Amazon’s Alexa Popularizes Digital Assistants
June 17, 2016
Digital assistants are smarter than ever. I remember when PDAs were the wave of the future and meant to revolutionize lives, but they still relied on human input and did not have much in the ways of artificial intelligence. Now Cortana, Siri, and Alexa respond to vocal commands like an episode of Star Trek. Digital assistants are still limited in many ways, but according to Venture Beat Alexa might be changing how we interact with technology: “How Amazon’s Alexa Is Bringing Intelligent Assistance Into The Mainstream”.
Natural language processing teamed with artificial intelligence has made using digital assistants easier and more accepted. Predictive analytics specialist MindMeld commissioned a “user adoption survey” of voice-based intelligent assistants and the results show widespread adoption.
Amazon’s Echo teamed with the Alexa speech-enabled vocal device are not necessarily dominating the market, but Amazon is showing the potential for an intelligent system with added services like Uber, music-streaming, financial partners, and many more.
“Such routine and comfort will be here soon, as IA acceptance and use continue to accelerate. What started as a novelty and source of marketing differentiation from a smartphone manufacturer has become the most convenient user interface for the Internet of Things, as well as a plain-spoken yet empathetic controller of our digital existence.”
Amazon is on the right path as are other companies experimenting with the digital assistant. My biggest quip is that all of these digital assistants are limited and have a dollar sign attached to them greater than some people’s meal budgets. It is not worth investing in an intelligent assistant, unless needed. I say wait for better and cheaper technology that will be here soon.
Whitney Grace, June 17, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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