How many times have you left the house without your keys, or forgot to lock the door?

Maybe not that many, but after having 3 babies I can very much tell you that baby brain is real, and I could really have used a friendly reminder to grab my keys (or swap my slippers for shoes) on my way out the front door.

Luckily for people like me, Amazon has said that Alexa, it’s AI voice assistant, will now be able to guess what you’ve forgotten, or might forget, and even what you may be thinking.

Last week during an event in Seattle, the huge technology company revealed a new feature called Alexa Hunches. The aim is to use artificial intelligence to replicate human curiosity and insight.

Amazingly, technology has advanced enough to program intuition via deep neural networks and machine learning.

This Hunches feature is due to be launched later this year, when Alexa will be able to ‘observe’ (spooky) what it’s owners do in their home via smart devices (e.g. locks, lights, electricity outlets) and then once it thinks it’s detected a regular pattern, Alexa will remind it’s owners to do something they always seem to forget, like maybe turning off the lights before going to bed. It will even offer to do it for them.

They might be called smart home systems, but there is actually a lot of criticism of them being the complete opposite.

Some of the downfalls of the products on the market at the moment include needing to be a technical expert to set them up and program them, annoying glitches being commonplace, and worryingly the possibility of enabling corporate surveillance.

Amazon aims to overcome these downfalls and bring everything regarding the smart home system under it’s own umbrella.

New technology named Wi-Fi Simple Set Up is aimed to make it super easy to configure new smart home devices, says Amazon’s David Limp, Senior VP in charge of its Alexa service – All you’d need to do is plug it in.

Also on the agenda at last weeks event was a cheap-as-chips less than $10 chipset that can be built into electronic devices and household appliances during the manufacturing stage, meaning they would have Alexa’s voice control.

For example, they introduced a microwave, branded by Amazon, that had Alexa built in for just $60, paving the way for smart fridges, coffee makers, televisions, etc all with the power of Alexa.

The future that Limp and Amazon are envisioning is full of Alexa powered smart devices all around your home and car, from making your coffee to navigating your drive.

Their focus now is on making Alexa more human. Features like Hunches enables users to have deeper and longer interactions – She’s better at sustaining longer conversations will even whisper back to you if you whisper to her.

Along with being able to remind you to remember to lock the door on your way out, she will soon be able to alert you if she hears a suspicious sound while you’re not in the house, for instance the sound of smashing glass or the smoke alarm going off.

There’s a fine line between being helpful and being annoying, and whilst some people (like me) who would think it was brilliant for someone (or something!) to remind me to pick up my keys every time I was leaving the house, others might find it exceedingly irritating.

Of course, Hunches will only work with connected home devices for now, but the scope to build on this technology is huge.

Imagine getting home from work, walking through the door to your favourite radio station playing, a coffee brewing and and a list of your recorded TV programmes waiting for your perusal – all with a few voice commands. Or maybe even waiting for you all by itself!

This article has focused on Amazon’s Alexa but there will be plenty of others out there to rival them – Other brands are available…!

We can’t be the only ones who are excited by the prospects of future technology, and a bit of good old Wi-Fi, can bring.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/20/alexa-amazon-hunches-artificial-intelligence