Now Alexa guesses what to do based on user requests

Amazon reports that Alexa has over 100,000 different features, but knowing or using them all is nearly impossible. And it is precisely for this reason that the company has come up with a new way to bring out the skills of its AI. Such as? By allowing Alexa to guess what users want to ask when they talk about other activities. According to Amazon it would be “inferring the latent needs of customers”, but in reality it is much simpler than that. Let’s take a practical example. If you ask her “How long does it take to steep the tea?” Alexa will say “Five minutes”, but then she will also ask “Would you like me to set a timer for five minutes?”. This way, Alexa Amazon is able to showcase her skills by making explicit questions hidden in your inquiries.

Alexa Amazon, so AI anticipates user requests

The idea that Alexa is able to predict what we want to ask her is absolutely incredible. But what if she misses her request by far? She could irritate the user, no doubt. After all, AI was designed to improve our lives, and certainly not to annoy us with inappropriate questions. But this is only the worst case scenario, let’s face it. Apparently, Alexa Amazon is able to formulate a series of questions also based on the requests made on Ted Talks, Ultimate Quiz Story, Harry Potter Trivia and more. Here is an example:

TED Talks

Client: What happened in the story today?
Alexa: May 18, 1980 …
Alexa: By the way, I can look for history talks in TED Talks. Do you want me to extract them?

From this example, we certainly can’t say that Alexa’s new functionality is irritating, but clearly it’s all about user interaction. Either way, what matters is that Amazon’s goal is to make conversation with its AI easier. Already at the beginning of the year the company added new features, so it is quite clear that this is the direction. We just have to get used to it. After all, we have always dreamed of someone understanding what we want to say before even saying it.