Machine Learning Makes Amazon Alexa Smarter, Reduces Error Rate By 8%

Alexa, Amazon's poster child for connected home devices, has recently received yet another update. Researchers have developed a method of implementing improved natural language processing in the model, cutting the error rate by 8%. This was done through a combination of transfer learning and utilising AI to generate'embeddings' of words. Transfer learning was implemented with a neural network to train an AI on a large dataset of annotated speech samples, thus enabling researchers to bootstrap training in a new domain with sparse data. This technique taps into millions of unnannotated interactions with Alexa, fueled by data from users of Amazon's Echo products.