Amazon Crowdsourcing Alexa's answers to tough questions – TechCrunch

If you have an echo device at home, you've almost certainly played a few rounds of "Stump Alexa" and ask the increasingly secretive questions from Amazon's assistants to get a baffled answer. You probably found it very difficult to confuse the AI. After all, Amazon does not have the benefit of Google's deep knowledge graph.

One quick workaround is the Wikipedia route, which relies on users' knowledge and helps build a deeper knowledge base. Amazon has just opened this door with an invitation program that asks clients to provide answers to Alexa's more difficult questions.

Amazon has tested Alexa Answers internally and added more than 1

00,000 responses in the last month alone. Now the program opens via e-mail invitations for a small cross section of the public. Those who are asked to register can answer questions about Alexa through a website that covers a wide range of topics.

For example, Amazon offered the following (admittedly bizarre) suggestions. "Where was Barbara Bush buried?" Or, "Who wrote the score for Lord of the Rings?" Or "What is cork made of?" Or "Where do bats stay in winter?" I would imagine that they were all in demand from the same spinner in quick succession.

After the replies have been added, Alexa has access to them, noting that they come from an Amazon customer – it's believed that the wizard will be pulled off the heat a bit. But what could go wrong?