And why engineers say the moon-bound Alexa can't become 2001's HAL:
Captain Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the Star Trek gang were in constant dialogue with the onboard Enterprise computer, asking it questions about the starship and their alien environments.
[...] When Lockheed Martin, the company that built the new Orion spacecraft for NASA, first dreamed up the talking computer, engineers figured they'd just throw an Amazon Echo Dot on the dashboard with a laptop and call it a day. But it wasn't nearly that simple, said Rob Chambers, Lockheed's director of commercial civil space strategy.
[...] An experiment to test the technology will ride along with Artemis on its first spaceflight, which could launch as early as Aug. 29. The project, named Callisto after one of Artemis' favorite hunting companions in Greek mythology, is programmed to give crew live answers about the spacecraft's flight status and other data, such as water supply and battery levels. The technology is being paid for by the companies — not NASA.
A custom Alexa system built specifically for the spacecraft will have access to some 120,000 data readouts — more than astronauts have had before, with some bonus information previously only available within Houston's mission control.
[...] For the most part, the virtual assistant will be answering queries, like "Alexa, how fast is Orion traveling?" and "Alexa, what's the temperature in the cabin?" The only thing the system can actually control are the lights, said Justin Nikolaus, an Alexa voice designer on the project.
[...] The space-faring Alexa might not seem so advanced. But engineers had to figure out how to get the device to recognize a voice in a tin can. The acoustics of Orion, with mostly metal surfaces, were unlike anything developers have encountered before. What they learned from the project is now being applied to other challenging sound environments on Earth, like detecting speech in a moving car with the windows rolled down, Nikolaus said.
The most significant change from off-the-shelf Amazon devices is that the system will debut a new technology the company calls "local voice control," which allows Alexa to work without an internet connection. Back on Earth, Alexa operates on the cloud, which runs on the internet and uses computer servers warehoused in data centers.
In deep space, when Orion is hundreds of thousands of miles away, the time delays to reach the cloud would be, shall we say, astronomical. Looking toward the future, that lag could stretch from seconds to an hour to transmit messages back and forth to a spacecraft on its way to Mars, about 96 million miles from Earth.
That's why engineers built a spacecraft computer to handle the data processing, Chambers said.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Acabatag on Thursday August 25 2022, @06:14AM (2 children)
Isn't the focus of the Amazon voice recognition service to build a marketing profile using their 'free' service?
Further, Isn't the AI backend for this kind of VR service dependent on piping the audio back to mothership Amazon to recognize the speech? Is that traffic worthy for the novely of 'VR'?
It just doesn't sound like a practical space for Alexa, just an opportunity for Amazon to provide a 'toy' Alexa for the PR value. Is this the 21st century version of Tang or the Space Food Stick [wikipedia.org]?
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Thursday August 25 2022, @07:12AM (1 child)
Read the story and article, the Alexa reference is clearly a “joke”.
(Score: 1, Troll) by captain normal on Thursday August 25 2022, @03:52PM
Ah---yes, clearly a "joke".
"...This summer A.I. developer Blake Lemoine, formerly of Google, went public with his belief that a chatbot he helped build had become sentient. The story sparked a global conversation about whether some artificial intelligence is — or could be — conscious.
Such claims work to reinforce fears long embedded in popular culture — that one day the advanced technology enabling humans to achieve extraordinary things could be too smart, perhaps leading to machines that are self aware and want to hurt people."
https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2022/08/24 [gocomics.com]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 3, Funny) by sjames on Thursday August 25 2022, @06:34AM
Bonus points to whoever programs it to call the mission commander "dear".
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snospar on Thursday August 25 2022, @07:39AM
Let's all hope they don't send up any Scottish astronauts [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by MIRV888 on Thursday August 25 2022, @08:51AM (1 child)
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
(Score: 5, Funny) by theluggage on Thursday August 25 2022, @12:14PM
"Alexa, open the pod bay door!"
"Re-ordering coffee pods. I'm sorry Dave, Prime next day delivery is not available to Jupiter. Customers who browsed this product went on to buy: AE-35 units, spare space helmets and music by Richard Strauss..."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by inertnet on Thursday August 25 2022, @09:25AM (1 child)
Touch screens replacing buttons are a bad idea, but voice control replacing buttons is even worse.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 25 2022, @02:22PM
Don't worry, the voice control doesn't replace the buttons. It replaces the touch screens that replaced the buttons.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 25 2022, @11:48AM (1 child)
> The technology is being paid for by the companies
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 25 2022, @11:52AM
> The designers built in the capability for astronauts to buy things from Amazon.