Alexa Doesn't Know Everything, Yet

 

by Pa Rock

Constant Learner

I have always been an eager learner, and when I was younger I would rush to complete homework in class so that I could use my study hall time (our study hall was in the school library) to peruse the two or three old sets of encyclopedias that were on the library shelves.  I was fascinated with learning new things - and still am.

My quest for knowledge today is made much simpler by the internet. It is all right there, at my fingertips.  Google, ChatGPT, Wikipedia - somewhere on the internet is a ready answer to any question that flits across my mind, no matter how trivial.  And now, with smart speakers, I don't even have to be sitting at a computer or messing with my phone to access immediate knowledge.   I can be sprawled out on the couch, reading a book or dozing off to any music that suits my temperament at the moment and ask Alexa anything that flits into my mind.  She can spell, translate into different languages, calculate, and answer all manner of oddball questions.

Alexa is smart, a lot smarter than me, but she is also still learning and there are things she doesn't know - yet.  A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I heard that the price of postage on a first-class letter was rising to 68 cents.   Ever since the post office got smart and went to "forever" stamps where a stamp was good forever once you bought it - and the going postal rate was no longer printed on the stamps, it's been (intentionally) hard for Americans to keep track of just how much money they are paying to use the mail.  If the price was rising to 68 cents per letter, I wanted to know the amount from which it was rising.

So I asked Alexa about the cost of a first class stamp - and she told me 44 cents.   I knew that was wrong, so I asked again, but Alexa was insistent with her incorrect information.  (I learned later that the price at that time was 66 cents per first class stamp.)

The price of first class stamps rose to 68 cents a week ago yesterday, and yesterday morning I asked Alexa about the price of a stamp, and she told me it was 55 cents.  Overnight, someone must have juiced her circuits, because when I asked the same question this morning, she told me it was 68 cents.

Sometimes Alexa responds better depending on how a question is posed.  When I asked her for a five-digit prime number, she responded, "Sorry, I don't know that one."  So I regrouped and asked Alexa what a prime number was - and she gave me the definition.  Then I asked for examples of prime numbers and she listed the first ten:  2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and 29.  So then I asked for an example of a five-digit prime number, and she responded:  "From answers.com, the largest 5-digit prime number is 99,991."    She knew one - a unique one.  Alexa still obviously does not know every prime number so far known to mankind, but she is capable of learning and will someday have that information.

She also does not seem to have the ability to calculate time spans in days.  I told her my birthday and asked her how old I was in days, and that stumped her.  There are day calculators available on the internet, so it is a calculation process that she could eventually incorporate into her "knowledge" base.

(The answer, according to a day calculator website, is that I am 27,706 days old - and I feel every one of them!  I have been working on this blog now 5,927 days, or 21.39 percent of my life.  By now I should be paying myself a pension - or going on strike!)

So far there is no "one source" for all knowledge, but it's coming - and it's coming damned fast!

(I would be surprised if my grandchildren even know what encyclopedias are!)