Page 13 - Fortune-November 01, 2018

ar tifi c i al intelli gence + t h e b a t t l e f o r v o i c e

sophomoric, tricks. (Ask Alexa for a fart, if you must.)
Amazon didn’t invent voice-recognition technology, which
has been around for decades. It wasn’t even the first tech gi-
ant to offer a mainstream voice application. Apple’s Siri and
Google’s Assistant predated Alexa by a few years, and Mi-
crosoft introduced Cortana around the same time as Alexa’s
F “smart” home devices by potentially making those objects as POPE: HEINZ-DIE T ER FA LK ENS T EIN—GE TTY IM AGES; EDISON: BE TT M A NN/GE T TY IM AGES; AUDRE Y: COUR T ESY OF NOK IA BELL L A BS: T ELEPHONE: SHEIL A T ERRY—SCIENCE SOURCE
launch. But with the widespread success of the Echo, Amazon
has touched off a fevered race to dominate the market for
important as personal computers or even smartphones. Just
as Google’s search algorithm revolutionized the consump-
tion of information and upended the advertising industry,
A.I.-driven voice computing promises a similar transforma-
tion. “We wanted to remove friction for our customers,” says
Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s head scientist for Alexa, “and the most
natural means was voice. It’s not merely a search engine with a
bunch of results that says, ‘Choose one.’ It tells you the answer.”
The powerful combination of A.I. with a new, voice-driven
user experience makes this competition bigger than simply a
battle for the hottest gadget offering come Christmastime—
though it is that too. Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and
others are all pouring money into competing products. In fact,
FOUR SHORT YEARS AGO, Amazon was merely
a ferociously successful online retailer and
the dominant provider of online web host-
ing for companies. It also sold its own line of
consumer electronics devices, including the
Kindle e-reader, a bold but understandably
complimentary outgrowth of its pioneering
role as a next-generation bookseller. Today,
thanks to the ubiquitous Amazon Echo smart
speaker and its Alexa voice-recognition engine,
Amazon has sparked nothing less than the big-
gest shift in personal computing and commu-
nications since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone.
It all seemed like such a novelty at first. In
November 2014, Amazon debuted the Echo,
a high-tech genie that uses artificial intel-
ligence to listen to human queries, scan mil-
lions of words in an Internet-connected data- Talking Head Voice I Hear You
base, and provide answers from the profound 1000 A.D. Machines 1952 Bell Labs
to the mundane. Now, sales of some 47 mil- Pope Sylvester II 1876 Alexander creates Audrey
lion Echo devices later, Amazon responds to invents a talking Graham Bell (Automatic Digit
consumers in 80 countries, from Albania to head that (legend introduces the Recognition), a
Zambia, fielding an average of 130 million has it) could telephone. device that can
answer yes or no
questions each day. Alexa, named for the questions. 1877 Thomas recognize the
ancient Egyptian library in Alexandria, can Edison (above) spoken digits one
through nine.
take musical requests, supply weather reports invents the phono-
and sports scores, and remotely adjust a graph, the first
user’s thermostat. It can tell jokes; respond device to record
to trivia questions; and perform prosaic, even and play back voice.

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