Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

Re:Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit by drsim on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @12:05PM (#19369580)

Alexa needs a PageRank and an 'I'm feeling lucky' that is successful the majority of the time.

I would like it to work as a room of human experts works with a moderator.

Alexa, how long will it take me to cycle to Netto?

Alexa sends this parsed query out to all apps it thinks can answer.

They respond with a confidence level and answer / follow up question.

Alexa decides which app to choose (the 'PageRank') based on a number of factors like has the query been seen before and how did each app perform for it, the app's answer success rate, has the user been given a response from this app before etc. etc.

The user should not have to install apps. Alexa should know all of the apps in the room and what they're good/bad at and select one to respond.

Surely discovery is the wrong way to think about this problem and Alexa needs to be elevated from a good speech parser.

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Re:Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit by amznthrowaway2 on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @03:30PM (#19372028)

The “canfulfill” API for skills is available. Alexa scientists are constantly working on improving the arbitration experience but it’s a very difficult problem, especially due to security concerns.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/implement-ca...

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Re:Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit by cheez on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @12:08PM (#19369620)

Oh I like this twist on things. The difficulty is how do you prevent your data/query going to a place you wouldn't want it to go to?

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Re:Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit by drsim on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @12:25PM (#19369875)

Very true, the privacy implications would need to be carefully considered.

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