We are all upbeat and at times, a bit unsure and tensed at how Artificial Intelligence can impact our lives in the future. One of the very first and basic AI devices in our homes is the Amazon Alexa first generation, even though now it has graduated to the fourth generation. The capability or skills have increased over the past five years since the introduction to more than 100,000.
When my son was young around 3 years of age, around the mid nineties, to play nursery rhymes, we had to either sing it ourselves or play the audio cassette in our Philips audio system at home, provided we had the right cassette, else had to go to the audio store in the town and buy one cassette, bring it home, play and and listen to it.
But fast forward to the 20s of the twenty first century, when my sister in Mumbai wants nursery rhymes in any language to teach her grandson, she just has to ask her home Alexa, play English nursery rhymes and there comes unlimited English nursery rhymes. What a great convenience. !!
What convenient it is. This is the convenience AI is bound to bring to our lives.
This writing is only to understand the AI capability of Alexa .. Were it not for the AI capability, there is nothing exciting about Alexa. But that is what it is - eerything about AI.
Its ability to synthesise speech into text and vice versa which is the first and foremost capability, besides its ability to use this text to search the Internet databases like wikipedia and output information, first a text and synthesise it back as audio.
At a very initial assessment, we find till date Alexa has more than 100,000 skills for public use.
Amazon Alexa AI is capable of
- voice synthesis and interaction
- doing music playback
- making to-do
lists
- setting alarms
- streaming podcasts
- playing audio books
- providing weather, traffic, sports, and other real-time information
- provide news
- control several smart devices using itself as a home automation system.
- home security (at a fee)
We all agree electricity has made a great change in our lives today. Were it not for Benjamin Franklin's invention in the 1750s of electricity, many of the luxuries and conveniences we enjoy these days would not have existed.
From the lighting in our homes to the refrigerators, to the fans, air conditioners, induction stoves, microwave ovens, televisions, audio- video systems, industrial heavy duty motors and machines, what not, even the computers and the Internet would not have been possible.
A similar change we are expecting now with the introduction of AI to our life. We cannot even dream about the change AI will bring in our lives.
My sister does not have to switch on the record player, take the nursery rhyme record, switch on the power, and start the player, she just has to ask the Alexa AI pod in a corner of her front room, Alexa, play English nursery rhymes and there it goes with nursery rhymes in a long list for hours together with no repetition ..
When I have to write a new document or a case, I just write the main ideas as a Google doc and Google AI guides me slowly with ideas on the grammar, sentence formation and spellings to help me arrive at the best formatted text. Writing a case is barely a 3 -4 hour exercise for me from the earlier 8-10 hour exercise.
Click here for the 30 best Alexa skills of the 100,000 plus it has that can entice you for hours together and could come handy at any time.
With the passing years, three years after Amazon initially ventured into this area, Google too has the Google Home AI, progressively disrupting the AI scenario across the world and being a forerunner of AI adoption. Amazon has a 20 year edge over other companies in this area. (click here for the Forbes article).
Click here to find the HBR article by Alex Kantrowitz to find how Amazon automated it's work and put it's people to better use.
George..
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