There was an article in The Atlantic recently that remarked upon this. The Atlantic: Alexa Is a Revelation for the Blind. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/

There was an article in The Atlantic recently that remarked upon this. The Atlantic: Alexa Is a Revelation for the Blind. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/what-alexa-taught-my-father/556874/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/what-al... Then I stop myself. Isn’t it possible that he expects Alexa to recognize a prompt that’s close enough? A person certainly would. Perhaps Dad isn’t being obstreperous. Maybe he doesn’t know how to interact with a machine pretending to be human—especially after he missed the evolution of personal computing because of his disability. ... Another problem: While voice-activated devices do understand natural language pretty well, the way most of us speak has been shaped by the syntax of digital searches. Dad’s speech hasn’t. He talks in an old-fashioned manner—one now dotted with the staccato march of time. “Alexa, tell us the origin and, uh, well, the significance, I suppose, of Christmas,” for example.