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THE LIGHT SIDE

BROWSE THROUGH ALL OF THE STORIES TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR SMART ASSISTANT AND THE WONDERFUL THINGS IT CAN DO FOR YOU.

Education

What Can Siri and her siblings do in the classroom?

Siri and her siblings (Alexa, Google Assistant and Cortana) are already popping up in classrooms around the world. These AIVAs are continuing to enable immediate access to personalized information in educational settings. With voice recognition and artificially intelligent interpretation capabilities, Siri and her siblings allow for rapid completion of simple tasks in the classroom, such as:

Checking solutions or spelling
Getting the weather report
Creating white noise or providing background music
Opening and closing software apps
Researching knowledge-based questions
Smart assistants also provide several benefits for teaching and learning. These include:
Improved efficiency of learning
Greater equity/accessibility of technology
Increased collaborative learning
Connected communication
Personalization of learning

New and innovative Smart Assistants and AI-based technologies are on the horizon and have promising implications for K-12 and higher education contexts. Through data mining and machine learning, Smart Assistants and future AI technologies could be used for:

Creation of customized courses and personalized learning
- Duolingo (AI-powered personalized language learning)
AI for Assessment and Feedback
- Turnitin (AI-powered plagiarism detector)
AI-based Intelligent Tutoring
- Socratic (Multi-subject AI tutor powered by Google AI)
- Korbit (Data Science AI tutor)
- Edwin (AI-powered English Tutor - Product of Google Assistant)
AI Teacher Assistants to complete time-consuming tasks and stop students from “falling through the cracks”
- E.g., Using Humanoïd Robots to Support Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Cognii (AI-powered Virtual Teaching and Learning Assistant)
Automatic Visual Recognition and Immediate Knowledge Access Apps
- LeafSnap (Plant identification app)
- PhotoMath (Math problem-solving app)
Student Assistants
- Higher education institutions installing personalized Echo Dots as “Student Assistants” in dorm rooms (e.g., Pilot programs at Arizona State University, Northeastern University and the Georgia Institute of Technology)
Customized Research & Analysis
- Manuscript Writer by SciNote (AI-powered software that can analyze and mine data from research to write a draft of your manuscript)

More resources to explore:

Accessibility

For many, smart assistants have become a tool to help them stay organized and remember things. This can be especially helpful for people who need some added support with executive function skills, such as people with ADHD, traumatic brain injuries, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or Alzheimer's. This study showed that teenagers with high-functioning ASD were able to be significantly more independent in their daily activities using a programmed smart assistant to provide reminders ('it's time to leave for school') and prompts ('remember to take your books'). People with ADHD can add an event or check their calendar with a simple verbal command, avoiding the distraction of opening their phone and seeing all of their apps. Applications such as Seeing AI and Google Lookout can help people with visual impairments or blindness navigate the world. These applications can also support emerging and struggling readers with their low latency reading capabilities.

Beyond the well-known list of timers and web access, some smart assistants can offer location-based reminders ('Siri, remind me to call mom when I get home'), make decisions ('Alexa, pick a number between 1 and 3'), and even use the Drop In feature to check on pets and loved ones. There's even some promising evidence that AIVAs could help children and adults practice speech exercises and learn language skills through gameplay.

Early on, speech recognition was only able to understand sounds and made many mistakes. That was followed by understanding and applying syntax to improve reliability. Smart assistants now understand things in context, taking into account many different variables to generate meaning and intention. For those that rely on a smart assistant, understanding context is a game-changer. The next iterations of these technologies will be able to understand emotions through sentiment analysis and natural language processing. Find out how “Siri Knows How You Feel.”

What else can your smart assistant do for you?

Siri: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/15-awesome-things-you-didnt-know-siri-can-for-you.html

Alexa: https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/amazon-echo-6-surprising-things-you-didnt-know-alexa-could-do/ and https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/alexa-games-to-keep-your-kids-busy/

Entertainment and Global Use

Most people use Siri and other AIVAs for entertainment by asking funny, complex, confusing questions that the device is not capable of answering or requests that obtain a silly response the developers have created. Users enjoy making Siri and her siblings 'frustrated', offer unexpected answers, or challenge their capabilities. Check out this link on how to use Siri for your entertainment:
https://medium.com/@toppicks444/how-to-use-siri-for-your-entertainment-5640138ec6b3

Will smart assistant voices just be a voice? Anything robotic is always entertaining for young individuals. What if Siri and her siblings could feel like a friend, a colleague, a personal secretary, or a dog guard? Siri first originated as a fun interactive app and evolved into one of the features on Apple devices that would change the course of technology. Ever since this idea of a voice assistant was developed, several institutions are trying to design the smartest AIVA they can build for the everyday user. However, Siri and her siblings are starting to evolve into physical beings, either in the shape of a robot or humanoid. Check out this link on the next invention in AIVAs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMPyi0uRTgc

“Hey Siri, tell me a story!” Now, thanks to smart assistants, parents won't fall asleep first when they read a bedtime story to their kids. Users can have AIVAs read them an audiobook or read out an article as a form of entertainment. The user can allow Siri to be any voice they’d like and have any preferable speed in speech. The potential for this is that it could allow users with a visual impairment to enjoy hearing something read out loud. Check out this recent article on how Siri is being used for storytelling:
Hey Siri, tell me a story: Digital storytelling and AI authorship Thorne, S. (2020). Hey Siri, tell me a story: Digital storytelling and AI authorship. Convergence (London, England), 26(4), 808-823. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856520913866

Gender

AIVAs have elevated the way we interact with technology by entering homes and becoming entertainment fixtures. It has made technology much more enticing to both passive users and tech enthusiasts. Siri, Alexa, and Cortana were originally branded with female voices because of a social belief that people subconsciously prefer female speech, which was thought to increase the likelihood of user engagement. The result: AIVAs shone a spotlight on gender biases, sexism, and the disproportional gender representation in STEM. And it got everyone talking about it.

Publicly criticizing the ugliness of programed sexist responses and the value of having diverse teams required companies to consider ways they could do better, and they've started. It has initiated campaigns designed to get more women in STEM/AI and global movements to increase diversity supported by reports that show increased diversity makes companies more profitable. It also created a market for tools and resources designed to educate users on the hazards of bias microaggressions and emphasize the need for more inclusion in technology.

Do we wish we didn't have to educate people on sexism and still work so hard for gender equality in this day and age? Of course. But instead of continuing to shame companies for having female-voiced AIVAs, let's use this technology to amplify the importance of women being a part of AI advancements and remind us that every industry must be inclusive and diverse.

Try this interactive guide to AI bias: https://f-xa.co/

Security

In terms of security, the integration of Siri and her siblings into a home security system is an excellent way to improve one’s personal security. Thanks to their ease of use and the ability to access them and issue commands remotely, integrating an AIVA into one’s home security adds a layer of safety and ease of use. This is especially pertinent if you already utilize digitally-integrated systems in your home, such as smart switches or a Google home dot and smart outlets. With these devices, you can control the lighting, sound systems, and even temperature of your home, with easy mobile access as well. By taking it a step further, Siri and her siblings can be integrated into an existing home security system or alarm system, allowing for ease of use and increased accessibility without having to physically move or get to an alarm system. It also allows its users to activate and monitor their home security from anywhere where they have access to Siri, which can help out if you forgot to arm your system or if you want to check in on your home’s security. Thanks to its voice control, and its open-ended integration, Siri is also capable of integrating with other security apps and can work in tandem or as a control feature for other security systems you have in place.

For a more thorough breakdown, check out the article linked here!