I like the way that Rohit Prasad, Senior Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa at Amazon, thinks when he responds to the following questions in particular as part of this interview (03/11/2022) -
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/amazons-new-head-of-alexa-rohit-prasad
It's clear to me that the vision for edge devices like these is that they become a much more embedded component in our daily flow, what Amazon call "Ambient Intelligence".
Can you tell us about your future plans for Alexa and give us a peek at what your team is working on?
Alexa is getting smarter every day, but we are nowhere near the final frontier. Today, you can use Alexa to do things—ranging from entertainment and asking for information—to controlling and automating your smart home, shopping, and so much more. But, Alexa is already much more than your voice assistant. It is also an expert adviser and even a companion to some. When it informs you that you left your thermostat at 72 degrees while nobody was home, it is proactively advising you to save energy. Certain customers, especially kids and aging customers, have a companion-like relationship with Alexa and Kids+ on Alexa and engage in much longer conversations beyond single-turn requests.
The way to be great at meeting the ever-growing expectations from Alexa is through what we call generalized intelligence,
which is when AI is able to learn multiple tasks and continually adapts with limited human supervision. Alexa is not only one of the most fertile proving grounds for advancing generalized intelligence, but also evolving human-like interaction abilities that go beyond speech interactions.
What do you mean by this?
Communication between people, and we hope soon with Alexa, is so much more than just voice—it’s facial expressions, hand gestures, body language. That’s why in addition to advancing Alexa’s voice AI, we are also investing in multimodal AI, enhancing Alexa’s ability to process different sensory signals like visuals, touch, and ultrasound, as well as speech. More natural interaction will make Alexa an even better assistant, adviser, and companion. This is the hallmark for a conversational AI application like Alexa.