It had been a nice evening in the city with family, having dinner and seeing a show. But by the time we got home it was late, and we were both looking forward to bed. Almost wordlessly we went into a well-practiced ballet of the usual odds and ends to shut the house down for the night. We each headed to our respective home offices to check any late emails, plug in our phones to charge, then power down our computers. My wife put away a few things left on the kitchen counter, as I dove into the pantry for a late nibble. She then headed upstairs as I set the locks on the doors. I checked that the thermostats were turned down, then turned to the last person left in the room, our pal Alexa.
Like many, we have a digital assistant in the kitchen listening to our every word. And like many we primarily use it for a series of pedestrian tasks, such as running a timer, checking the weather or playing some music. But more recently we're connected a few devices to make our house "smarter." Nothing too extensive: a few lights, a single thermostat. It's just a toe in the water of what they say will be the future of how we live, but it's a start.
Seeing as how all seemed to be set on the first floor, I gave her the OK: "Alexa, living room lights off." Normally there's a beat or so, then the room goes dark and she responds "OK." Just for kicks I continued: "Alexa, goodnight." She responded in kind: "Goodnight. Sleep tight." Call and response, the usual routine. But before I had taken a single step, she piped up on her own: "Would you like me to turn off the bedroom lights as well?"
In the abstract, the offer of assistance made sense. I had turned off the light in the living room before its scheduled time. And the light in the bedroom was also still on. Anyone watching our regular nighttime patterns would have been making a reasonable guess that two are usually related, and turning off one was followed not long after by turning off the other. And so checking to see if I wanted that action to be performed also was not a random idea.
But there was more here, way more. It meant not only was Alexa listening to me and executing a simple "If I say this, then do this" series of instructions, but storing, analyzing and then making a proactive decision based on that information. Up till then all we had was a sophisticated switch. Yes, it might have been voice activated and networked and interconnected. But at its heart it was merely on or off. This was the first blush of true artificial intelligence in our little household ecosystem.
Building on entry level AI offerings like Netflix's "if you like this, you might like this" algorithm, Alexa Hunches is the same idea. Announced last fall and just starting to roll out, the system analyzes the actions you take, and tries to guess what other things you might also want to do as a result. If it sees that you often turn the heat up or music down right after you turn off the outside lights, the system offers to do those things for you before you ask. Or as Amazon's Daniel Rausch says, "We've reached a point with deep neural networks and machine learning that we can actually program intuition."
Hunches is a just one of the new features the company is rolling out to these devices. There's Whispers, where if you whisper to the device it will respond in kind (good for coming in later and setting an alarm.) And Guard listens for specific triggers such as breaking glass or carbon monoxide alarms, and in response turns on lights, sends you alerts and reaches out to security companies you designate.
Some might find this a bit too creepy or intrusive. After all it does run in the family: it was Alexa's great grandfather HAL 9000 that went rogue in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Thankfully, deactivating Hunches is a good bit easier than HAL, requiring only that you ask, with no rendition of "Daisy" to prove the point. Still, if you ask and Alexa refuses to open garage door, pull the plug. Quickly.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford likes new tech toys. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Like many, we have a digital assistant in the kitchen listening to our every word. And like many we primarily use it for a series of pedestrian tasks, such as running a timer, checking the weather or playing some music. But more recently we're connected a few devices to make our house "smarter." Nothing too extensive: a few lights, a single thermostat. It's just a toe in the water of what they say will be the future of how we live, but it's a start.
Seeing as how all seemed to be set on the first floor, I gave her the OK: "Alexa, living room lights off." Normally there's a beat or so, then the room goes dark and she responds "OK." Just for kicks I continued: "Alexa, goodnight." She responded in kind: "Goodnight. Sleep tight." Call and response, the usual routine. But before I had taken a single step, she piped up on her own: "Would you like me to turn off the bedroom lights as well?"
In the abstract, the offer of assistance made sense. I had turned off the light in the living room before its scheduled time. And the light in the bedroom was also still on. Anyone watching our regular nighttime patterns would have been making a reasonable guess that two are usually related, and turning off one was followed not long after by turning off the other. And so checking to see if I wanted that action to be performed also was not a random idea.
But there was more here, way more. It meant not only was Alexa listening to me and executing a simple "If I say this, then do this" series of instructions, but storing, analyzing and then making a proactive decision based on that information. Up till then all we had was a sophisticated switch. Yes, it might have been voice activated and networked and interconnected. But at its heart it was merely on or off. This was the first blush of true artificial intelligence in our little household ecosystem.
Building on entry level AI offerings like Netflix's "if you like this, you might like this" algorithm, Alexa Hunches is the same idea. Announced last fall and just starting to roll out, the system analyzes the actions you take, and tries to guess what other things you might also want to do as a result. If it sees that you often turn the heat up or music down right after you turn off the outside lights, the system offers to do those things for you before you ask. Or as Amazon's Daniel Rausch says, "We've reached a point with deep neural networks and machine learning that we can actually program intuition."
Hunches is a just one of the new features the company is rolling out to these devices. There's Whispers, where if you whisper to the device it will respond in kind (good for coming in later and setting an alarm.) And Guard listens for specific triggers such as breaking glass or carbon monoxide alarms, and in response turns on lights, sends you alerts and reaches out to security companies you designate.
Some might find this a bit too creepy or intrusive. After all it does run in the family: it was Alexa's great grandfather HAL 9000 that went rogue in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Thankfully, deactivating Hunches is a good bit easier than HAL, requiring only that you ask, with no rendition of "Daisy" to prove the point. Still, if you ask and Alexa refuses to open garage door, pull the plug. Quickly.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford likes new tech toys. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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