When Amazon released the Echo and Alexa, people appreciated and accepted the technology wholeheartedly. Many users were awestruck by the functioning of Alexa. But now users often complain that Alexa gets confused a lot between voice commands. As a solution to that, Amazon has decided to introduce a new feature that will make Alexa smarter. You will be the teacher who will train Alexa to be better.
For some commands that Alexa might get confused in, Amazon is putting in a clarification feature that will allow Alexa to ask questions. For example, if you asked Alexa to turn the lights to the reading mode and the command isn’t understandable to the device, it will inquire what that means. Then you can specify the light setting you want. Alexa will learn from this instance what you mean by reading mode and save this for future reference. The feature will come out in a few months.
The feature doesn’t sound like a groundbreaking update, but it is a big step in the field of Artificial Intelligence. It is a step towards the future where machines will learn from humans on the fly. As Roger Levy, who is a professor at MIT puts it, the ability for clarification will be a fundamental property of any good conversational artificial agent. Knowing what to ask and when to ask will be significant for advanced AI systems. Roger is an Artificial Intelligence and Linguistics specialist.
In the first update, Alexa will only ask clarifying questions related to home appliances like thermostats and lights. Rohit Prasad, the head of the Alexa AI team, said that later they will be adding this feature for all the connected devices.
The feature works with a series of algorithms. The key is to make Alexa understand that even though the command is not understandable, it can still be done by asking some questions. Which questions to ask is the hard part. There is a chain of language algorithms that are involved in this. One algorithm will determine that the command is unclear but might be answerable. Another one will extract concepts that need some clarification. The third one will work out possible actions for the ambiguous command.
Giving Alexa the ability to reply and basically, the talk will make her ‘intelligent’ but also a threat to privacy. Privacy threat goes hand in hand with AI advancement. Some experts believe that the only way to make a machine smarter is to converse with it. To answer the privacy question, Amazon says that the feature, though, will be turned on by default, but users can opt to disable it and delete any information collected by the device.
The future of Artificial Intelligence sure is glowing as Rohit prasad indicated that his team is working on a way for Alexa to jump into a conversation. The tone and visual cues for the devices equipped with a camera will indicate Alexa if it is an appropriate time to interrupt a conversation. This feature will probably come out in 2021.
