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Microsoft AI Input Devices

Microsoft's Satya Nadella Shown Up By Confused Cortana Assistant 201

Posted by samzenpus from the try-again-later dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was a little embarrassed at a Salesforce conference today when he tested the company's personal virtual assistant during a presentation. Slightly fluffing the question 'Show me my most at-risk opportunities', Nadella was dismayed to find Cortana offering him a Bing page with the search term 'Show me to buy milk at this opportunity'. Two further efforts to discover the exposure of his shares failed to achieve their aim, and eventually the CEO of Microsoft gave up. The fact that he stumbled over his first attempt at the question seemed to floor Cortana, which uses the 'Einstein' AI engine, and which has been more praised for its accurate speech recognition than its ability to understand what an array of interpreted words actually mean.
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Microsoft's Satya Nadella Shown Up By Confused Cortana Assistant More

Microsoft's Satya Nadella Shown Up By Confused Cortana Assistant

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  • Cant see why this is a problem. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:24PM (#50545389)

    He asked a basically nonsense question. If i ask "why is a fish?" and cortana doesn't understand, is this news?

    • When he tried again, twice, without messing up the question it still failed to understand the question.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        I think Satya should just trust to karma and accept the answer that Cortana gives him.

      • I don't understand the question either.

    • Re:Cant see why this is a problem. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:47PM (#50545515)

      Don't make silly! His Indian English is desiring no correction.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Eastern Indian people are incapable of pronouncing the letter "t". That's why you'll always hear them say something like "thirdeen" instead of "thirteen".

    • Show me my most at-risk opportunities.

      That's hardly nonsense. I understood it with no problem and I'll bet you did too really, so it's not far fetched to expect an actual AI to understand it. If not understood, an intelligent response would have been "What kind of opportunities?" or perhaps "Show how?", seeking clarification. Instead, it simply went wandering down its search paths until it couldn't continue and then spat out whatever.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Still makes 0 sense to me. I would respond "could you ask the question a different way", as it doesn't even parse.

        • I would respond "could you ask the question a different way", as it doesn't even parse.

          Are you saying that if you were having one doubt about the needful you'd revert the same?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dahamma ( 304068 )

        You only understood it because you already had context. Without context, it's a ridiculously vague question.

        Sure, the next step would be to carry on a conversation to clarify details but it's not there yet. IT'S NOT AN AI!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          You only understood it because you already had context. Without context, it's a ridiculously vague question.

          Sure, the next step would be to carry on a conversation to clarify details but it's not there yet. IT'S NOT AN AI!

          And luckily Cortana also had context because she was integrated with Salesforce for purposes of the demo

        • Really? I thought I knew what it meant, then when I got some context it turned out I was right.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dahamma ( 304068 )

            You had context from the start. The first sentence in the article SAID it was a Salesforce conference.

            Ironically if you put "most at risk opportunities" without any other context into Google the top result is "jobs most at risk from robots". (clearly this is not one, yet).

            The next results (not including the article itself) are HIV-related, or states at risk of disasters. Business or investment opportunities don't even show up unless you specifically add those words.

      • I kindly disagree. A truly intelligent response would have been:

        "Oh go fuck yourself, you useless corporate drone!"

      • Yes, it is not far fetched to expect an actual AU to understand it. However, Cortana is not truly an AI. Additionally, it is far fetched to believe that Cortana, even if it was an AI, would be able to answer the question (unless specifically trained to do so).

    • Re:Cant see why this is a problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:12PM (#50545667)

      All business related questions from executives tend to be nonsense or gibberish.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )

      why is a fish?

      I don’t know why.
      Ask me a riddle and I reply:
      Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        Of course slashcode doesn't like so many caps but here goes anyway:

        MELON MELON MELON

        +++OUT OF CHEESE ERROR+++

        ?REDO FROM START

        With apologies to the late Terry Pratchett.

    • "why is a fish?"

      Because one of it's legs is both the same?

    • A fish is because of hydrogen, time, gravity and nuclear fusion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dahamma ( 304068 )

      He asked a basically nonsense question. If i ask "why is a fish?" and cortana doesn't understand, is this news?

      That's a perfectly understandable question, and if he had asked it, the proper answer is "Is that the best you can do? Go fuck yourself, Satya".

  • The Milk Was Most At Risk (Score:5, Informative)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:24PM (#50545391) Homepage Journal
    The milk was past its use-by date and was very much at risk. Cortana correctly realized that it would be bad for meat creatures to try to consume it and was trying to direct him to get a fresh one.

    • Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:42PM (#50545495)

      This isn't the first time faulty speech recognition has embarrassed Microsoft during a live demo. Anyone remember the last time this happened [youtube.com]?

      To be fair to Cortana, how exactly do you respond to "Show me my most at-risk opportunities"? What does that even mean? Who talks like that?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PRMan ( 959735 )
        CEOs.

      • Anyone with a sales background would understand that. I would want to know which sales opportunities were most likely to go wrong / get beaten. However that isn't a straight forward question to answer and not one I expect a computer to answer. Is it based on time frames, competitors, ability to supply, some other unknown variable, who knows.

      • Re:The Milk Was Most At Risk (Score:5, Informative)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:01PM (#50545601)

        Well if you're in Salesforce, when you are working with a sales person, they open what is called an "Opportunity". It's a document used to track the progress of a potential sale through the pipeline.

        If I was a sales guy, I might have a customer who has just decided to order the 1 TB storage upgrade to Application X, which the customer already owns. The sales rep opens a new opportunity for the prospective purchase, links the existing customer information to it and tracks that through to the end.

        Someone like a CEO would run their own reports based on how all of the company's opportunities look on a regular basis, especially deals which are at-risk of not closing, so this all makes sense in context. Generally your sales forecasting is provided by creating reports based on your opportunities and the tracking information within. A percentage is assigned to an opportunity to show how far it has gone, with 100% being Closed Won.

        tl;dr, it's a sales opportunity tracking ticket in Salesforce. Which is probably why he was using that lingo at a Salesforce conference. Presumably Cortana would have had access to his Salesforce accounts somehow. Or, more likely, a fake account with humorous "at-risk" customers like Apple and Google or something.

        • Well if you're in Salesforce, when you are working with a sales person, they open what is called an "Opportunity". It's a document used to track the progress of a potential sale through the pipeline.

          And this is reason #7 why people dislike marketing. "Opportunity" = 5 syllables. "Potential sale" = 4 syllables. Just use the shorter and more descriptive term. As a bonus it'll save you from ever having to type sentences like "It's a document used to track the progress of a potential sale through the pipel

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tnk1 ( 899206 )

            It's not that bad. But think of it this way, this is a sales and marketing tool, so they're really just torturing themselves.

  • Props, though (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:30PM (#50545431)

    Props for attempting voice recognition in a live demo. Most people don't even trust a network connection for a demo.

  • What did the question even mean? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:34PM (#50545451)

    Seriously, "show me my most at-risk opportunities"? Show me your what now? I'm pretty sure I'm human, and I'm pretty sure I speak English and have a fair knowledge of "stuff", but I honestly have no idea what this sentence means. Opportunities that are at risk? Does that mean a chance to win a free lunch that is ending soon?

    If someone said "show me my most at-risk opportunities" too me I would probably consider that I'd misheard and look for near-fit sentences that made sense too. At the very least I'd ask them to repeat themselves to confirm that they were, in fact, speaking gibberish.

    • I'd recommend not shelling out the $2K for dreamforce. It's probably not for you...

    • Re:What did the question even mean? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:07PM (#50545639)
      It's definitely salesman jargon ("What potential customers are most likely to not complete the sale"). That's a big problem for any speech recognition, words have different meaning in different context.

    • From the video, it seems there was a list of specific opportunities and some numbers related to them.

    • Re:What did the question even mean? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:36PM (#50545787)

      Cortana finds gibberish double-talk incomprehensible - just like the rest of us!

      • Hilariously I just did an "Ok Google" and read this gibberish to it.

        It recognized it perfectly pointed to a slew of articles about Cortana failing publicly.

        Hah!

        • Doesn't "OK Google" just transcribe what you say into a Google search? I don't personally talk to my phone, I think it is weird to do so, but then I always just picture Scotty talking to the 1980's computer mouse "Hello Computer".

    • Re:What did the question even mean? (Score:5, Funny)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @08:34PM (#50546081)

      "show me my most at-risk opportunities"

      They must be talking about that hot blonde staff assistant we just hired. The one that all the other guys are going to be making a move on soon.

    • Re:What did the question even mean? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bite The Pillow ( 3087109 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @08:39PM (#50546101)

      Here it is used in context:

      Supply lines today are longer, and more complex than ever, and it is vital to proactively identify at-risk opportunities in your supplier base to prevent costly delays and disruptions. With global capabilities, extensive industry experience, and multi-cultural expertise, SAI Global can help you quickly identify critical supplier non-compliances, and target program investments where theyâ(TM)ll have the greatest impact.

      It is business jargon, understood by the kind of people that Microsoft has the best relationship with - mid to upper management.

      So what you said was "I have no idea about business. When someone says things that are outside my experience I assume there is no meaning, and all of business is therefore meaningless to me."

      There is a certain amount of truth to that, but it's no different from developers talking about DRY and Single Responsibility Principle, and the like. I want my code to be dry? How does it get wet? Does that mean the drought is ending or just beginning?

      We have a common language, known as jargon, that makes communication more efficient. As does every industry. If you don't understand it, you can ask an actual question, or you can sound like an anonymously retarded window-licking asshole brained fart sandwich. So kudos for posting anonymously, and wasting 5 peoples' mod points. Because obviously the are just as much fart sandwich, and would have up modded something just as ignorant. Might as well be 5 all in one place.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robi5 ( 1261542 )

        > It is business jargon, understood by the kind of people that Microsoft has the best relationship with - mid to upper management.

        When it comes to business leaders (rather than, say, the IT department), Microsoft can talk to midlevel management or lower. It is SAP that talks to the business at the C-level.

        Microsoft has products that run an employee directory or mail server. SAP, and to a different extent, Salesforce, have products that run the business.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bloodhawk ( 813939 )
      all you are showing is a lack of knowledge of business. anyone that works in sales or business would have no issues understanding the sentence.

      • Re:What did the question even mean? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Friday September 18, 2015 @12:03AM (#50546841) Journal

        all you are showing is a lack of knowledge of business. anyone that works in sales or business would have no issues understanding the sentence.

        And this is why it failed. Cortana isn't working in sales or business.

        I just wonder why the fuck the person didn't actually try asking his question some time before the conference to test it out? This is like compiling some code, give a person the *.exe when you never bothered to run it yourself to see if it works. Sure, you think it should work great, but it probably won't. You have to test it first. Or even worse, Nadella is a CEO who actually believes the hype wagon his company spews, and doesn't bother to actually use the products his company makes.

        Idiot got what he deserved.

    • It's standard sales jargon and so would be well understood at Dreamforce (salesforce's big conference). Leads are people you've met which might want to buy something in the future. If you feel a lead is starting to show meaningful interest then you mark them as an opportunity. Opportunities have sizes (how much can you sell to this person) as well as risk (how likely am I to land this sale).

      So "Show me my most at-risk opportunities" makes perfect sense - give me a list of opportunities which have been as

      • So "Show me my most at-risk opportunities" makes perfect sense -

        The software worked perfectly, the piece of junk he is holding in his hand is his most at-risk opportunity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I guess they are allowing other software to tie in to Cortana now. In the same way that Google allows other apps to create Now cards that the user can search by voice, for example. So in Salesforce lingo "opportunities" has some meaning, and the idea is that Cortana can understand this jargon because the Salesforce app tells her about it.

      Looks like it needs a bit more work, but it's nice to see that they are working on the ability to handle jargon that humans use if given the right context and a few hints.

    • I'm pretty sure I'm human

      That's you're problem. This was directed at sales and marketing types.

  • I tried to tell Cortana "Windows Media Player" and it couldn't get that right.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:48PM (#50545527)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Consequences of laying off Windows QA staff (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Wow, you mean that letting Terry Myerson obliterate the entire Windows QA org in the 2014 Microsoft layoffs might actually have consequences for quality? I'm shocked; absolutely shocked, I tell you.

  • "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"

  • Show me to buy milk at this opportunity (Score:4, Funny)

    by bobthesungeek76036 ( 2697689 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:50PM (#50545543)
    I mean it was a Salesforce.com audience...
  • "How do we stop screwing up the Windows 10 release?!"

  • Considering how bad those telephone auto attendant gets me, even with presumably a limited set of word selections to recognize, this simply seems to be very difficult problem to solve for Microsoft or anyone. (I do have a bit of Japanese accent myself.)

    The funny thing is, when I actually spoke the phrase "show me my most at-risk opportunities" into Google, it actually got me right second time. (I don't have Windows 10, let alone in English locale, so I can't test it with Cortana.) Albeit, I had to speak ver

  • Despite a few well run demos and some really cool eye candy AI is still basically just a room full of monkeys that can type very quickly.
    Better add more monkeys.

  • Not cortana's fault (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Only a fool would try to do a public demonstration of something he hasn't tried successfully multiple times before.

    • No, it is Cortana's fault, because clearly it is intended to understand and is supposed to be ready for prime time.

      It was probably tested many, many times in various rooms, maybe a car. But never in the real world, on a stage. And that's where Microsoft keeps fucking up. It works here, and here, why would it not work anywhere else?

      The entire point of Microsoft's computing base is that it should work on a desktop, in a living room, in a board room, in a subway, and of course it isn't rated to be on a stag

  • and? (Score:4, Funny)

    by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:40PM (#50545813)
    And people wonder how "open the pod bay door" got turned into "please jettison me into space to eat hard vacuum." HAL obviously was a microsoft baby.

  • Bullshit Bingo? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Irate Engineer ( 2814313 ) on Thursday September 17, 2015 @07:47PM (#50545855)
    Maybe they should teach Cortana how to play Bullshit Bingo [bullshitbingo.net] so it at least have a humorous error during these sales meetings. It will just sit quietly for a while, and then in the middle of the meeting it will just shout "BULLSHIT!"

  • It's 2006 all over again!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all!

  • He asked it to show him his most at-risk opportunities, and it showed him that he's risking his job on technology that doesn't work.

  • The OJ Simpson Trial: Drama of the Century [cnn.com]: I remember watching the gloves in the courtroom and thinking to myself, "He's not going to ask O.J. to put on the glove." That's too much of a risk. You never ask a question in a courtroom, much less do a demonstration where you don't know what the outcomes is. And it was like a slow motion disaster movie for the prosecution as O.J. milk the moment for all it was worth and pretended to try on those gloves.

  • 1. was this a temporary glitch ?
    2. are these CEO's so accustomed to success and trust their subordinates, that they don't feel the need of a private test/rehearsal ?
    3. are they completely detached from reality?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • And I'm just sitting here waiting for Europe to tear them a new ass for hard wiring Bing into the OS. Get ready for another billion dollar fine. As far as I know, you cannot use Google with Cortana even though it would be idiotically easy to pass it search strings.

  • Sorry, this version of Cortana can only understand English.

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