When it comes to smart assistant, users can ask just about anything. But when it comes to Amazon Alexa, its knowledge about math and sciences was pretty thin.
Alexa typically sources its knowledge from sites like Wikipedia, Yelp, Accuweather, Stats.com and others. But still it wasn't able to answer tough geography, history, or engineering inquiries.
To make the virtual assistant a step smarter, Amazon announced that it has integrated Alexa with Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine.
This gives Alexa the ability to access a wide cross-section of curated data, with a heavy focus on math and sciences.
Starting in the U.S., Alexa users can ask questions like: "Alexa, what is the billionth prime number?" or "Alexa, how high do swans fly?", for example.
Launched in 2009, Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine, an answer engine developed by Wolfram Alpha LLC, a subsidiary of Wolfram Research.
The online service is capable of answering factual queries directly by computing the answer from externally sourced "curated data", rather than providing a list of documents or web pages like how internet search engines normally would
To do this, Wolfram Alpha gets its information from a wide range of sources, including its own Wolfram Mathematica and third-party resources, including Crunchbase, and from knowledge base like iMDB, AccuWeather, Yelp and Wikipedia.
Other sources include, and not limited to: CIA’s The World Factbook, the U.S. Geological Survey, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Dow Jones, the Catalogue of Life, Best Buy, the FAA, Facebook accounts, and more
It has been long known that Alexa has lagged behind in some knowledge. In an experiment conducted by Loup Ventures this December 2018, it was said that Google Assistant was able to answer 88 percent of 800 questions correctly versus Apple’s Siri at 75 percent, Alexa at 73 percent, and Cortana at 63 percent.
By focusing its effort to supply Alexa with new data sources, Wolfram Alpha integration should make that percentage higher.
With Wolfram Alpha integration, Amazon should make its Alexa devices a lot smarter.
This should also be an advantage since Google Assistant doesn’t have the integration with Wolfram Lpha, preferring to rely on its Google's search engine. Without knowledge from Wolfram Alpha, Google may not be able to answer some math problems or quizzes. But given that Google Search has a massive trove of data, in the end, it seems that the more sources of information a smart assistant can pull from, the smarter it can become.
"Our vision has always been that Alexa will be able to answer all questions in all forms, from anywhere in the world," said Bill Barton, VP of Amazon’s Alexa division.
Previously, Wolfram Alpha has also been used to answers queries on Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo search engine, as well as Apple's Siri, Samsung's S Voice, Dexetra, Iris and the voice control software on BlackBerry 10.