps fucking up. It works here, and here, why would it not work anywhere else?

The entire point of Microsoft's computing base is that it should work on a desktop, in a living room, in a board room, in a subway, and of course it isn't rated to be on a stage with microphones and feedback and audience noise and applause and shutter sounds because who would do that?

I guarantee it was tested many times, but not in that environment, And if in that environment, then when it was empty.

Everything Apple unveils has had a huge amount of preparation, so that it can't fail. And they tend not to do risky live demos, but the ones they did were well refined.

You assume a lack of practice, I propose a lack of preparation.

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:Classic PICNIC Error?

[Moridineas]

Naw, this is a classic PEBKAC error (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair).

Re:heads are going to roll for this...

[jrminter]

Let's make sure the right head rolls... This was a rookie mistake that no CEO should ever make. One NEVER tries a demo for the first time before an important audience. If the CEO isn't willing to do a dry run, then he should either get a product manager who has the time to do it or the board should get a new CEO.

Re:heads are going to roll for this...

[FranTaylor]

This was a rookie mistake that no CEO should ever make. One NEVER tries a demo for the first time before an important audience.

Steve Ballmer made exactly the same mistake with the surface tablet, it failed him during a demo.

Bill Gates crashed Windows 98 while demoing on live television.

So EVERY Microsoft CEO has made the "rookie mistake that no CEO should ever make"!

Cool!

Re:Context

[FranTaylor]

Like humans, if Cortana could switch between (say) domestic and professional modes, and bias towards or away from different vocabulary sets for each context, it'd be good.

no, Cortana will not help you find a girl who will go out with you

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.

Re:Did he throw a chair?

[Cederic]

Sorry but all these repeated comments on the same subject, when it's never been mentioned before, sound like astroturfing and agenda building.

Lots of ACs and no named people? Don't trust you. Feels like it's one person trying to push racial division.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Never Ask a Question You Don't Know Answer To

[david_thornley]

When my son was very young, he taught me never to ask a question if I wasn't prepared for any possible answer.