Page 17 - 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

2013—about the same so-so level of accuracy THE FUTURE OF VOICE
human listeners achieve. One of the great
recent triumphs in the field has been teaching
the engines to filter out nonspoken background
noise, a distraction that can frustrate the keen- ASK ALEXA something easy, Ostendorf, a UW professor who
est human ear. These systems reach this level, like, “Play ‘In My Feelings’ by advised the team, “is open-ended
however, only when the question is simple, like, Drake,” and she gets it right about conversations where someone
every time. Try to engage in an in- suddenly asks why or how some-
“What time is Mission: Impossible playing?” depth conversation on the mid- one did something. The machine
Ask the Google Assistant or Alexa for an opin- term elections, and you’re likely has too many choices.”
ion or try to have an extended back-and-forth to find her tongue-tied. A.I. sci- Even so, voice is getting
conversation, and the machine is likely to give entists say the holy grail of voice smarter. Najim Dehak, a com-
either a jokey preprogrammed answer or to recognition is to make computers puter and electrical engineering
simply demur: “Hmm, I don’t know that one.” so smart that they can have a professor at Johns Hopkins, uses
long, nuanced conversation with voice recognition to identify irate
humans. The better computers customers. He has fed his voice
O CONSUMERS, voice-driven get at this, the more useful they software recordings of 2,000
gadgets are helpful and some- will be as smart assistants. negative and 2,000 positive
T times entertaining “assistants.” $1 million reward for any univer- customer conversations gleaned
Each year, Amazon offers a
from a company call center. By
For the tech giants that make
them—and keep them con- sity team of programmers who focusing on keywords—pro-
design a piece of software that fanities are a dead giveaway for
nected to the computers in their data cen- can keep a conversation with a negativity—the machine can
ters—they’re tiny but extremely efficient data
human going for 20 minutes with- identify which calls are from
collectors. About 60% of Amazon Echo and out getting confused or straying teed-off customers. “The idea,”
Google Home users have at least one house- off topic. No one has yet to claim says Dehak, “is that managers
hold accessory, such as a thermostat, security the full prize, but a team from the can listen to those negative calls
system, or appliance, connected to them, University of Washington came to know if the service agent did
according to Consumer Intelligence Research close last year and walked off with something wrong or needs more
$500,000 for keeping the chatter training.” The software is in test
Partners. A voice-powered home accessory going for 10 minutes on average. phase, but Dehak says it should
can record endless facts about a user’s daily “The biggest challenge,” says Mari be available within a year or so.
life. And the more data Amazon, Google,
and Apple can accumulate, the better they
can serve those consumers, whether through
additional devices, subscription services, or
advertising on behalf of other merchants. company will pull in $4.61 billion from digital advertising in
The commercial opportunities are straight- 2018—a spokesperson says it does not currently use Alexa data
forward. A consumer who connects an Echo to to sell ads. Google, counterintuitively, considering its giant ad
his thermostat might be receptive to an offer business, also isn’t positioning voice as an ad opportunity—yet.
to buy a smart lighting system. Creepy though Apple, which loudly plays up the virtue of its unwillingness to
it may sound to privacy advocates, the tech exploit customer data for commercial gain, claims to be ap-
giants are sitting on top of a treasure trove of proaching voice merely as a way to improve the experience of
personal data, the better with which to market its users and to sell more of its expensive HomePods.
more efficiently to consumers.
As with their overall strategies, the tech gi- ESPITE ONE OF AMAZON’S early selling points, what
ants have different approaches to the data they people aren’t asking their devices to do is help
collect. Amazon says it uses data from Alexa to D them shop. Amazon won’t comment on how
make the software smarter and more useful to many Echo users shop with the device, but a
its customers. The better Alexa becomes, the recent survey of book buyers by consulting firm
company claims, the more customers will see the Codex Group suggests that it’s still early days. It found that
the value of its products and services, includ- only 8% used the Echo to buy a book, while 13% used it to lis-
ing its Prime membership program. Although ten to audiobooks. “People are creatures of habit,” says Vincent
Amazon is making a big push into advertis- Thielke, an analyst with research firm Canalys, which focuses
ing—the research firm eMarketer projects the on tech. “When you’re looking to buy a coffee cup, it’s hard to

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