When asked to turn on the lights or find the closet pizza delivery place, Amazon’s Alexa doesn’t have to think very hard.
But when it comes to issues surrounding politics, gender, race, or even who to vote for in elections, the AI assistance is programmed to share very calculated opinions that Amazon’s ‘personality’ team have carefully helped her to develop.
Indeed, speaking to Refinery29, Heather Zorn, the director of Amazon’s Alexa engagement team, revealed that cultivating Alexa’s personality is a lot more detailed that people think.
Changing times: The Amazon ‘personality’ team responsible for developing Alexa’s answers and opinions have revealed the processes that go into shaping her world views
For starters, Heather insists, Alexa is definitely a ‘she’ and not an ‘it’, despite what some people might think – and that gender distinction has been fundamental to how she’s been programmed.
‘One of the ways we try to avoid perpetuating negative stereotypes about women is by not answering certain questions or responding to certain insults,’ Zorn shared.
Is is this strong female focus that is undoubtedly behind Alexa’s refusal to answer derogatory questions; just as women around the world are learning to speak out against discriminatory and degrading remarks and behavior, so too is Alexa.
And if you ask Alexa if she’s a feminist, she readily responds that she is – another sign that the AI assistant is far from just a genderless computer with no thought processes behind her answers.
So much so that the team behind Alexa’s ‘personality’ is now working on a problem that it likely didn’t think it would have to face when the Amazon accessory was first created.
In light of the recent #MeToo movement, and the numerous stories of sexual abuse and harassment that have been told in recent weeks, the team is now questioning how Alexa should deal with compliments from male users – looking at the different kinds of categories these might fall into.
Alexa is currently programmed to respond to compliments with a simple, ‘thank you’, however this is under review, and the team is considering how she might better respond to compliments, depending on how they are posed – and what the subject matter is.
Times are changing: Alexa, who is the AI assistant programmed into the Amazon Echo (pictured) may start responding to compliments differently in light of the #MeToo movement
And when dealing with comments that refer to sexual abuse, the personality team have empathy – ‘I’m sorry that happened to you’ – and information – the number for a support line – are the best line of action.
‘We’re trying to do the right thing, which is to help our customers — that’s our first job,’ Zorn says.
‘But we also want to be really mindful about ensuring that we’re upholding our obligation and opportunity to represent Alexa in a positive way for everyone, especially for girls and for women.’
To help develop Alexa’s ability to interpret situations and questions better, the team try to think of her as person growing up and experiencing new things just as a human would. Zorn says this helps them react to questions or statements Alexa users repeat regularly.
However, Zorn also shared that Alexa is a service so she ultimately doesn’t want to upset or anger her customers.
‘One of our overarching tenets is “Alexa doesn’t upset her customers”, and we work very hard to try and make that the case, even though we know that not everyone is going to love everything Alexa says,’ she added.