Alexa and Humans All Experience the World Differently, but Use Common Language

When you use Alexa to find a table at your favorite restaurant, you and she are both aware and responsive as you discuss eating, even though Alexa has never felt the texture of a crunchy apple against her teeth, the effervescent prickles of sparkling water against her tongue, or the gooey pull of peanut butter against the roof of her mouth. Ask Alexa to describe the qualities of these foods, and she’ll offer you details that mirror your own experiences. Alexa doesn’t have a mouth—so how could she perceive food the way that you do?

You are a biologically unique person whose salivary glands and taste buds aren’t arranged in exactly the same order as mine. Yet we’ve both learned what an apple is and the general characteristics of how an apple tastes, what its texture is, and how it smells. During our lifetimes, we’ve learned to recognize what an apple is through reinforcement learning—someone taught us what an apple looked like, its purpose, and what differentiates it from other fruit. Then, over time and without conscious awareness, our autonomous biological pattern recognition systems got really good at determining something was an apple, even if we only had a few of the necessary data points. If you see a black-and-white, two-dimensional outline of an apple, you know what it is—even though you’re missing the taste, smell, crunch, and all the other data that signals to your brain this is an apple. The way you and Alexa both learned about apples is more similar than you might realize.