I bought an Alexa yesterday and the second thing I asked it to do was “play the Desi playlist from my Spotify”. I tried 5 different variants of this, and also in different accents but it was unable to understand it. It’s cool that they’re doing work to improve understanding in Desi contexts, which makes it that much stranger that it couldn’t understand “Desi”.
The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
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Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#22Now this is a very negative opinion in a general anti-consumerist sense but:
Why does one buy items like an Alexa? I get that it performs some features, it slightly increases convenience but it does not enable anything new or different.
Something I do not understand about hackernews: There are a lot of people on here who, on average, care about the environment. By the same token, there are many users here who have an interest in electronics and technology, and are just generally interested in new gadgets.
How do you square buying gadgets with being somewhat conscious of the mounting environmental problems? The amount of electronic waste, the almost literal slave labour to mine the resources, the energy necessary to transport and assemble the parts, and the final device.
All to not use one's smartphone's assistant but a home assistant.
The consumer does not ask himself 'why do I consume', every decision is in the framework of making consumerist choices (e.g. buy a Tesla instead of a Jeep), the option 'I do not need to consume most of these things at all' is barely present.
So I am honestly asking to people buying these things, what is the thought process? Is there a feeling of happiness or joy in having new gadgets? Does it last? Are environmental or more generally philosophical considerations on whether you need to buy new things part of your thought process?
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#23I'm so happy because this means we're one step closer for an Alexa for Pakistan.
Does Pakistan have a similar number of dialect shifts within the nation? It's at least a far fewer number of languages right?
Nope, about the same crazyness as in India.
Urdu, Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi, English, Saraiki, lasi, Kutchi, Thari, Balochi, Brahui, Hazaragi, Chitrali, Kohistani, Hindko, Kashmiri, Shina and Balti are the main languages and dialects spoken in Pakistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincial_languages_of_Pakist...
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#24I'm so happy because this means we're one step closer for an Alexa for Pakistan.
Does Pakistan have a similar number of dialect shifts within the nation? It's at least a far fewer number of languages right?
The national language in Pakistan (Urdu) is incredibly similar to Hindi. It's just written with a different alphabet and has different words every now and then.
Urdu is fairly standard across the country with slightly different accents..
The regional languages are different though. Some (like Punjabi) are spoken in India too, and then there's Pashto (also spoken in Afghanistan) but then there are Sindhi and Seraiki which can be similar and different to other languages.
However, what excites me is the fact that Hindi is so similar to Urdu, the same tech could be repurposed for Urdu with much less work than a whole new language.
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Pakistan have a similar number of dialect shifts within the nation? It's at least a far fewer number of languages right?
Nope, about the same crazyness as in India. Urdu, Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi, English, Saraiki, lasi, Kutchi, Thari, Balochi, Brahui, Hazaragi, Chitrali, Kohistani, Hindko, Kashmiri, Shina and Balti are the main languages and dialects spoken in Pakistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincial_languages_of_Pakist...
Yeah, but the emphasis on Urdu as our national language means almost everyone everywhere is comfortable speaking Urdu!
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#26> “We had to think outside the box of just understanding English. We had to train Alexa to understand the proper noun in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Punjabi, Malayalam, among others,” says Kumar Alexa India's true test will be on how it handles ____glish (where ____ = the base language) that's very common in everyday spoken interactions, esp. in the South. Ex: Tanglish = Tamil + English mixed-in. https://en.wikipedia.org/w…
Could Amazon just treat those as new, separate languages with a corpus of words that includes the main language plus English? It'd mean the dictionary is much bigger but that shouldn't make a big difference (as far as I know, which isn't very far...)
1. It's not the same as the original language plus English.
2. It's not easy to find data for these languages. It's easier to add the modifications, apparently.
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to come across as an Alexa fanboy and defend it, but it would help to understand which parts of your interaction you think of as dumb. I agree Alexa Stop was clearly a mistake (albeit, not one I've ever observed) but for the rest, it's understanding what you said, you simply have different expectations of what the best response is. Were it a human, one wouldn't say they were dumb, just that they had diff…
> it would help to understand which parts of your interaction you think of as dumb. All of them were dumb. That's the problem with AI conversational interfaces. Once people talk to an "assistant" they intuitively expect the level of intelligence of a human. Because of that, mistakes are not tolerated much and conversation quickly goes from "ah this is so awesome we are living in the future" to "this is the dumbest th…
The phrase can and should be handled as a synonym of "stop" in the current context.
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#28I bought an Alexa yesterday and the second thing I asked it to do was “play the Desi playlist from my Spotify”. I tried 5 different variants of this, and also in different accents but it was unable to understand it. It’s cool that they’re doing work to improve understanding in Desi contexts, which makes it that much stranger that it couldn’t understand “Desi”.
Idea... "Alexa, how do I (get you to do/ask for)..." "Sorry, I'll have to think about that for a few minutes" In that time, a support tech reviews the question, perhaps with some machine leaning assistance, and then gets back to you with the answer. "(first name), about your request, you can (insert instruction or apology)." Amazon already has mechanical turk... no reason why Alexa shouldn't take advantage.
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#29> “Every 100 km there is language change and in every 30 km the dialect changes,” This is so true. The term number of languages is a bit inadequate when you talk about India. Another issue is the high amount of migration between states. People who moved a generation ago from Gujarat to Tamil Nadu speak Tamil with a few Gujarati mannerisms thrown in. I have seen examples of this in my friends and I have seen the vice…
Yes, this. I'm American but have cumulatively spent several years in India -- mostly Delhi, with about 6 months in Ahmedabad -- over the past couple of decades. It's given me the the ability to comprehend (but not really speak) basic "chaste" Hindi, with a bit of Gujarati on the side.
In practical terms this is essentially meaningless, because most of the time, people are speaking several languages at once. Last night I was in a supermarket in London, listening to the staff who were animatedly speaking what I think was a mashup of Bhojpuri (some of which I could understand) and Malayalam (no chance). Was totally baffling. Elsewhere I've seen Salman Rushdie describe the language of Bombay as "HUG-ME": "Hindi Urdu Gujarati Marathi English", with the apparent objective being to cram words from all five languages into every sentence. He's not wrong.
This will be one hell of an ML challenge.
Re: The backstory of Alexa’s Indian makeover
#30> “Every 100 km there is language change and in every 30 km the dialect changes,” This is so true. The term number of languages is a bit inadequate when you talk about India. Another issue is the high amount of migration between states. People who moved a generation ago from Gujarat to Tamil Nadu speak Tamil with a few Gujarati mannerisms thrown in. I have seen examples of this in my friends and I have seen the vice…
Yes, this. I'm American but have cumulatively spent several years in India -- mostly Delhi, with about 6 months in Ahmedabad -- over the past couple of decades. It's given me the the ability to comprehend (but not really speak) basic "chaste" Hindi, with a bit of Gujarati on the side. In practical terms this is essentially meaningless, because most of the time, people are speaking several languages at once. Last nigh…
Eh, this kind of thing is surprisingly common. Singlish, the lingua franca of Singapore, is loosely based on English but incorporates vocab and grammar from a slew of Chinese dialects (Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, Cantonese, Mandarin), Malay and various Indian languages as well. And English itself is also an unholy mess of imports from everywhere.