 |
Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
 |
Amazon's Alexa To Recognize Emotions
Amazon researchers are working to improve Alexa, the virtual helper that is associated with their Echo home appliance. Specifically, they want to better understand a user's intent, by having a grasp of the user's emotions.
Overall improvements to Alexa’s natural-language understanding are likely to help the device interpret ambiguous requests more accurately, by applying probabilities techniques, the source says. For example, a person who is located in Seattle may be judged more likely to be referring to the Seahawks when he or she asks, “How are the Hawks doing?”
Already, Amazon uses data about a user’s interests to prime the voice recognition system. Alexa is more likely to recognize requests to hear jazz artists from users who have previously added jazz to their digital music library, for instance.
Further improvements will see Alexa better able to hold a conversation—remembering what a person has said previously, and applying that knowledge to subsequent interactions. “That’s one of the active areas,” the source familiar with Amazon’s research says. “It is super-vital for the conversation to be magical.”
Researchers have long predicted that emotional cues could make machine interfaces much smarter, but so far such technology has not been incorporated into any consumer technology.
SF fans feel, well, emotionally about computer understanding. For example, Star Trek: The Next Generation's Commander Data made use of an emotion chip to actually feel emotions himself, which helped him understand his human coworkers and friends.

(Geordi and Data regard the emotion chp)
Arthur C. Clarke's HAL 9000 was also quite adept at determining emotions (mostly through voice harmonics).
See how you feel about these related links:
Via Technology Review.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/7/2016)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.
| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories -
("
Artificial Intelligence
")
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.' - HG Wells, 1898.
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.' - James Blish, 1957.
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.' - Frank Herbert, 1965.
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.' - George Orwell, 1948.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
|
 |
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
More SF in the News Stories
More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories
|
 |