Teachable AI will help Alexa users set up preferences

Amazon today detailed a capability coming to Alexa called Teachable AI that will enable the assistant to ask questions to fill gaps in its understanding. First announced during the company's September virtual press event, Teachable AI leverages machine learning to determine whether a request can be a trigger for a teachable moment. If Alexa makes this determination, it will ask a customer for information to help it learn. Amazon says Teachable AI will become available in the next few months for smart home devices before expanding to other areas. Scientists at Amazon's Alexa AI research division have long pursued semi-supervised and unsupervised learning techniques, in which AI systems learn to make predictions without ingesting gobs of annotated data.