M is for Millenial?

Interesting piece on Facebook's new Messenger AI, "M":

When you ask M a question, the AI works to understand what you’re asking and formulates a response. But rather than sending it to you, the system sends this response to human “trainers”—customer-service types who work alongside the Wit.ai team inside Facebook’s new building in Menlo Park, California. These trainers then decide what else must be done to provide what you’re looking for

So it sounds like M gets the input, and then essentially send it to a Millenial, who Googles etc., to get the task done. I guess that works, and I think there are some startups taking this approach ("don't scale!") Fun to see it filter to FB, and a great cultural fit for them too. And now we know what "M" stands for.

In doing that heavy-lifting, the humans generate a roadmap for how particular questions should be answered. “Everything the trainers do, we record every step,” Lebrun says. This includes what websites they visit, what they say when calling the DMV, what they type in response to M users, and so on. In the future, this data can help drive a more advanced system based on deep learning, a form of AI that masters tasks by analyzing enormous quantities of information across a vast network of machines.

The long term plan is to gather inputs and automate the more common queries. Sounds great if it works. Siri has been a big disappointment as Apple's ability to deliver great experiences suffers post-Jobs.