Who’s behind Alexa?

As she was studying communication at LMU, Marie Kilg never thought she would have ended up working for Amazon as Alexa Content Manager. But here she is, only 24 years old, soon moving to Seattle to follow her career path. However, it is pretty comprehensible she couldn’t tell after all: just a few years ago her job did not even exist. But nowadays, with the rise of bots such as Alexa, this profession is gaining importance.

When asked how she developed an interest for this field, Marie says that, somehow, she has always loved the idea of talking to machines. Then, something important happened. “I found a curious website, called cheapbotsdonequick.com, with the promise of guiding people in creating their own bot within only 20 minutes. It actually worked, and I was enthusiastic about it.” Her first bot was what we could define a “CV bot”: “People could text my bot and he would answer telling about my work experience”.

Some of her first experiments are still available on her Twitter page, as well as more recent ones. You would find for example the “Costume bot”, which is advising people on how they should dress up on Halloween night.

“I noticed nowadays most people lack in creativity, and they just pick up any animal or monster and make it a bit slutty. I hoped my costume bot could help people find really original alternatives, even if some of them might be weird”. Yes, we must admit that “Goblin Title Examiner with shark fingers” might seem just a bit absurd and difficult to create (do sharks have fingers?), but some others, like “Zombie Dietitian and Nutritionist with a spoon” could really make up funny alternatives.

What started as a hobby became soon something more serious, and today she works at Amazon as Alexa Editor. “I would say my job is an intersection between journalism and technics, and that’s why I love it. I think it’s totally cool exactly because is such a mix. As I was working as a journalist, I was already into innovation and technology; Alexa is absolutely innovative, but still doesn’t miss the content aspect”.

This more technical side fascinates her, and she tries to improve her programming skills at the moment. “I cannot exactly program yet, I just know a couple of things. But I am attending courses about bots programming to get better. I discovered it is not just about numbers: at least at a basic level, even if you don’t love maths, you can still be good at it and have fun.” Apart from the technical side, creativity is in fact also extremely relevant, especially in the content aspect.

Eventually, this job is probably meant to became pretty relevant in the next years. “I think in the future people will have many possibilities to talk with bots, and you will need experts to manage them; on the one side, of course, you need programmers to make them work. But what bots are actually going to say, that is up to Editors and Content Managers.”

There are several perspectives and factors that become relevant at such a level. Choosing a bot’s answer is not about randomly coming up with some sentence, but rather is the result of an accurate work.

“You have to consider, for example, what people want to hear in that moment. If you are managing a bot of a help centre for example, you might avoid funny answers because clients are probably frustrated and not in the right mood”.

At a deeper level, there are important implications of choosing the content and form of the answers. “I realized that people, including myself, tend to handle bots like they speak with humans, even if they perfectly know they aren’t”. If we consider especially children, the language of machines is crucial. “I think maybe the way machines speak could one day influence the way humans speak with each other, either positively or negatively.”

As a content manager the risk is also to create a biased bot, even not realising it. “In my bots I always state clearly that they come from me, so it is fine if they have some of my biases. I consider transparency extremely important: if someone feels bad about an answer, they must have the chance to know who is behind that. I don’t think this is regulated by law yet, but I believe this would be essential.”

In conclusion, bots are a new technology, and as such do have strengths and drawbacks, depending on how they are used; but the first step, for sure, is to train professionals able to manage them responsibly.