Amazon scientist explains how Alexa resolves ambiguous requests

During a blockbuster press event last week, Amazon took the wraps off a redesigned Echo Show, Echo Plus, and Echo Spot, and nine other new other voice-activated accessories, peripherals, and smart speakers powered by Alexa. Also in tow: the Alexa Presentation Language, which lets developers build "multimodal" Alexa apps -- skills -- that combine voice, touch, text, images, graphics, audio, and video in a single interface. Developing the frameworks that underlie it was easier said than done, according to Amazon senior speech scientist Vishal Naik. In a blog post today, he explained how Alexa leverages multiple neural networks -- layered math functions that loosely mimic the human brain's physiology -- to resolve ambiguous requests. The work is also detailed in a paper ("Context Aware Conversational Understanding for Intelligent Agents with a Screen") that was presented earlier this year at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.