Amazon Will Let Anyone Answer Your Alexa Questions Now (fastcompany.com) 63
The next time you ask a question to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, the answer might come from another Alexa user. From a report: Starting today, Amazon is publicly launching a program called Alexa Answers, which lets anyone field questions asked by users for which Alexa doesn't already have a response -- ones such as: What states surround Illinois? What's the proper amount of sleep? How many instruments does Stevie Wonder play? How much is in a handle of alcohol?
From then on, when people ask a question, Alexa will speak an answer generated through Alexa Answers, noting that the information is "according to an Amazon customer." The program launched in a private, invite-only beta for thousands of customers last year after a period of internal testing. Even with that limited group, Amazon says it's already logged hundreds of thousands of responses, which Alexa has served millions of times. Those numbers will likely shoot upwards now that anyone in the United States can participate. "Our North Star, our overall vision, is we'd love it if Alexa can answer any question people ask her, no matter what the language, where they are, what the device," says Bill Barton, Amazon's vice president of Alexa Information. "We're focused on Alexa as an objective, factual information source with this particular effort."
From then on, when people ask a question, Alexa will speak an answer generated through Alexa Answers, noting that the information is "according to an Amazon customer." The program launched in a private, invite-only beta for thousands of customers last year after a period of internal testing. Even with that limited group, Amazon says it's already logged hundreds of thousands of responses, which Alexa has served millions of times. Those numbers will likely shoot upwards now that anyone in the United States can participate. "Our North Star, our overall vision, is we'd love it if Alexa can answer any question people ask her, no matter what the language, where they are, what the device," says Bill Barton, Amazon's vice president of Alexa Information. "We're focused on Alexa as an objective, factual information source with this particular effort."
If I wanted uninformed opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
If I wanted uninformed opinion I'd just ask that old git in the pub. In fact I'd just stand within 20 feet of him, he'll give it anyway.
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“Uninformed” is the best case scenario. Worse is “According to an Amazon customer, the states surrounding Illinois are: buy Bitcoin at btcnow.com!”
Boobs! Boobs is the answer to any question!
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“Uninformed” is the best case scenario. Worse is “According to an Amazon customer, the states surrounding Illinois are: buy Bitcoin at btcnow.com!”
And even worse then embedding ads like that (which you can blatently detect), is intentionally giving subtly wrong answers. Like, given recent events, I could see the same sort of question "what states surround florida" being answered to exclude Alabama (or maybe saying Alabama surrounds South Carolina).
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Right, Alexa is for abuse. The game is on for trolls to figure out how to bypass Amazon's filters.
Oh, so exploitable! (Score:3)
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If I wanted uninformed opinion I'd just ask that old git in the pub. In fact I'd just stand within 20 feet of him, he'll give it anyway.
Sounds like just another day in the life of a current White House correspondent ...
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Is it a Wetherspoons? The old loony git might be the owner.
Better idea (Score:3)
https://internetoracle.org/ [internetoracle.org]
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I was going to point this out. I have noticed as well that most "new technology" are just recycled old ideas.
How about a Magic 8-Ball Instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
This really sounds like Amazon is admitting that the Alexa technology is reaching it's limitations.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was a stop-gap until they were able to bring together something more capable.
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I think Amazon realized early on that they didn't have the capability to make Alexa really smart. They bought in some voice recognition technology that mostly worked but don't have the in-house talent to make Alexa itself seem intelligent.
Instead they were hoping that "apps" from third parties would make up for that, giving Alexa extra skills. It didn't work, most of them didn't put much effort in. I suppose it made sense in the meeting room, after all a lot of phone features started out as third party apps
Google (Score:3)
Meanwhile, Google's voice assistant can already answer questions like "what states border Illinois" without sending your requests to a human.
Re: Google (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, Google nailed all of those questions. This is essentially a voice activated LMGTFY.
Holy crap (Score:3)
This has the potential for epic levels of trolling.
The company is using automated filters to keep out obvious profanity, and it will also try to filter out questions with a political angle....In some cases, human editors as well as algorithms will be involved in quality-control measures.....Beyond those safeguards, though, Amazon is hoping that a basic upvote and downvote system will help keep out low-quality responses.
Perfect. Gentlemen, start your engines. They have not learned a thing from the last 30 years of the internet.
https://alexaanswers.amazon.co... [amazon.com]
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"The company is using automated filters to keep out obvious profanity"
But as we have seen countless times in the past, people will uses spaces, misspellings and character substitution to get around this, This was legitimately done in the past to get voice synthesizers to properly pronounce words.
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"The company is using automated filters to keep out obvious profanity"
But as we have seen countless times in the past, people will uses spaces, misspellings and character substitution to get around this, This was legitimately done in the past to get voice synthesizers to properly pronounce words.
And- even if they check for "sound alikes" for people doing this they might miss legitimate answers. There is a real reporter called Euan Kerr (You Wanker), for example
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Meh, I'd just as soon they do filter out the (real and obfuscated) smut, to give more room to the brilliantly hilarious trolls that shine best when a company crowdsources information.
Alexa, what states surround Illinois?
Solid, liquid, gas, and Statey McStateface.
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Agreed, this is magnificent. They have clearly not learned the lesson from Microsoft "Tay" (oh crap, now Taylor Swift might sue me...), this is greatest opportunity for fun and undermining "internet assistants" that has yet been offered!
joke? (Score:4)
Somebody tell me this is a
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FWIW, the UK is running you a pretty close second. In front, even, depending on what time weightings you apply.
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Have you seen some subset of recent high school graduates in the US lately?
poisoning the well (Score:1)
oh great — now anyone can provide false news facts and corrupt the database of agregated knowledge.
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oh great — now anyone can provide false news facts and corrupt the database of agregated knowledge.
"Alexa, who started World War II?"
"Donald Trump started World War II when he invaded Alabama."
"Alexa. where was Obama born?"
"President Obama is an illegal alien and was born in Kenya to Muslim extremists."
"Alexa, who is the greatest musical act of all time?"
"The greatest musical act of all time is Nickelback. Justin Bieber is a close second".
followed by monetisation (Score:2)
... when the answers are provided by the highest bidder.
Fake News (Score:5, Funny)
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Protip: When Alexa starts spouting off answers laden with profanity, homophobic, and racial slurs, it was a question that Alexa didn't already have in their database,
As if I needed another reason not to get one (Score:2)
However let's consider a user who truly needs a voice interface for whatever reason.
Such a user might want an answer to a question -- How does that person guarantee that the answer received is true?
A malicious user may even give an answer that is even harmful.
No internet user would ever do that. Shirley Knot!
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It has uses that are useful.
Alexa, what's the weather (while getting dressed after a shower in the morning)?
Alexa, set a timer for 20 minutes (this is awesome in the kitchen, can set multiple ones, don't have to fiddle with my phone).
And the most used one, for kid's sleep time:
Alexa, play Mozart piano concertos (they play all night, I'm specific to piano as his opera pieces are annoying).
I like them (we have 4) and I really don't care if they are listening. If I want to say something.... interesting, I wil
Alexa spews random stuff. (Score:2)
This would be just like thanksgiving dinner with my crazy uncle Melvin, or maybe we could reframe it to be like 'Cliff' from the 80's sit-com Cheers.
Anything that spouts random, unvetted, feces is about as useful as Facebook for facts.
Just what we need... (Score:2)
Another source of non-expert information on the interwebz
Alexa, do vaccines cause autism? (Score:3)
Google cancelled it, again (Score:1)
Google used to have an excellent service called Google Answers. You'd ask a question, specify a price, and an approved question-answerer, one with expertise in the field, would answer it. A $5 question would get a quick answer, a $25 question more research, and a $100 question would get someone to write a mini-paper on the topic. It was great.
Google shut it down, like it does most of the things it starts.
It's not just the stupidity, it's also the optics (Score:4)
As many have pointed out, this is weapons-grade stupid. But it also makes it appear that Amazon either doesn't know or doesn't care about internet disinformation. With that kind of attitude, would I plant their spy device in my living room? And even pay for the privilege?
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upvote the term "weapons-grade stupid"
Upvoted, twice and written down for future reference.
Amazon product questions (Score:2)
So is this is going to be like Amazon product questions answered by other people who bought the product? Where the number one answer to just about every question is some variation of "I don't know?"
This will go well. (Score:1)
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And more importantly, this time it's caused by human activity.
Prepare for quality answers! (Score:2)
Unreliable Opinions Have Been Done (Score:1)
They're stored on a site called Wikipedia.
The Home Audience (Score:2)
Why would anyone want this? Really - WTF is it good for? How does this "assist" me, make my life better, improve anything?
If I wanted... (Score:3)
spyware all over my house I would pay money to install any of these IOT things.
Why do we put up with it? We even pay a premium to allow fashion designers to put advertising on our clothing.
uh oh crowdsourcing (Score:2)
And ... (Score:3)
What happens when someone has provided an incorrect and/or biased answer? Will there be a review and correction process? TFA mentions "optimism" and a few filters for profanity and political bias, but I'm guessing they'll have problems similar to Wikipedia. Will people be able opt-out of receiving un-vetted responses or will they be stuck with a "take it with a grain of salt" experience. In any case, hopefully Amazon won't let our President provide any answers, especially about hurricanes -- other than, perhaps, "tremendously big and tremendously wet" (Google it).
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In any case, hopefully Amazon won't let our President provide any answers, especially about hurricanes -- other than, perhaps, "tremendously big and tremendously wet" (Google it).
Those weren't his responses regarding hurricane Dorian; those were a couple of his comments about Stormy Daniels.
Oh wow, letting the people of the internet answer (Score:2)
What could possibly go wrong?
So random people can (Score:3)
give whatever answers they want. There's no way this could go wrong.
The reason? (Score:2)
...because just like 'corporations are people too', so will AI be a person, eventually. And that 'person' will be owned by a corporation, and that corporation will be responsible for the outcomes generated from human interactions with said AI. So the case of, "OMG, Alexa told me to $DO_HEALTHY_STUFF, but it caused me $PROBLEM. Now I have a $LAWYER." can't happen.
Now, Alexa has the people's attention it can continue to 'be useful', but now has the right to claim "...oh that? Yeah, that was someone else s
Alexa, why do you spy on my nephew? (Score:2)
He's only 10.
Please stop letting him buy stuff when he goes to his classmates homes.
Kids can't form contracts when under the age of 16.
Thanks,
America
Microsoft Team-Up? (Score:2)
I'd like to see Microsoft reach out to Amazon about this... Tay should be given the chance to answer some of these questions.
Yahoo Answers? (Score:2)
They going to offer points for answering questions too?
Alexa! (Score:2)
Alexa what is best in life?
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!"
Alexa... (Score:2)
Does this look infected?