Amazon Alexa's AI Brain is Improving

Amazon's big hardware reveal event hasn't been covered much on LinkedIn. However in a surveillance capitalism that feels more like a camera-of-everything reality, Amazon is going to totally disrupt the legacy internet that Google and Facebook built.

It's not just that, it's how Alexa will be getting smarter. It's one step closer to the kind of ambient AI in the sci-fi movie Her. Amazon's new Echo devices are more like edge computing hardware in enterprises where the AI processing is going local.

The movie Her is only seven years old, but that kind of AI Operating system (semi AGI, AI OS) in everything is nearly on the horizon. Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu and a host of Chinese facial recognition companies are on the front lines too.

What is an echo dot, if not a node in a new global brain? As the smart home becomes the workplace of today and the future, a more ambient Alexa is everything in how Amazon will disrupt Google and Facebook in advertising revenue and other new products, channels and the human-AI interface itself.

While we can admire flying Ring drones like a swarm of AI eyes in our cities, smart speakers communicating with us offering new degrees of personalization is the real deal. The Alexa Artificial Intelligence team is working overtime, and while China has the upper hand in facial recognition startups, the smart speaker is a curious intersection of innovation and the commercialization of AI.

If Google is the wannabe, Amazon is the heir apparent in AI at the intersection of IoT. Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft could enable the U.S. to lead in AI for a few more years, though not likely even a decade vs. China. China definately overtakes U.S. companies by around 2028.

Alexa getting smarter is good though. What does it mean for the actual consumer? More features, a more responsive Alexa. For example, Amazon has unveiled new artificial intelligence capabilities for Alexa, aimed at making the voice assistant more conversational in your home. Alexa will be more responsive, even asking for 'clarification' when it gets confused. God knows my Google Assistant gets confused a lot, but I prefer her voice.

Amazon's ferocity at the hardware product level is truly incredible, and Alexa's AI is really front and center. Alexa for work can scale in ways and with E-commerce ordering that makes the Google Assistant seem rather outdated. As voice-search and AI interactions become more impressive, brands won't be asking Facebook and Google for ads eventually as much. Companies like Amazon and Alibaba will push ahead.

The Cloud and digital advertising will be the perennial cash cows for AI research. The Alexa overhaul and artificial intelligence improvements were outlined as Amazon launched its latest batch of Echo devices. Of course to say that Alexa has any kind of true AI abilities in 2020, it's a bit underwhelming. However a smart speaker being a good conversational agent by 2030 is highly probable. AI later in the 21st century becomes that 'universal mind' people interact with, as teenagers text on their phones today.

That processor building block along with Amazon's artificial intelligence advances are designed to make the Echo more ambient and progress is still slow. Google is getting good at real-time language translation. I couldn't care less that now multiple people can talk to Alexa at once. However it's clear where Alexa is heading, to a more central position in our home and work life.

Amazon's new Echo Show will silently turn to face users in order to keep the screen in view, while the device is being used. A demonstration of ambient AI? Not really, but worth watching nonetheless. Amazon's Echo devices are using the company's AZ1 Neural Edge processor with 20x less power, double the speech processing, and 85% lower memory usage. But Alexa is really actually evolving:

• Alexa can take interaction cues and note errors and then connect them.
• Learn from humans by asking to follow up questions when Alexa has a gap in knowledge about returns and learned modes.
• Deep learning space parsers to understand gaps and extract new concepts.
• More natural conversation and adaptation.
• Follow-up mode when interacting with humans.

Everything that's new is new again with artificial intelligence. And that's the difference between actual AI innovation Amazon is making vs. the feature and software services innovation companies of the likes of Facebook, Apple and Google. It's curious to note that China is already living in more AI-tethered reality in many ways.

As for Alexa's ability to interpret context and adjust how to speak to you, the verdict is still out. Amazon Ring has launched what is basically a tiny drone with a camera that flies around your home. But in an era where we work from home, is Alexa going to become even more conversational? Now there's also a business use for Amazon Chime and Zoom integration and the ability to handle group calls. Alexa for business has a lot of potential in the 2020s.

Alexa's new Echo capabilities would apply to productivity as well as office settings, according to its head Engineer. Still if we have to teach our AI assistant, that's not at all ambient AI. But in a world of IoT/AI it's all about speed. Amazon's new AZ1 Neural Edge processor, a silicon module that will indeed speed up Alexa’s ability to answer your queries and commands by hundreds of milliseconds per response. 

As we buckle down for the 2nd wave of a Pandemic, AI has no necessity of slowing down. Amazon is trying to use AI to make Alexa's responses better suited to how actual human conversation occurs and we're all amateur AI trainers for free.