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Alexa continues to mystify me.

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Hockey_Magnet

Alexa continues to mystify me.
« on: January 21, 2018, 04:41:43 pm »
Just now, "Alexa what's the score in the football game"

"There are no NFL games scheduled today"

"Alexa what's the score in the Patriot's game"

"The Patriots trail the Jaguars 14-10"

 ???

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2018, 04:56:20 pm »
there are no nfl games scheduled.  just the playoffs. 

mike27oct

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2018, 09:27:51 pm »
Gotta ask the question correctly.

Hockey_Magnet

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2018, 05:39:37 pm »
there are no nfl games scheduled.  just the playoffs.

That's a bit nuts. An NFL playoff game is obviously still an NFL game. Would you say to someone. "Are you watching the Patriot's playoff tonight"? or "Are you watching the Patriot's game tonight" ?

Hockey_Magnet

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2018, 05:46:03 pm »
Gotta ask the question correctly.

Obviously, but you should not have to ask the question with that degree of Specificity - Both Siri and Google could handle that question no problem. Obviously any of these systems is not terribly intelligent - Try asking Alexa : "Who is Captain Marvel?" and then tell me I have to ask the question correctly. Echo handles my Smart Home stuff beautifully but the ad hoc question stuff is not terribly strong right now, I'm sure it will improve.

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2018, 06:03:26 pm »
there are no nfl games scheduled.  just the playoffs.

That's a bit nuts. An NFL playoff game is obviously still an NFL game. Would you say to someone. "Are you watching the Patriot's playoff tonight"? or "Are you watching the Patriot's game tonight" ?

yes and no.   you got to say playoffs if you wanted the playoff schedule.  I am guessing the info is coming from different databases. 

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2018, 06:09:14 pm »
Gotta ask the question correctly.

Obviously, but you should not have to ask the question with that degree of Specificity - Both Siri and Google could handle that question no problem. Obviously any of these systems is not terribly intelligent - Try asking Alexa : "Who is Captain Marvel?" and then tell me I have to ask the question correctly. Echo handles my Smart Home stuff beautifully but the ad hoc question stuff is not terribly strong right now, I'm sure it will improve.

since apple and google own their own search engines, it is easy for them to get answers.  they can "stack the deck."    apple has spotlight and google has google. 

DroMike

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2018, 07:27:11 pm »
You have to be careful how to parse words with Alexa is all.  It's not a perfect technology and has its quirks.  It learns from you, but you have to learn from it too.  I've said before that I would've been happy paying $1,000 for this device, but I only paid $79 (for a full 2nd Gen; and now have five).  So for that price, we have to be a little patient.  But if you want to grouse, we understand and are here for you too.  Yes, it sucks, but for all the other things it does and time it saves me, I have no complaints.

Remember the first "one" was the ENIAC, and it could only do basic math (and was the size of a small warehouse).....

asianrocker

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #8 on: January 22, 2018, 08:16:06 pm »
Well this post is only 1 day old but it seems they fix it? Why not my bulb glitch in colorloop scene?!! Really?

Anyway, I just ask Alexa what's the score in the football game. And it gave me patriots score and eagles score.

I ask Cortana the same, LOL it's a fail. It's talking about the score in football game in general. I even use NFL word and still  the same answer. Oh well.

I also ask alexa  "Who is Captain Marvel?" It's talking about Michel Jordan I think, what the..... I ask Cortana the same and it did answer right the comicbook hero.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2018, 08:20:08 pm by asianrocker »

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2018, 05:44:33 am »
Well this post is only 1 day old but it seems they fix it? Why not my bulb glitch in colorloop scene?!! Really?

Anyway, I just ask Alexa what's the score in the football game. And it gave me patriots score and eagles score.

I ask Cortana the same, LOL it's a fail. It's talking about the score in football game in general. I even use NFL word and still  the same answer. Oh well.

I also ask alexa  "Who is Captain Marvel?" It's talking about Michel Jordan I think, what the..... I ask Cortana the same and it did answer right the comicbook hero.

yea, but which Captain Marvel?

bongbro4

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #10 on: January 24, 2018, 06:39:57 am »
Well, here’s one for the books. I was at a production meeting at work, and a young lady whose name I didn’t even know told me I had sent her a message on her echo that morning. I said, “me”? she pointed at my ID badge and said, “yeah”, and said my full name. I said, “I hope it was a good message”. She said all it was, was “I didn’t know you had one of these things”. On top of that, my sister’s echo sang her “Happy Birthday” un asked.

Hockey_Magnet

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2018, 10:24:54 pm »
You have to be careful how to parse words with Alexa is all.  It's not a perfect technology and has its quirks.  It learns from you, but you have to learn from it too.  I've said before that I would've been happy paying $1,000 for this device, but I only paid $79 (for a full 2nd Gen; and now have five).  So for that price, we have to be a little patient.  But if you want to grouse, we understand and are here for you too.  Yes, it sucks, but for all the other things it does and time it saves me, I have no complaints.

Remember the first "one" was the ENIAC, and it could only do basic math (and was the size of a small warehouse).....

Thanks, I'm more than well aware of the limitations and I'm happy with my 4 Echos. I was just pointing out the very strange inconsistencies that occur. Not exactly a "parsing" issue though, more context related.

Hockey_Magnet

Re: Alexa continues to mystify me.
« Reply #12 on: January 29, 2018, 10:33:03 pm »
Gotta ask the question correctly.

Obviously, but you should not have to ask the question with that degree of Specificity - Both Siri and Google could handle that question no problem. Obviously any of these systems is not terribly intelligent - Try asking Alexa : "Who is Captain Marvel?" and then tell me I have to ask the question correctly. Echo handles my Smart Home stuff beautifully but the ad hoc question stuff is not terribly strong right now, I'm sure it will improve.

since apple and google own their own search engines, it is easy for them to get answers.  they can "stack the deck."    apple has spotlight and google has google.

Actually Siri is IMHO no better than Alexa and in some instances a lot worse. There are many different issues here -voice recognition, context recognition, parsing and searching - As far as I know, Spotlight is not a search engine at all, it just hooks into one. Apple was using Bing for Siri and Spotlight and I believe they've switched to Google.  Google of course has a huge advantage in this area although they haven't really leveraged it very well.