When Elon unveiled the Tesla Bot, he said, a humanoid robot will be useful if it can navigate through the world without being explicitly trained. Without explicit line-by-line instructions.. Can you talk to it with phrases like'please pick up that bolt and attach it to the car with that wrench'.. it should be able to do that'. He went on to say that It should be able to understand'please go to the store and get me the following groceries' and said, I think we can do that. This challenge is immense and I think it's fun to break down what exactly is required to enable something like that. Firstly, there's voice recognition to start.

There are over 30,000 Alexa Skills available today, and the marketplace has added more than 6,800 since the beginning of the year -- more than 1,500 in April alone. The popularity of voice interfaces continues to grow among consumers. One reason for this is accessibility. Voice interfaces provide a natural platform for humans to interact with computers; even children can quickly learn how to interact with voice-enabled devices. My last article for VentureBeat, which looked at user behavior around Alexa devices, concluded that consumers are overwhelmingly happy with the devices and can already see them changing their behaviors.