Amazon Alexa and the Search for the One Perfect Answer

I purchased a Google Home last year, primarily to use play music, but I've also found it handy to get a quick answer to a question. If I was searching online, I'd get a page of results, but voice search implies that there is one correct answer. How does Google (or Amazon if you're using an Alexa device) determine which answer to tell you?

That's the subject of this article from Wired. It turns out to be a complex problem with some interesting implications that are worth thinkng about.

The command that big tech companies have over the dissemination of information, particularly in the era of voice computing, raises the specter of Orwellian control of knowledge. In places such as China, where the government heavily censors the internet, this is not just an academic concern. In democratic countries, the more pressing question is whether companies are manipulating facts in ways that benefit their corporate interests or the personal agendas of their leaders. The control of knowledge is a potent power, and never have so few companies attained such dominance as the portals through which the vast majority of the world’s information flows.

The rest of us, meanwhile, may be losing the very skills that allow us to hold these gatekeepers to account. Once we become accustomed to placing our faith in the handy oracle on the kitchen counter, we may lose patience with the laborious—and curiosity-stoking, and thought-­provoking—hunt for facts, expecting them to come to us instead. Why pump water from a well if it pours effortlessly from your faucet?