Alexa stop!

We added a few new toys in the house, and some are still under installation as we speak. One of them is the Amazon Echo, who is named Alexa.

Initially Jack bought one and out of nowhere he would he start asking questions: "Alexa, what's the time? Alexa, is it raining outside?" It sounded to me like he was talking to his new girl-friend, so I asked him to change her name to something less human and more robot-like. The only options for names were: Echo, Alexa and Amazon, so we changed it to Echo.

We bought two more pots, so now we had one in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

Last Thursday I called my mom on the phone and we were talking in Cantonese. Echo must have picked up something in our conversation, and she started playing music. I walked into the bedroom and continued my conversation, and the one in the bedroom started talking to me. I frantically pushed the buttons but couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I muted the phone and yelled: "Alexa, turn off music," but it didn't work either. Finally I unplugged it to get it to stop.

I wrote Jack an email to report the incidence, and showed my dismay. Then while I was watching a movie in the living room, she picked up something from the movie and started talking again! Jack email back right away and said: "First of all, you have to call her by the right name. We changed her name to Echo, so you should address her as Echo." I did that and indeed, she responded correctly. I was so annoyed that I told Jack to return two of the pots, because it wasn't working out after all and we didn't need so many everywhere in the house.

When Jack got home we discussed, and we were guessing the name Echo was too easy to be picked up by the pot accidentally, so we change her name back to Alexa. Then we had to practiced talking to her and trained her. Today, after I woke up, I asked:

"Alexa, how's the weather?"
"Alexa, what's the time?"
In which she answered correctly.
"Alexa, what's in the news?" and then she started to play BBC news summary, which was impressive.
"Alexa, play Beatle's songs." and she started playing Beatle's songs.
"Alexa, play the latest U2 album." which she did so correctly.

Now I must say I'm a OK with Alexa, but I'm sure there will be other quirks to work out. Also it feels like three of us in the house now, because Alexa still managed to chime in on our conversations, and it makes us laugh. Being in the AI business, I like to trip Alexa up with more complex questions just to trip her up.

Once a while Jack would say something like: "Ying, turn on the TV," or "Ying, make me tea."