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Microsoft's Satya Nadella Shown Up By Confused Cortana Assistant

Posted by samzenpus on from the try-again-later dept.

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.

16 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Cant see why this is a problem. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Cant see why this is a problem. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    2. Re:Cant see why this is a problem. by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    3. Re: Cant see why this is a problem. by MrNaz · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      I hate printers.
  2. The Milk Was Most At Risk by Greyfox · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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?

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    2. Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. What did the question even mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What did the question even mean? by tomhath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:What did the question even mean? by Brett+Buck · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    3. Re:What did the question even mean? by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

      "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.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    4. Re:What did the question even mean? by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  4. What did you mean to say? by hackwrench · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  5. Obligatory by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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

    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
  6. Bullshit Bingo? by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!"

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

  7. Re:heads are going to roll for this... by FranTaylor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!