In the future, software in products like the Amazon Echo Studio will feature give-and-take calls.
Sarah Tew / CNET
Two years ago, Amazon announced a new feature for Alexa: the ability to ask questions. Dogs, as they are called, have been slowly running out since the announcement, and now it’s pretty easy to hear Alexa outside of her old “answer questions, follow instructions” routine. The voice assistant usually asks these questions as a follow-up dyn commands as queries, and they are a result of Alexa trying to anticipate your requests – for example, reminding you to lock the door at night.
Hunches are just the beginning.
During July Alexa Live Developers Conference, Amazon announced a brand new upgrade: give-and-take conversations with the voice assistant. The tools for such conversations are already being implemented by third-party developers and it would not be a surprise to hear Alexa, in the coming months start asking follow-up questions after you have given the usual instructions.
These may seem like incremental improvements, but they can dramatically change the way we understand and use speech assistants. After all, we’ve seen movies in which AI creatures live with their makers, but a few of us have actually spent time wondering if we actually want to to spend a lot of time chatting with Alexa over coffee every morning. And more importantly, we have not wrestled enough with the cost of such progress.
The power of Alexa
It’s almost appropriate to talk about the enormous troves of data companies like Amazon and Google can apply today, but that data is the fuel that drives the proverbial engine of the smart house – and Alexa is the fracking device that it collected.
Amazon’s release of the Echo Dot with Clock last year provided a small window into the usefulness of such data: Alexa fields questions about the time of day more than a billion times a year, so Amazon built a device around it answer question more effectively. It’s simple supply and demand, but where Amazon can quantify the demand with unusual precision.
Echo Dot of 2019 clockwise represents Amazon’s tool for data collection in action.
Chris Monroe / CNET
Now Amazon is testing more proactive behavior for Alexa, allowing the assistant to prompt users on occasion – and the company can track the success rate in those predictions in real time. People respond positively (that is, confirm Alexa’s suggested actions) “the vast majority of the time,” according to Amazon Home vice president at Amazon Daniel Rausch.
Rausch and I spoke on the phone before the July conference and he was as excited as ever about the innovations in the voice-driven smart home space. He said more developers than ever are designing Alexa skills and devices to work with the voice assistant – more than 750,000 were registered for the conference – and it’s cheaper than ever to incorporate Alexa compatibility into any particular device, at a glance $ 4.
The growth in third-party development means the direct feedback loop, in which Amazon can roll out features, test them and receive instant customer response data, only grows in value for Amazon – especially as it delves deeper into uncharted consumer territory.
Amazon’s voice assistant makes itself at home in more than the home, thanks to the Alexa app, Echo Auto and other devices outside the home.
Tyler Lizenby / CNET
Perhaps, like the hours of time we spend each day on our phones, we are reaching a new standard without ever having time to seriously consider the route we are taking, the destination ahead. Or maybe it’s time to consider such things now.
Vision for the future
The EU is currently looking for Google, Amazon and other tech giants for precisely this kind of data-driven dominance of the market in the smart home space in Europe – although the stated aim is to maintain healthy competition.
Another type of survey – formal or informal – is in order: What exactly could be the unforeseen outcomes of advanced voice technology? Is there a way to advance technologically without risking such outcomes?
Daniel Rausch and others at Amazon are typically hesitant to talk about specific goals in the distant future, but the investment the tech giant is making in its voice technology tells us more than you might think about the vision Amazon is pursuing . It is a vision that is both exciting and touching.
We are not likely to reach the sci-fi levels Iron Man, Month as Har too soon, but because we are accustomed to an on-and-take mode to interact with Alexa, we go to voice technology and take a much more central place in our daily lives. As Rausch told me over the phone, Alexa usage has doubled in the past two years and the increase in Alexa usage is non-linear: Growth next year is likely to increase last year’s growth.
If Alexa and other voice assistants find homes in new devices – check us out TV’s, phones and even the microwave – and because they also become more predictive and proactive in their interactions with us, we were able to dramatically change the voice landscape in ever shorter periods.
The Amazon Basics microwave is probably just an early example of what will become normal over the next decade: voice-activated devices.
Tyler Lizenby / CNET
Specifically: Within a year, we could see imaginable Alexa (and other voice assistants) entering the kitchen using capacities equal to Alexa Guard (that can differentiate between human and pet footsteps), ask if you want it to heat the oven for your regular lunch and so on – all unprompt. Many customers would be happy for such convenience, even considering the cost of privacy it deserves.
It’s not just privacy at the moment: People turn to voice assistants for information on COVID-19, mental health, exercise and more – and Alexa provides solemn skills, sometimes hundreds of skills, to address such needs. When one Atlantic writer speculated about the future of voice assistants, “With their perfect cloud-based memories, they will be omniscient; with their occupation of our most intimate spaces, they will be ubiquitous. And with their ominous ability to elicit confessions, they could have a remarkable power over our emotional lives. “
If Alexa changes, so do we. Many of us who regularly use voice assistants have found tricks to interact with them. Alexa never understands when I ask for Teyana Taylor’s KTSE album, for example, so I have to play an individual song from it, and then tell the assistant to “play this whole album.” My wife, who is convinced that Alexa is sexist to never understand her commands, as the assistant understands me (“I have more practice,” I always assure her, only most sure of myself), is much more willing to Alexa to insult – and, strangely enough, to make excuses.
I’m worried about how our three- and four-year-olds will interact with voice assistants and I honestly do not know what kind of interaction is “good” anyway.
In short, Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and any number of other assistants are changing privacy standards, changing culture and changing us.
Cameras connected to Alexa and other voice assistants only add another layer of complexity to the conversation.
Chris Monroe / CNET
Can we maintain our privacy – and ourselves – and also experience the convenience of such progress? If we try, it will certainly slow things down – something that companies like Amazon would probably like to avoid.
Privacy policy, messy as it may be, is important here. Accounts like CCPA of California (which only began to be enforced from July) help companies sue for violating users’ privacy or not informing users about the data collected on them. Such bills, with the rapid expansion of voice and smart home technology, should be living documents, developed alongside Alexa and other voice assistants, and challenged where needed.
On an individual level, it’s still worthwhile to practice privacy hygiene – delete apps from your phone if you don’t use them regularly, opt for the strictest privacy options from social media and voice assistants and so on. More fundamentally, now is the best time to start asking ourselves what we are want to our futures to look out for, and how much access voice assistants should have on our lives, our homes, and ourselves.
Echoes of the past
As a time traveler from the future had told us in 2007 sleep problems en behavior changes touch screens would usher in our lives, would it or should the trajectory of our telephone innovations have changed over the next thirteen years to 2020?
If the answer is yes, then it is worth asking another question: While we see Amazon actively building towards a future that positions its voice assistant centrally in the home, we need to do more to protect what privacy we have about?
