Why It’s So Hard for Amazon Alexa to Really Explain Itself
In an interview with OneZero, Amazon’s chief Alexa scientist explains the voice assistant’s complicated new feature
We’ve all heard stories about Alexa mysteriously answering a question you didn’t ask, or turning on the music randomly without anyone in the room saying anything.
Amazon insists that there’s always a perfectly reasonable explanation — and it’s soon giving Alexa the ability to state it.
Starting later this fall, you’ll be able to ask an Alexa device, “Why did you do that?” and it will offer you some sort of reasoning for why it took a certain action.
For now, the explanations are going to be sorted into basic categories, says Rohit Prasad, vice president and chief scientist for Alexa, who sat down for a one-on-one interview with OneZero following the company’s product event in Seattle on Sept. 25, 2019. If music randomly starts playing, it could be the case that it was started by someone either on their phone or in another room, and Alexa would say something like, “Dave’s iPhone played the Black Keys.” You might also ask why Alexa didn’t do something, like turn off the lights after you asked.
This technology could prove to be a powerful…
