AI: Amazon's answer for everything

At Amazon's re:MARS robotics and AI conference, the humans remain in control, for now. It just so happens that the phrase "turn the lights on" sounds a lot like the word "tenderloin." That seemingly unimportant phonetic connection became an early challenge for Amazon's Alexa Shopping team. After all, the world's largest online store didn't want to ship its customers surprise packages of meat when all they wanted was to flick on a light switch. So the company devised a ranking system for its voice commands, placing a request for the lights, which is used a lot, high above a request for tenderloin, which isn't. To hone this system, the company gave Alexa contextual awareness too, so the voice assistant could tell if a conversation is related to groceries and not smart home controls.