AI

A Tough Act to Follow (Up)

“Turn down the temperature.” 

A human can use context clues and follow-up questions to grasp the exact meaning of such a request—like whether you're too warm or just trying to save on the electric bill (hi, mom). But for voice assistants, asking for clarification is easier said than done.

• Researchers have been working on solving this for over a decade, says Salim Roukos, global leader for language research at IBM Research—but over the past five years, there’s been a “dramatic acceleration” in progress. 

Field testing:  Two weeks ago, Amazon announced that in the coming months, Alexa will begin to ask users for clarification on certain requests. It’ll start small, limiting follow-up questions to smart home-related requests. Unsurprisingly, Amazon’s got bigger plans: It wants to apply this to all requests eventually. 

Context is king 

Machine learning systems are typically trained by assigning labels to freeform text: By analyzing your words, they attempt to categorize what you want. But a system has no idea how to classify a request it doesn’t understand—e.g., “Play my favorite music.” 

• “You’re entering a whole new world of unstructured conversation, nuance, and all that kind of stuff—and machines are just terrible at that,” Dr. Vasant Dhar, a professor and AI researcher at NYU, told us. 

The (in-progress) solution: Systems need to gather more info in order to give you what you want. 

• Using advanced language algorithms, voice assistants essentially must gauge: Is this a request I could fulfill with additional information? If yes, which part of the request should I seek clarification on? And what’s the best way to ask? 
• “That’s the intelligence that they’re now building into Alexa…and that’s not an easy problem,” says Dhar. 

C student 

The degree of success here hinges on ML systems learning from humans. That’s tough for a laundry list of reasons: diverse needs, varying context, and human impatience. We don’t like to be asked too many questions—whether by an algorithm, a toddler, or some guy at a networking event. 

But at its core, the trouble boils down to two famously star-crossed lovers: AI and common sense. In the past, projects built on humans teaching common sense to machines have been a “colossal flop,” says Dhar. 

• For this application, the key will be starting with simple use cases and building from there, says Roukos.

Roukos believes Alexa’s primary focus will be word-sense disambiguation—a sector of computational linguistics that attempts to parse a word’s meaning based on context clues. 

• The system is a feedback loop. As it learns more about context, it should theoretically get better at asking relevant follow ups. And better follow ups yield a better understanding of a user's personal context. 

Big picture: Amazon’s aiming to do two things at once: 1) crowdsource to solve the AI-and-common-sense problem and 2) hyper-personalize smart assistants so they’re more in tune with their users. Its competitors will likely roll out similar features if Amazon finds success. 

VC

Fundraising During Covid-19: Q3 Edition

One major bright spot of 2020 emtech: It’s already the largest-ever funding year for digital health, according to data from seed fund Rock Health. As of Q3, health tech startups have snagged $9.4 billion so far this year—compared to $8.2 billion in all of 2018. 

One of last quarter’s top “megadeals”? Ro, a digital elective care provider, raised $200 million at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. 

Other ~dolla dolla bill~ news: 

Electric vehicles: WM Motor, a leading Chinese EV startup backed by Baidu and Tencent, raised a $1.47 billion Series D. 

EV batteries: Northvolt, a Swedish lithium-ion battery maker, raised a $600 million private placement. Investors included Goldman Sachs, Volkswagen, and Spotify founder Daniel Ek. 

Biotech: XtalPi, an American-Chinese biotech startup specializing in AI-assisted drug discovery, raised a $319 million Series C. Investors included SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Tencent, and Morningside. 

Connected fitness: ICON, a Utah-based connected fitness equipment and software company, raised $200 million in growth equity funding. It’s now valued at over $7 billion. 

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MONDAY READS

1. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Read more about the pair’s pioneering research into CRISPR gene-editing tools. (Nature) 
2. Chrome is the most popular web browser in China, despite Google search and other services being blocked in the country. (SCMP)
3. What’s “edge computing” and why is it integral to the future? (Samsung Next) 
4. Samsung is angling for 5G kit market share, recently inking a $6.6 billion contract with Verizon. The South Korean conglomerate is capitalizing on Huawei being hermetically sealed off from western next-gen networks. (FT)
5. Elon Musk may be a showman, but he’s never stepped into the ring with a charging bull in order to demo his companies’ tech. In 1965, José Delgado—a pioneer of brain control tech—did. (The Baffler) 
6. For this one, the “read” reads you: This EU-sponsored interactive resource uses a face scanning algorithm to tell you “how normal you are.” (EU Project Sherpa)
7. Quantum sensors, long-range radio transmission, and automated telescopes: the world of GPS alternatives is far-reaching. (BBC) 
8. The World Health Organization partnered with Estonia—a country that allows citizens to vote via the internet—to create “digital vaccination certificates” powered by blockchain. It’ll start with a 12-week pilot. (Bloomberg) 
9. The U.S. Army is testing AR goggles for dogs (yes, dogs). They can be used to issue remote commands. (The Verge)
10. Dive inside a strange new emerging role: deepfake actor. (MIT Technology Review)

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WHAT'S BREWING THIS WEEK

Monday: Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The Brew is off. 

Tuesday: Apple announces new products at its “Hi, Speed” virtual event—an iPhone wethinks? GeekWire summit begins. 

Wednesday: World Summit AI.

Thursday: India Mobile Congress.

Friday: Boss’s Day and Global Cat Day. Shoutout to our editor Dan and his three warring cats. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Waymo expands driverless service in Phoenix 
• Nvidia’s new AI supercomputer
• When algorithms run the workplace