The Role of Context in Redefining Human-Computer Interaction
Understanding the user’s context is key to interpreting a customer’s utterance and providing the most relevant response. Alexa is using an expanding number of contextual signals to resolve ambiguity, from personal customer context (historical activity, preferences, memory, etc.), skill context (skill ratings, categories, usage) […]
Alexa really needs to get better at remembering my “historical activity.” I ask her every night to turn off my bedroom light and 9 times out of 10 she doesn’t get it right. It’s not because she can’t turn off the light. It’s because she doesn’t remember that my bedroom light is named “Teal Room” and I ask her to power it off at roughly the same time.
Granted that’s a hard word pairing to parse, especially with my Amish accent but c’mon, powering the light off is something I do EVERY NIGHT when I go to bed.
Amusingly she never forgets that I have a fan named “The Terminator” and she ALWAYS turns that off and on.
Claire · Dec 11, 2018 at 6:49 pm
That’s really cool stuff. It reads like they are basically creating short-term and long-term memory in AI. I would be fascinated to see how they are deciding to set that up. Temporary storage of contextually relevant information would be super efficient and without the biological burden of inhibition (like we have during memory retrieval) AI would end up being the perfect listener. Ha ha.
Perfect keeper of secrets, too! I doubt if Bezos is going to let that hard won memory go. He needs it to offer the aliens when Blue Origin makes first contact.
Claire · Dec 11, 2018 at 9:07 pm
Ha! Let’s hope Jeff Bezos doesn’t give them a poor perception of humans. On second thought, a real life “Mars Attacks” would be interesting…
Really what I’d like is Alexa in my truck so she can drive me around. That’d be ftw.
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