Yesterday, Amazon hosted its 3rd annual Alexa Live event for its 900,000+ developers and countless Alexa device users. Last year’s Alexa Live event had many big changes that plotted the future for the Alexa ecosystem. Alexa Live is joined by developers, device makers, startups, entrepreneurs, press, and analysts to see what Alexa has next for its community.
One statistic that Amazon threw out that caught my attention is that one in four Alexa Smart Home interactions are now initiated by Alexa rather than the customer. This statistic reveals the direction of the future of voice, and I believe Amazon hit it right on the money when giving its vision statement. Jeff Blankenburg, Chief Technology Evangelist, said Alexa’s vision statement, “to be an ambient assistant that is proactive, personal, and predictable, everywhere customers what her to be.” In the background, Alexa is made to be ambient while also naturally assisting customers and not being the next distraction. The unique challenge with Alexa is to traffic and guide information to the user from end-to-end without compromising ambiance. To do this, Amazon says it is working to make Alexa’s ambient experience ubiquitous, multimodal, and smarter.
Making Alexa ubiquitous
Amazon announced new interactive and customer-engaging features (Alexa Presentation Language), APL Widgets, and Featured Skill Cards. APL Widgets lets customers interact with content on the home screen with glanceable, self-updating views of skill content. Featured Skills lets developers put their skills on the home screen alongside what is already shown on the Echo Show home screen. These are great features that enhance the multimodal experience of the user and developer. Users should be able to engage with the skills used most and discover new Skills in a seamless interaction on the home screen.
Amazon announced its Name Free Interaction Toolkit (NFI) at last year’s Alexa Live event, and this year it has made some striding improvements to the toolkit. The toolkit helps developers get their skills out to users by flagging or signaling a skill based on a user’s request. Amazon says the toolkit has boosted traffic and doubling it in some cases for useful skills.
NFI Toolkit has a new feature that lets skills be the responses to Alexa’s popular discovery-oriented utterances like “Alexa, tell me a story” or “Alexa, I need a workout.” The NFI Toolkit also has a new personalized skill suggestion feature for users to frequent skills users find most helpful. An example Amazon gave was a customer asking, “Alexa, how did the Nasdaq do today?” and it responds with, “You’ve previously used CNBC skill. Would you like to use it again?” I highlight this example because it brings a personal and ubiquitous experience to skills without being overwhelming.
Amazon is also extending its Name Free Interactions feature to support extra discovery of skills in interactions that can use multiple skills. I think this feature is another great way to enhance customer interaction and increase discoverability.
An Alexa device displaying the time
Amazon
Another interactive feature Amazon added to Alexa is the Spotlight feature on Amazon Music. Amazon says users can now connect directly with fans by uploading messages to promote new music and interact with fans. Amazon also created Interactive Media Skill components and Song Request Skill components that shorten interaction times with Radio, Podcast, and Music providers and give users extra modes of interaction. Users will either love or hate these features, given most primarily want to listen to music, and music isn’t necessarily an interactive activity.
Making Alexa multimodal
Amazon has announced its new Food Skills APIs that quickly enable users to create food delivery and pickup experiences. One of the toughest choices when going out to eat is deciding on a place to eat. Having local food offers and suggestions by Alexa should make the experience much easier for users, and in some cases, better for restaurants, stores, delivery services to get products and services out.
Amazon also has two new features that go hand-in-hand—Event-Based Triggers and Proactive Suggestions. Alexa users can build proactive experiences that trigger skills when an event or activity happens. Alexa also has improved routines with Custom Tasks that lets users customize routines inside of skills. Amazon also includes a feature that lets users send experiences that start on the Alexa device to a connected smartphone. These features open up the multimodal capabilities of Alexa, and I think users are going to find Alexa to be a crucial part of their days.
Alexa is also opening its Device Discovery feature to include additional Alexa-compatible devices connected to the same network. This feature allows device makers to integrate Device Discovery into other smart home devices to create a connected home. Amazon has also upgraded Alexa Guard to connect to smart safety devices like smoke, carbon monoxide, and water leak detectors around the home that can then send notifications.
Making Alexa Smarter
Amazon says it has doubled engagement of skills since it made Alexa Conversations generally available. It announced that it is expanding Alexa Conversations to be available in public beta in German, all English Locales, and a developer preview in Japan. It is also announcing Alexa Skill Components to help developers build skills faster by plugging foundational Skill code into existing voice models and code libraries.
Aaron Rubenson, Vice President of Alexa Voice Service and Alexa Skills talking about developer API … [+] at the Alexa Live Event 2021.
Amazon
Amazon is also making it easier for users to connect their accounts to a product or service skill or sign up using Voice Forward Account Linking and Voice Forward consent. Amazon said it had upgraded Alexa Skill Design Guide that codifies lessons learned from Amazon’s developers and broader skill build community.
Amazon has included other features that make creating skills and implementing services and products into the Alexa ecosystem much easier:
Alexa Entities lets skills retrieve information from Alexa’s skill graph.
Customized Pronunciations lets developers add custom pronunciation to skill models.
Sample Utterance Recommendation Engine uses grammar induction, sequence-to-sequence transformers, and data filtering to recommend utterances for a developer’s skills.
Service and Test-Generation Tool helps developers test capabilities for consolidated batch testing.
What’s great about these new features is that Amazon understands it does not have to do all the work in making Alexa smart. Amazon only needs to give developers the tools and opportunity to implement smart interactions and user experiences. I think these tools successfully give developers the tools to do so.
Wrapping up
Ambient computing is one of the toughest things to get right but I believe the most valuable in the long-run. It could take another five to ten years of work to accomplish it on a global scale.
Amazon’s Alexa Live Event somehow brought more to the table than last year’s event. A large portion of creating an ambient experience that is ubiquitous, multimodal, and smart is in the hands of developers, device makers, entrepreneurs, and the Alexa community. To create an ambient experience, Amazon must create the tools and opportunities for these partners to do their part.
Amazon created seamless interactions between skills and users with Feature Cards and APL Widgets. It is giving skills more opportunity to be interactive and discoverable with the NFI Toolkit. Amazon is making many interactions and experiences between users and Alexa a big part of people’s day with Food APIs, Event-Based Triggers, and Proactive Suggestions. Amazon is successfully making skills easier and more accessible to developers, and I think the Alexa ecosystem, from end-to-end, can appreciate the feasibility.
Ambient computing is the “win” and Amazon, based on what I saw at Live, is getting us closer to this reality. It’s a two-horse race with Google, and it appears Amazon is in the current lead.
Note: Moor Insights & Strategy co-op Jacob Freyman contributed to this article.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The tiny Mideast nation of Kuwait has banned the release of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” which features the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and is set in part in the 1990s Gulf War.
The video game, a first-person shooter, follows CIA operators fighting at times in the United States and also in the Middle East. Game-play trailers for the game show burning oilfields, a painful reminder for Kuwaitis who saw Iraqis set fire to the fields, causing vast ecological and economic damage. Iraqi troops damaged or set fire to over 700 wells.
There also are images of Saddam and Iraq’s old three-star flag in the footage released by developers ahead of the game’s launch. The game’s multiplayer section, a popular feature of the series, includes what appears to be a desert shootout in Kuwait called Scud after the Soviet missiles Saddam fired in the war. Another is called Babylon, after the ancient city in Iraq.
Activision acknowledged in a statement that the game “has not been approved for release in Kuwait,” but did not elaborate.
“All pre-orders in Kuwait will be cancelled and refunded to the original point of purchase,” the company said. “We remain hopeful that local authorities will reconsider, and allow players in Kuwait to enjoy this all-new experience in the Black Ops series.”
Kuwait’s Media Ministry did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press over the decision.
“Call of Duty,” which first began in 2003 as a first-person shooter set in World War II, has expanded into an empire worth billions of dollars now owned by Microsoft. But it also has been controversial as its gameplay entered the realm of geopolitics. China and Russia both banned chapters in the franchise. In 2009, an entry in the gaming franchise allowed players to take part in a militant attack at a Russian airport, killing civilians.
But there have been other games recently that won praise for their handling of the Mideast. Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage” published last year won praise for its portrayal of Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age in the 9th century.
Copenhagen, 22.10.2024 – COBOD International, the global leader in 3D construction printing technology, proudly introduces the BOD3 3D Construction Printer for 3D printing of real concrete. Equipped with an extendable ground-based track system, the BOD3 advances the construction process by eliminating printer downtime between multiple buildings on the same site, setting anew benchmark for productivity and efficiency. The BOD3 is the most advanced solution for high-volume low-rise construction and a very effective alternative to conventional construction methods.
The heart and key feature of the new BOD3 3D printer is the advanced extendable ground-based track system. This system enables limitless extension along the Y-axes (length), expanding the printable area to cover 2 or 3 buildings, and reducing setup time to a single installation for multi-building projects. It’s a game-changer, allowing continuous, uninterrupted printing across large sites, increasing efficiency for high volume and mass production at an unmatchable scale.
Render of COBOD BOD3 3D Construction Printer.
The BOD3, COBOD’s third printer model, is the outstanding achievement of years of dedicated research, development, and close collaboration with customers. It is a vital advancement in automated construction technology, directly addressing the urgent global demand for faster, smarter, more efficient and sustainable building solutions. Like every COBOD 3D printer, the BOD3’s modular design offers customization, allowing it to easily adapt to any customer’s size wishes in addition to complying with the various sizes of construction sites anywhere in the world.
The BOD3 follows COBOD’s vision to build smarter through automation. Its operational stand combines the control and monitoring of both the 3D printer and supplementary equipment in one user-friendly system. The Advanced Hose Management System (AHMS) transports 3D printable material from the materials delivery system to the printhead via hoses secured within E-chains, minimizing physical labor and optimizing material flow. With the addition of the dual dosing system for additives, operators can better control the concrete and adapt it to onsite environmental conditions. By introducing additives directly at the printhead, the system reduces drying time between layers, speeding up the overall construction process. Designed for easy operation and precision, the BOD3 can be operated by a small, trained, and certified team, reducing the costs of projects.
Incorporating the innovative Universal X-Carriage, the BOD3 is ready for future COBOD advancements and technologies, like the introduction of additional tools for the printer aimed at insulating, painting, sanding, etc. This ensures long-term versatility and performance that will keep the BOD3 at the forefront of the industry for years to come.
Universal X-Carriage with Printhead.
Already deployed to the global market, the BOD3 is currently active in Indonesia, by Modula Tiga Dimensi, Angola, by Power2Build, andBahrain, by Ab’aad 3D. The customers report faster project execution with near-zero downtime between individual buildings on the same site. The projects showcase the BOD3’s ability to speed up construction and print with real concrete, with 99% locally sourced materials and 1% of innovative D.fab, a co-developed solution by COBOD and Cemex to make concrete 3D printable.
Henrik Lund-Nielsen, Founder and General Manager of COBOD, commented on the BOD3: “The global housing crisis demands a more efficient construction solution that is faster, more efficient, and scalable. The BOD3 is our answer to this challenge. Drawing on years of research and expertise, we’ve designed the BOD3 with innovative features, making it our most cost-effective and efficient model yet for multiple low-rise buildings. Its design supports high-volume, linear production of houses, enabling mass production without compromising quality. The fact that six units have already been sold before its official launch speaks volumes about the BOD3’s market demand and the trust our customers place in our technology.”
Michael Holm, Chief Innovation Officer at COBOD, states, “The advanced ground-based track system was developed as a response to our customers’ needs to increase efficiency and productivity. Now the 3D construction printer can be easily extended, and multiple consecutive structures can be printed with minimal repositioning and zero downtime between projects, making 3D construction printing more efficient than ever before.”
The BOD3 is now available for purchase worldwide; for more information, please visit our website, www.cobod.com, or contact us at info@cobod.com.
COBOD stands as the global leader in supplying 3D printers for the construction sector, with over 80 printers distributed across North and Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Driven by a mission to revolutionize construction through multifunctional robots based on 3D printing, COBOD envisions automating half of the construction processes to achieve faster, cost-effective, sustainable results with enhanced design versatility.
From residential, commercial, and public buildings, COBOD’s 3D printers have been instrumental in erecting 1- to 3-story structures across all six inhabited continents. The innovative technology also extends to fabricate large-scale data centers, wind turbine towers, tanks, and more.
Embracing an open-source material approach, COBOD collaborates with global partners, including customers, academia, and suppliers. The company, backed by prominent shareholders such as General Electric, CEMEX, Holcim, and PERI, operates from its main office in Copenhagen, Denmark, and regional competence centers in Miami, Florida, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. COBOD’s dynamic team comprises over 100 professionals from 25 diverse nationalities.
ABOUT MODULA TIGA DIMENSI
PT Modula Tiga Dimensi is a joint venture between Bakrie & Brothers (BNBR) and COBOD. BNBR focuses on offering and providing solutions for housing backlog problems currently encountered by the country.
Teaming up with COBOD International, the company is now set to adopt the latest 3D printing construction technology and is ready to offer the Indonesian market a new and better solution to housing obstructions.
ABOUT POWER2BUILD
Reshaping the construction sector and adapting it to urgent human needs.
Power2Build is a technology company for the construction industry, prepared to establish partnerships with private, public, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) so that they can make the transition to Build 4.0 through 3DCP.
We offer our clients value-added services and high-quality projects, always with a multidisciplinary approach that brings together the necessary experience to deal with complex issues.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence‘s recent rise to the forefront of business has left most office workers wondering how often they should use the technology and whether a computer will eventually replace them.
Those were among the highlights of a recent study conducted by the workplace communications platform Slack. After conducting in-depth interviews with 5,000 desktop workers, Slack concluded there are five types of AI personalities in the workplace: “The Maximalist” who regularly uses AI on their jobs; “The Underground” who covertly uses AI; “The Rebel,” who abhors AI; “The Superfan” who is excited about AI but still hasn’t used it; and “The Observer” who is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Only 50% of the respondents fell under the Maximalist or Underground categories, posing a challenge for businesses that want their workers to embrace AI technology. The Associated Press recently discussed the excitement and tension surrounding AI at work with Christina Janzer, Slack’s senior vice president of research and analytics.
Q: What do you make about the wide range of perceptions about AI at work?
A: It shows people are experiencing AI in very different ways, so they have very different emotions about it. Understanding those emotions will help understand what is going to drive usage of AI. If people are feeling guilty or nervous about it, they are not going to use it. So we have to understand where people are, then point them toward learning to value this new technology.
Q: The Maximalist and The Underground both seem to be early adopters of AI at work, but what is different about their attitudes?
A: Maximalists are all in on AI. They are getting value out of it, they are excited about it, and they are actively sharing that they are using it, which is a really big driver for usage among others.
The Underground is the one that is really interesting to me because they are using it, but they are hiding it. There are different reasons for that. They are worried they are going to be seen as incompetent. They are worried that AI is going to be seen as cheating. And so with them, we have an opportunity to provide clear guidelines to help them know that AI usage is celebrated and encouraged. But right now they don’t have guidelines from their companies and they don’t feel particularly encouraged to use it.
Overall, there is more excitement about AI than not, so I think that’s great We just need to figure out how to harness that.
Q: What about the 19% of workers who fell under the Rebel description in Slack’s study?
A: Rebels tend to be women, which is really interesting. Three out of five rebels are women, which I obviously don’t like to see. Also, rebels tend to be older. At a high level, men are adopting the technology at higher rates than women.
Q: Why do you think more women than men are resisting AI?
A: Women are more likely to see AI as a threat, more likely to worry that AI is going to take over their jobs. To me, that points to women not feeling as trusted in the workplace as men do. If you feel trusted by your manager, you are more likely to experiment with AI. Women are reluctant to adopt a technology that might be seen as a replacement for them whereas men may have more confidence that isn’t going to happen because they feel more trusted.
Q: What are some of the things employers should be doing if they want their workers to embrace AI on the job?
A: We are seeing three out of five desk workers don’t even have clear guidelines with AI, because their companies just aren’t telling them anything, so that’s a huge opportunity.
Another opportunity to encourage AI usage in the open. If we can create a culture where it’s celebrated, where people can see the way people are using it, then they can know that it’s accepted and celebrated. Then they can be inspired.
The third thing is we have to create a culture of experimentation where people feel comfortable trying it out, testing it, getting comfortable with it because a lot of people just don’t know where to start. The reality is you can start small, you don’t have to completely change your job. Having AI write an email or summarize content is a great place to start so you can start to understand what this technology can do.
Q: Do you think the fears about people losing their jobs because of AI are warranted?
A: People with AI are going to replace people without AI.
