Riverbank Ruminations
Observations from the Banks of the Technology River (Tom Evans)
Are you talkin’ to me?
One of the more well-known movie quotes comes from Taxi Driver starring Robert DiNero.
You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the h*** else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.
Perhaps you have had the experience of asking yourself that question when you hear someone talking on the phone, only they are on earbuds or a Bluetooth earpiece that you can’t see. They say something to the other person but it appears they are talking to you. It seems these days people are less concerned about speaking quite loudly while on the phone and in a crowd. Maybe that’s just my impression. The fact is, especially at home, people are talking to ‘the air’ on an increasing scale.
We have Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby among the more popular ones out there. Let’s take a brief look at what we are talking about or to, as it were.
Alexa is Amazon’s entry. Do you know how many variations of Alexa devices are available? I was surprised to find the following. Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Studio, Echo Plus, Echo Input, Echo Frames (invitation only), Echo Buds, and the Echo Loop (invitation only). There may be more by the time you read this.
Artificial Intelligence Is The Backbone
What makes all of these things work? AI (artificial intelligence) is getting more and more integrated into the workings of Alexa. If you know anything about AI, you know it is not smart, nor does it have any real intelligence when it is started up. What makes AI work is constant training. You train AI to recognize faces by feeding it known samples that can be categorized and aid in recognizing unknown images. Voice recognition works the same way with voice samples. AI can learn a lot of things. This article from 2018 mentioned Alexa Hunches.
“…Alexa Hunches will observe its owners’ interactions with connected smart home devices like locks, lights, and electricity (sic) outlets. When Alexa believes it has detected a regular pattern, such as turning off a television set before bed, the voice assistant will remind owners if they forget to do it, and offer to fix the problem.”
For Alexa to be able to offer suggestions about your house ‘she’ needs to know what is going on in the house. Thus all your ‘smart’ devices need to provide information to Alexa so she can make ‘good’ suggestions. You need to talk to it. The same article mentioned that the future was bright for all sorts of voice-controlled appliances and other devices. Which brings me back to the Echo Loop. In the image from the Amazon web page, we see an interesting situation. The gentleman is asking his ring “What’s on my grocery list?”. Also available by invitation only are Echo Frames, so you can ask your glasses about the shopping list instead. It leads me to wonder who will answer if you happen to have the Loop and the Frames on at the same time?
AI Needs To Be Trained
The real issue to keep in mind is that the AI behind all of this technology needs to be trained. To be trained, it needs to be fed real-life examples. Guess where that data comes from? Anyone who uses one of these devices (myself included) is providing data in the form of commands and questions that gets analyzed by the vendor. You may have heard about Alexa sending a couple’s conversation to all of their contacts.
“Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa’. Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’.”
Amazon said this was a very unlikely scenario but they would be working to reduce the slight possibility that it would be repeated. What is unknown at this time is what other ‘unlikely possibilities’ are there lurking in our increasing use of AI-driven devices.
AI is getting mixed reviews from all corners. Facial recognition is an area where AI works well, but the ramifications of having an AI watching everyone all the time has caused some cities to prohibit its use, no matter how valuable it is perceived to be. Time will tell how this all plays out. In the meantime, it seems like the opportunity fo ask “Are you talking to me?” will not go away any time soon.
