Virtual Assistants: How Question Answering Systems Help Siri, Alexa & Google Home

Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home are using technology like Question Answering Systems and other machine learning techniques to help us do the things we do every day, just quicker and easier.

Tia explains how virtual assistants have gone from something out of Star Trek to something that is changing the way the world does business.

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Transcript:

Siri can tell me my schedule for the day. Google Home can play my favorite music. And Alexa can add milk to my grocery list.

What a time to be alive.

Virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri are based on machine learning techniques like “Question Answering Systems” – remember her?

Each virtual assistant, and their closely related cousin the chatbot, run just a little bit differently, but they all have the same result. They make our lives much easier.

Bank chatbots embedded in financial sites allow us to interact with our accounts, while customer support sites use this technology to help me get solutions to my issues faster.

But it doesn’t have to stop there.

Virtual assistants and the technology around them are helping us do the things we do every day, just quicker and easier.

Imagine an office setting where you don’t have to spend a quarter of your day looking for things.

Logging into programs, navigating pages, and digging through emails could become a thing of the past if we could just call out, “What are our numbers for this quarter?”

Virtual assistants and chatbots are continuing to improve, and quickly. It wasn’t too long ago that the idea of talking to a phone in our pocket seemed like something from Star Trek. Now we all do it.

But this technology goes beyond the question answering system. Virtual assistants and chatbots ask follow up questions to better understand what we want, and then they do things for us like setting timers or increasing sales quotas.

That’s right, I said increase sales quotas. You may have a helpful voice on your phone, but enterprise virtual assistants can look at your numbers in Salesforce and adjust company goals.

Virtual assistants at banks can help navigate investments, and law firms can pull up the latest depositions in no time.

Who knows what’s next?

Hey Siri, what do I have next?

Siri: Nothing, your calendar is clear for the rest of the day.

I love the future, you guys.