 |
| Amazon wants you to stop talking to Alexa so much |
Amazon hopes everyone will stop communicating so much with Alexa and get on with their lives. Tom Taylor, head of the Alexa and Echo team at the company, said the company hopes you don't talk to Alexa less, which might surprise you.
“We believe the future of consumer technology lies in environmental intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence to combine smart devices and services,” Taylor said.
"It's not just about connecting more devices," he added at the Web Summit technical meeting in Lisbon. It's about adding intelligence to the entire system for hardware optimization.
Tech giants are working hard to improve AI assistants so they can predict what people want and what they want.
"It's there when you need it and it's in the background when you don't," Taylor said, referring to a future version of Alexa. This represents the next big leap in technology both inside and outside the home.
He added, "This means less time to visit your phone and talk to Alexa more often. It means you'll spend more time studying the world and its people."
Amazon introduced the Alexa Routine that allows users to program Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices to perform certain actions at specific times.
For example, you can configure the assistant to turn off the thermostat when everyone leaves the house, or to turn on local information when the alarm goes off in the morning. Sounds such as a baby crying can also trigger these routines.
Amazon also offers other incentives, including visual effects. In September, the company added a custom circular event alert that can be used to open the garage door when a package arrives.
Amazon relies on environmental intelligence
“With this intelligence, you no longer have to ask Alexa to do these chores around the house,” Taylor said.
Amazon anticipates that there will be many different AI assistants in the future who will play different roles in different environments.
For example, Taylor said more automakers and retailers are using Amazon's tools to develop smart assistants.
When Amazon launched Alexa seven years ago, the assistant could do 13 relatively simple tasks like playing music.
Today, Taylor said, Alexa has more than 130,000 skills, and people interact with Alexa billions of times a week.