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Alexa is Implementing Self-Learning Techniques To Better Understand Users (theverge.com)
In a developer blog post published this week, Alexa AI director of applied science Ruhi Sarikaya detailed the advances in machine learning technologies that have allowed Alexa to better understand users through contextual clues. From a report: According to Sarikaya, these improvements have played a role in reducing user friction and making Alexa more conversational. Since this fall, Amazon has been working on self-learning techniques that teach Alexa to automatically recover from its own errors. The system has been in beta until now, and it launched in the US this week. It doesn't require any human annotation, and, according to Sarikaya, it uses customers' "implicit or explicit contextual signals to detect unsatisfactory interactions or failures of understanding."
The contextual signals range from customers' historical activity, preferences, and what Alexa skills they use to where the Alexa device is located in the home and what kind of Alexa device it is. For example, during the beta phase, Alexa learned to understand a customer's mistaken command of "Play 'Good for What'" and correct them by playing Drake's song "Nice for What."
The contextual signals range from customers' historical activity, preferences, and what Alexa skills they use to where the Alexa device is located in the home and what kind of Alexa device it is. For example, during the beta phase, Alexa learned to understand a customer's mistaken command of "Play 'Good for What'" and correct them by playing Drake's song "Nice for What."
and 'google'.
wow.. that's some 'machine learning'.
tossing in the option of a camera to read sign language for the deaf would be interesting.
If this is not artificial life I don't know what is.
That products like these are not to help people, that is an (un)intended consequence, but
a paid-for-by-the-consumer experiment for data collection and group analysis for control.
This is not a tin-foil hat theory. Think about it, they known everything about you in your home --
SPL, temperature, ambient light, how often you (and your children) have visitors), and
background noise (yes, that background noise as well) to name a few.
Do they operate as a smoke detector as well? Thought so...
Do you really want to pay a pseudo-government entity to spy on your most personal life?
CAP === 'archival'
Clippy was the kind of provoking "contextual signals to detect unsatisfactory interactions"
Come closer my dear... so I can better understand you.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Google Home AI is better by a mile: better speech recognition, language understanding (you mostly can just say things without adhering to a rigid syntax), and speech synthesis, better music service and question answering, too. Yet people treat Alexa as though it’s extraordinary in some way other than being the first on the market.
Good luck AI. My son loves to just play with Alexa, half the time Alexa can't understand him.
I do not want a 'relationship' with my machinery. Relationships involve intimacy and I don't want intimacy with Amazon, Google, et al. They may have my clicks and typed in text I use to get what I want but they don't need to figure out if others live with me, what I talk about when they're "not listening" or anything further. Camera feed? Fucking hell no.
For example, during the beta phase, Alexa learned to understand a customer's mistaken command of "Play 'Good for What'" and correct them by playing Drake's song "Nice for What."
Thank God! We were all waiting on tenterhooks for that problem to be solved!
To better advertise to more like.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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My youngest (4) has some speech issues. She has been making improvements and Alexa has been making improvements. She can now trigger the Amazon devices on demand which has made her happy. I change the trigger word for her lamp each week to one of the words she is working in her school program for her speech. My two kids call their cousins, my parents, and even my grandparents and that makes the extended family very happy. We get a ton of use out of the devices even with the privacy and data issues.
it needs to understand that i don't want a personal assistant and that when i'm calling customer support, it's because i've spent the last hour trying to fix my problem already, i'm insulting the "automated voices" because they all seem to want me to go to their website and not spend the next hour with my undocumented problem and all i'm doing is pressing "0" and trying all menus to talk to a real person! so the only things i say is "STFU" and "i wanna talk to a real person you st*p*d machine!"
Try asking it to clear your notifications. **EVERY TIME** she will ask you, "Delete all your notifications, right?" I understand it's to kep noobs from accidentally deleting all their notification but If I have answered "Yes" for a solid year, it really should be smart enough to stop asking. After the 100th plus time, it should have said, "I see you want this to be your default - I won't ask again. If you want to change this, go into settings etc." This is a simple, localized branch and should be a knock off for the devs. It's constantly talked about in forums and I've submitted at least three requests myself.
I tossed my Alexa's out and replaced them with Google Home's.
Me: Alexa, Turn on the bedroom lights. ....
Alexa: Okay!
Me: Alexa, Turn off the bedroom lights.
Alexa: I am sorry there is no device by that name, please run a scan and
Me: Alexa, please set a timer for 30 min.
Alexa: Okay your timer is set.
Me: Alexa, Add another timer for 45 minutes.
Alexa: Second timer added.
Crap. Alexa, please cancel the first timer.
Alexa, I am sorry but you have multiple timers running - to cancel please open the Alexa app.
Google Home does it clean every time.
is the never ending "Hmm, I'm not sure" on things that the google assistant has no problem doing. I get so much "Hmm, I'm not sure" from Alexa I wonder how it's a real "assistant" product. It seems fine for turning lights off and on (if I had that setup) and the sound quality is pretty good, but answering questions is it's weakest point.