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Amazon Rolls out Chatbot Tools in Race to Dominate Voice-Powered Tech

posted by martyb on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the His-Master's-Voice dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) chief technology officer is working toward a day when people can control almost any piece of software with their voice.

The company on Wednesday rolled out the technology powering Alexa, its voice assistant that competes with Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) Siri, to developers so they can build chat features into their own apps, CTO Werner Vogels said in an interview. The service, Amazon Lex, was in a preview phase since late 2016.

[...] Processing vast quantities of data is key to artificial intelligence, which lets voice assistants decode speech. Amazon will take the text and recordings people send to apps to train Lex - as well as Alexa - to understand more queries.

That could help Amazon catch up in data collection. As popular as Amazon's Alexa-powered devices are, such as Echo speakers, the company has sold an estimated 10 million or more. Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPhones and other devices with Siri.

[...] As with other cloud-based services, Amazon will charge developers based on how many text or voice requests Lex processes.

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-rolls-chatbot-tools-race-181632556.html

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  • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:27AM (1 child)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:27AM (#497850)

    What would a speech processor do differently to a conventional CPU?

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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:49AM

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:49AM (#498182) Journal

    This whole thing is supervised by an Arduino. Selected for its trustworthiness, its simplicity, as well as its miserly power consumption... especially when sleeping.

    But an Arduino loses terribly on raw processing power.

    So, I offload as much stuff as I can onto dedicated sub-processors.

    Intention is failure of subprocessing systems will not lock up the Arduino. Just trip failure flags.

    Nor can one malfunctioning subsystem affect other subsystems.

    Another thing is I need very high levels of task fidelity. Meaning each subprocessing unit has a particular thing its watching. In my case, the most time-critical thing is two variable reluctors telling me how many gear teeth have passed on the engine drive crankshaft, as well as the differential rear end. I want to count every last one of 'em. They are used to sense speed, engine tach, transmission slippage, fuel consumption, mileage, engine load, and possibly more.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]