Alexa goes down the conversational rabbit hole – TechCrunch

Onstage at re:MarsAmazon presented this week a new Alexa feature, which mimics natural language flow. Conversation between two people is rarely structured in a predetermined way. It can take place in unexpected and surprising places. As participants share their lived experiences, one topic leads to another.

Demonstrations show that conversations about trees turn into conversations about hiking and parks. In the context of the company’s AI, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, refers to the phenomenon as “conversation exploration.” It’s not a proper name for a proper feature, exactly. There isn’t a switch that gets flipped to suddenly enable conversations overnight. Rather, it’s part of an evolving notion of how Alexa can interact with users in a more human — or perhaps, more humane — manner.

Smart assistants like Alexa have traditionally provided a much more simplistic question-and-response model. Alexa will tell you the weather in a given area if you ask her. Ask her the A’s score (or, honestly, probably don’t), and Alexa tells you the A’s score. It’s a straightforward interaction, not dissimilar to typing a question into a search engine. However, this is not a common way for real-world conversations to unfold.

“There’s a whole range of questions Alexa gets, which are very much information bearing. When those questions happen, you can imagine they’re not point questions,” Prasad told TechCrunch in a conversation at the event. “They’re really about something the customer wants to learn more about. What’s on top of our minds right now is what’s happening with inflation. We get a ton of requests to Alexa like that, and it gives you that kind of exploration experience.”

These conversational features are just a few of the many things Alexa can do for you. Eight years after being launched by Amazon, the assistant is still learning — collecting data and determining the best ways to interact with consumers. There are always tweaks to be made, even when something is ready for Amazon to showcase it on a stage.

“Alexa needs to be an expert on many topics,” explained Prasad. “That’s the big paradigm change, and that kind of expertise takes a while to attain. This will be a journey, and with our customers’ interactions, it won’t be like from day one Alexa will know everything. But these questions can evolve into more explorations where you end up doing something you didn’t think you were.”

Seeing the word “Empathy” in big bold letters on the stage behind Prasad was a head-turner — though not, perhaps, as much as what came next.

There are simple scenarios in which empathy can or should be considered during conversations with humans and smart assistants. Let’s take, for instance, the ability to read social cues. It’s a skill we pick up through experience — the ability to readThe subtle language that faces and bodies use to communicate with each other. Prasad has been discussing emotional intelligence for Alexa for many years. That starts with changing the assistant’s tone to respond in a manner conveying happiness or disappointment.

The flip side is determining human emotion, a concept that the company has been trying to perfect for several decades. It’s work that’s manifested itself in various ways, including the 2020 debut of the company’s controversial wearable Halo, which offers a feature called Tone that purported to “analyze energy and positivity in a customer’s voice so they can understand how they sound to others and improve their communication and relationships.”

“I think both empathy and affect are well-known ways of interacting, in terms of building relationships,” Prasad said. “Alexa can’t be tone-deaf to your emotional state. If you walked in and you’re not in a happy mood, it’s hard to say what you should do. Someone who knows you well will react differently. It’s a very high bar for the AI, but it’s something you can’t ignore.”

The executive notes that Alexa has already become a kind of companion for some users — particularly among the older demographic. It would be possible to increase that phenomenon by using a more conversational approach. Astro demonstrated this week how the robot can be used to fill a similar role in the home. However, such notions are not without their limitations.

“It shouldn’t hide the fact that it’s an AI,” Prasad added. “When it comes to the point [where] it’s indistinguishable — which we’re very far from — it should still be very transparent.”

The video showed a new voice synthesis technology that creates a convincing imitation of human speech. It only takes a minute to record the audio. In it, a grandmother’s voice is reading her grandson “The Wizard of Oz.” The idea of memorializing loved ones through machine learning isn’t entirely new. MyHeritage, for instance, uses tech to create animated images of the remains of a loved one. But these scenarios invariably — and understandably — raise some hackles.

Prasad was quick in pointing out that the demo was only a proof of concept and highlighting the underlying voice technology.

“It was more about the technology,” he explained. “We’re a very customer-obsessed science company. Customers should find value in our science. This is unlike many other things where generation and synthesize have been used without the right gate. It feels like one customer would love it. We have to give them the right set of controls, including whose voice it is.”

With that in mind, there’s no timeline for such a feature — if, indeed, such a feature will ever actually exist on Alexa. The exec points out that the technology to power it is fully operational in Amazon Labs. However, it would still require some of that transparency if it does arrive.

“Unlike deepfakes, if you’re transparent about what it’s being used for, there is a clear decision maker and the customer is in control of their data and what they want it to be used for, I think this is the right set of steps,” Prasad explained. “This was not about ‘dead grandma.’ The grandma is alive in this one, just to be very clear about it.”

Asked what Alexa might look like 10 to 15 years in the future, Prasad explains that it’s all about choice — though less about imbuing Alexa with individual and unique personalities than offering a flexible computing platform for users.

“It should be able to accomplish anything you want,” he said. “It’s not just through voice; it’s intelligence in the right moment, which is where ambient intelligence comes in. It should be able to anticipate your needs and help you in certain cases. This is where we expand the conversational exploration. Anything you look for — imagine how much time you spend on booking a vacation [when you don’t]Have a travel agent. Imagine how much time it takes to buy the TV or camera you want. Anything that requires you to spend time searching should become much faster.”