Voice In Canada Flash Briefing #75

Hey there, hope you’re having a great week. Now here is another story that came out from Amazon, announcing some really cool features that are launching in Alexa.

I’m going to tell you off the bat, unfortunately these are not in Canada yet. One would expect that they will come to Canada soon, but I wanted to include this story in the flash briefing because this is big news.

This is about making Alexa smarter and using more intelligent processing power so that the artificial intelligence of the device is actually becoming truly more and more smart and this is very, very cool.

So there are actually three different components that go into what is going to be making Alexa that much smarter.

The first is something known as skills arbitration and this is where Alexa, when asked about a specific question, will be able to tap into the knowledge and the resources from a third party skill that has been developed.

So the example that is being given online is if somebody asks Alexa, hey “Alexa, how do I remove an oil stain from a shirt?” Alexa may respond that the tide stain removers skill says to do the following and so it gives you the answer.

But it is actually providing that data that answer through a skill that tide has developed, which is very interesting because right now Alexa doesn’t do that and this is going to open up the information that Alexa knows at her fingertips so to speak {I guess she doesn’t have fingertips} to anyone that wants to develop a skill that will make Alexa that much smarter.

So you can actually ask Alexa to remember something for you.

Alexa to Get Smarter

Now the second update is a big one. This is a huge one, it’s called the context carry over capability and one of the biggest problems with AI devices is that they don’t know the context of things.

So if you say, you know, give me a list of Sushi restaurants, it’ll do that, but then if you say, “What are the hours of that one?”

Meaning the last restaurant that was mentioned, Alexa doesn’t know that because it doesn’t know the context.

But now this is going to be available and so for example, you could say, “what’s the weather in Vancouver?” and then you could ask how about tomorrow and Alexa will understand the context that tomorrow is referring to the weather in the location Vancouver of the question that you just asked.

So this is a huge step in terms of artificial intelligence and the third thing is the ability for Alexa to be able to recall things.

So you can actually ask Alexa to remember something for you for in the future.

If you’re the type of person that forgets an anniversary or forgets, I don’t know any specific event, you could save to Alexa, “Alexa, remind me or remember my anniversary on such and such a date”.

And so you can see that among these three features, this really does increase the intelligence of these smart speakers and they truly are becoming more and more smart. So I’m looking forward to this.

I will definitely keep you updated on when it gets released and particularly when it gets released in Canada.

But this is very, very exciting. Stay tuned for more about this. I’m sure it’s coming in the near future.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Other Useful Resources

Listen on your Echo Device! Easy as 1-2-3!

Voice in Canada Skill Logo1. Open your Alexa app and click on the Menu button > Settings > Flash Briefing.
2. Click on “Add Content” and search for “Voice in Canada”.
3. Click on “Voice in Canada” and the Enable button.

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