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Amazon podcast maker7/1/2023 ![]() And with its Pizza Hut skill, you can order dinner.īy the way, you don’t have to be Capital One or Pizza Hut in order to give Alexa new capabilities. Its Capital One skill lets you check your credit-card balance. LOVE: Alexa’s also constantly learning thanks to the fact that anyone can give it new capabilities, what Amazon calls “skills.” Right now, third-party developers have added about 25,000 skills to Alexa, and that number grows all the time.įor example, its Uber skill lets you order a ride. If lots of people start talking to Alexa in a particular way, all of that will start filtering in in the models, and Alexa will get better at understanding that way of requesting something. If my Alexa gets better, yours is automatically better. RAM: Every time you interact with Alexa, you are teaching Alexa something that helps Alexa work better with you but also with everybody else. By talking to it the way we usually talk, we’re teaching it, helping it become more capable of handling our requests correctly. LOVE: Another thing that makes Alexa’s job easier is … us. It’s focused on the kinds of things that you’re going to interact with this device about. RAM: It doesn’t have to interpret your opinions of Shakespearean plays. ![]() What makes Alexa’s job a bit less daunting is that there are some limits to the topics you’re likely to converse with it about. It also has to figure out which meaning of those words you intend, so that when you say “Cubs,” it doesn’t start talking to you about baby bears instead of baseball players. LOVE: And Alexa doesn’t just have to identify those words. RAM: Imagine you have maybe a bunch of friends over and you’re all talking and there’s music playing and dishes clanking and all of that, and someone says, “Alexa, what’s the weather like.” You have to now pick up that voice in that crowded environment and respond to that request accurately. But the abilities it showcases in that interaction are pretty impressive anyway, starting with how it homes in on your words. LOVE: Unfortunately for those of us in Chicago, Alexa can’t actually do anything to get the Cubs to the World Series again. They were eliminated in the National League Championship Series. The Cubs won four playoff games this year. You can just blurt out, “Alexa, what was the Cubs’ record this year?”ĪLEXA: In the 2017 season the Cubs finished first in the National League Central with a record of 92 and 70. ![]() Let’s say you can’t remember the details of your favorite baseball team’s performance last season. RAM: Our goal is that you should not have to change the way you talk to be able to interact with Alexa. She’ll discuss a technique she’s developed that allows algorithms to glean key information about us from our conversations on social media. We’re also going to hear from Kellogg professor Jennifer Cutler. In this episode, we’re going to speak with Ashwin Ram to learn more about how Alexa learns. LOVE: That’s right-if you are interested in learning more about Alexa, you can just ask Alexa, using regular, conversational language.Īnd one of the things that makes Alexa so innovative is the fact that it is also using regular, conversational language to learn about us. There’s a whole backstory behind her character, and you can uncover that if you ask a little bit about Alexa and so forth. So Alexa has a particular way of speaking, particular quirky sense of humor. ![]() People like interacting with Alexa, and there’s actually a personality team that has designed the personality of Alexa and maintains that. RAM: People report that Alexa feels like a friend or a family member almost. He’s one of the minds behind Alexa, the voice-activated personal assistant from Amazon that can do everything from controlling the lamp in your living room to ordering a pizza.Īs Ram points out, you don’t have to learn much about how Alexa’s algorithm works in order for it to be useful.Īnd what learning curve does exist is designed to be. LOVE: Ram is an artificial intelligence expert. Why can’t I just talk to these machines and have them do the right thing for me? Why do I have to learn to talk to them? Why not have them learn to talk to me? No matter how user-friendly the product is, we know that it’s going to take some time-and probably some frustration-to figure out what all of the buttons do.Īshwin RAM: I kept thinking, when we talk to each other, we don’t do that. Jessica LOVE: We’re all familiar with the learning curve that accompanies any new gadget we buy-whether it’s a smartphone or an espresso maker. ![]()
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