Got to this somewhat late, but some useful directions about the nature and value of conversational assistance. Still don't see the required richness and context dependence that is required for intelligent interaction.
Expansion of Voice Science
Amazon sends Alexa developers on quest for ‘holy grail of voice science’
KHARI JOHNSON @ Khari Johnson in Venturebeat
Amazon VP of devices David Limp onstage at the re:Mars conference held at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on June 4, 2019
Above: Amazon VP of devices David Limp onstage at the re:Mars conference held at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on June 4, 2019
At Amazon’s re:Mars conference last week, the company rolled out Alexa Conversations in preview. Conversations is a module within the Alexa Skills Kit that stitches together Alexa voice apps into experiences that help you accomplish complex tasks.
Alexa Conversations may be Amazon’s most intriguing and substantial pitch to voice developers in years. Conversations will make creating skills possible with fewer lines of code. It will also do away with the need to understand the many different ways a person can ask to complete an action, as a recurrent neural network will automatically generate dialogue flow.
For users, Alexa Conversations will make it easier to complete tasks that require the incorporation of multiple skills and will cut down on the number of interactions needed to do things like reserve a movie ticket or order food.
Amazon VP David Limp refers to Conversations as a great next step forward. “It has been sort of the holy grail of voice science, which is how can you make a conversation string together when you didn’t actually programmatically think about it end-to-end. […] I think a year or two ago I would have said we didn’t see a way out of that tunnel, but now I think the science is showing us that [although] it will take us years to get more and more conversational, […] this breakthrough is very big for us, tip of the iceberg,” Limp said.
It begins with a night out and casual conversation
The Alexa Conversations journey is first emerging with a night-out scenario. In an onstage demo last week at re:Mars, a woman buys a movie ticket, makes dinner reservations, and hails a ride in about one minute. (Atom tickets, Uber, and OpenTable are early Alexa Conversations partners.) .... "
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