Amazon's Alexa Answers Allow Anyone to Teach Alexa Facts

The next time you ask a question to Alexa's voice assistant Alexa, the answer may come from another Alexa user.

Starting today, Amazon publicly launches a program called Alexa Answers, which allows anyone to answer questions asked by users for which Alexa has not yet answered – for example:

• Which states surround Illinois?
• What is the appropriate amount of sleep?
• How many instruments does Stevie Wonder play?
• How much does it cost in a handful of alcohol?

From that moment, when people ask a question, Alexa will talk about an answer generated by Alexa Answers, noting that the information is "according to an Amazon customer".

The program was launched as a private, invitation-only beta for thousands of customers last year after a period of internal testing. Even with this small group, Amazon claims to have already recorded hundreds of thousands of responses that Alexa has served millions of times. These numbers are likely to skyrocket now that anyone in the United States can participate.

"Our North Star, our global vision, is that we would like Alexa to answer all the questions people will ask her, no matter what language, where they are, what the device is," says Bill Barton, vice president of Amazon at Amazon Information. . "We are focused on Alexa as an objective and factual source of information with this particular effort."

Search engine

It is not difficult to understand why Amazon could use external help to deal with obscure issues. Thanks to Google Assistant, Google can pick answers to the difficult questions of billions of pages indexed for its search engine. But Amazon does not have a corpus of such bulky materials for Alexa queries. Instead, the company licenses data to hundreds of sources it considers to be of high quality and uses more than a dozen Q & A techniques that it classifies according to an automatic learning algorithm. which then determines the best answer. (This is a common misconception, says Barton, that Amazon is using Microsoft's Bing search engine for answers, and this partnership has been limited to additional items such as search links in the Alexa mobile app. .)

Barton explains that Alexa already responds to a "substantial majority" of users' questions with her validated sources, but that crowdsourcing was a natural choice to cover the rest. It draws a parallel with questions and answers from customers on Amazon's commercial site, which are often useful for looking for small details about products that vendors do not talk about in their listings. "Being part of Amazon's DNA is just one part of our commitment to engage our community of users to provide more information to customers who ask questions," he says.

Those who participate in Alexa Answers do not submit answers directly via Alexa herself. Instead, Amazon provides a website where they can view pending queries and enter responses with up to 300 characters.

During the invitation-only period, Amazon is largely focused on greater involvement of the response process. It added a search function and more tags allowing users to filter different types of questions. He also launched a personalized "for you" section for each contributor. Amazon has also attempted to simplify the question-response process by adding profiles that allow users to see the impact of their responses, ranking, and the ability to earn badges.

"We measure the engagement on the website – very well at that, after decades – and we can see our engagement increase as we add these fun, entertaining and even player-like experiences, "Barton.

Faith in the system

If you've focused on giant technology platforms in the last few years, you can reasonably ask if all of this can be abused and if the information Amazon provides to customers will be reliable. As we have seen on platforms such as YouTube and Reddit, web communities can easily be invaded by trolls and other bad actors. Amazon itself has had problems with fake reviews and occasional "brigade criticism" on its retail site. With Wikipedia having a constant vandalism problem, Alexa Answers would seem to run the risk of being poisoned by offensive or inaccurate "answers". Even people with good intentions can provide incorrect information.

Nevertheless, Amazon is addressing Alexa Answers with what seemed like a surprising optimism. The company uses automated filters to avoid any obvious profanation. It will also try to filter the issues from a political angle. ("We do not want this to become a strident forum for people who talk about any political event or personality of the moment," says Barton.) In some cases, human editors as well as algorithms will be involved in quality control measures.

Beyond these guarantees, however, Amazon hopes that a basic system of voting to vote positive or negative will help prevent poor quality responses. If a contributor receives too many negative comments, Amazon may start providing fewer responses from that person to Alexa users, but even then, Barton indicates that the company will not stop banning a user altogether. Amazon will also not specify whether an answer must reach a certain number of positive votes before Alexa begins serving it.

"We rely on the positive energy and good faith of the contributors, and we use machine learning and algorithms to eliminate the noisiest, the meanest," says Barton. "But we will not remove the magical experience that we can offer to 99 customers because one person had something else in mind."

Amazon also does not require a quote in its answers. This means that participants in Alexa Answers can not easily check where the information comes from before voting, and users will only hear "According to an Amazon client" as a source of information in the answers to the questions. # 39; Alexa. Barton said people have not asked for quotes so far, but he felt that a large number of votes on a large number of users was anyway a sufficient signal to ensure accuracy.

"We are certainly willing to revisit this issue if we get positive feedback from contributors or end-users if they find the attribution more beneficial," he said. answers. "

Alexa gets a community

Despite the potential for problems, Amazon is optimistic about setting up Alexa Answers. Barton explains that users can often answer unanswered questions much faster than an automated system, especially for the latest news. As an example, he notes that when Barbara Bush died in April 2018, Amazon saw an increase in the number of questions regarding where she would be buried. Even within Amazon's internal testing, the company got a response and started serving it to users.

"We've seen cases where, in a very short time, you now have an answer because someone from the community has provided it," explains Barton.

But even if no answer is given, Amazon considers creating a community around Alexa as its own reward. In the end, it's a way to engage and invest in the voice assistant, which in the long run could be just as useful for Amazon as having an answer on cork manufacturing or on the location of the largest wind farm. It's certainly a different approach than Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana.

"We also believe that engaging a community to contribute to Alexa is in itself an important part of the Alexa experience," Barton said. "Just being able to contribute to Alexa and have community content is new to Alexa. There is no other experience that allows this much.