Tableau details its natural language query plans

Conversational interfaces with computers have been the talk of tech since the days of Star Trek. Mostly associated with voice response, frustrating experiences interacting with Siri, chatbots, or the interactive voice response (IVR) systems of call centers reveal what a long slog it's been for getting computers to understand natural language, regardless of whether it's in the form of voice or text. But it took the Amazon Echo's Alexa, which was designed as a conversational voice to Amazon's retail and entertainment services, to show that natural language interfaces could actually perform useful services. When we saw SAS founder Dr. James Goodnight demonstrate how Alexa could be used to query SAS Visual Analytics, we thought that was pretty cool. But when you look at this video, you'll realize that Alexa has only been taught a few things and has a long way to go before it will replace your keyboard or touchpad.