Here's What AI Actually Does

Your voice is measured by frequency, the wavelengths of sound at a specific moment. When you speak to Alexa, the software breaks down your command into 25-millisecond slivers, then converts each wavelength measurement into digestible numbers. The software compares those sonic signatures to its catalog of sounds until its confidence scores are high enough that it can assume that you said, "Order more dog food." Watch your phone screen while using Siri or Google Assistant, and you'll see the transcription swap out words as you speak. That's the software comparing the words it thinks you've said to its stores of example sentences, which inform how it understands syntax and vocabulary.