The President of Russia Vladimir Putin and General Director of “Yandex” Arkady Volozh

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

MOSCOW, September 21. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the office of “Yandex”, where he inspected the exhibition devoted to the main services of the company and talked with the employees. The head of state demonstrated the drone, developed by the specialists of “Yandex”.

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The President was accompanied by first Deputy head of administration Sergei Kirienko, the presidential aides Igor Shchegolev and Andrey Belousov, Minister of communications and mass communications Nikolay Nikiforov and Director General of group of companies “Yandex” Arkady Volozh.

Putin was shown one of the new developments of “Yandex” – voice assistant “Alice”. This was similar to Siri from Apple . To discuss with “Alice” while it is a few topics – the weather, the routes through the city. In the program “Alice” lies and answers jokes by analogy with Siri. The dialogue may be asking questions out loud and typing them into the chat.

The President asked Volozh: “If I can ask?” And then said, “You’re not hurt”? “Okay, I will consider,” – said Alisa. “How are you feeling here?”, – asked the President. Voice assistant responded that it is considering “photos of seals in “Yandex”, nothing better seals, no, I hope You’re both well”. Putin was pleased with the demonstration, noting that “the question, hurt or not, she declined to answer”.

Voice search “Alice” will be launched on October 10, told the President the developers of this system of machine intelligence. They noted that no analogues in the world of “Alice” because unlike other voice assistants, this can be easy to talk to. The machine works on the principle of recognition of key words, as already established voice assistants, and analyses to answer large amounts of information. “We don’t know what she will say. It can give different answers to the same question,” said the President, technical Director of “Yandex” Michael Parahin.

Later, answering questions of journalists, the developers said that threat to humans, the system is not, because “it is the intellect without the will”. However, during communication with the user “Alice” gives such answers that the impression that the system like mad, offended or appreciated the humor of the interlocutor. The head of state showed how the system can answer questions using the popular conversational phrases “rules OK” and so on. As explained by Putin, the system constantly analyzes what people respond to certain questions, and remember these phrases.

The creators of “Alice” noted that “at first “pumped” machine the whole of Russian literature, after which she became “very depressed to give the answers” Later decided to connect it to the social network “Twitter”. As a result, “Alice” began to speak like a teenager, they said. “Alice” for a year continues to learn, she improves all the time,” explained its creators.

Putin asked how the navigation system operates the “Alice” when do location-based queries. He was assured that it uses all available systems, including GPS, GLONASS.

Other projects of the company

During the inspection of the office of the Minister was also told about the projects “Yandex.Health”, “Yandex.Market”, “Yandex.Weather”, “Yandex.Taxi”, about geoservices of Yandex, as well as new developments that will be introduced in already existing popular applications of the company.

In the final, Putin showed the unmanned vehicle developed by the company. Before the arrival of the President the interest of journalists was caused by the man sitting behind the wheel of a “car without driver”, but to the emergence of a Russian leader’s car really was left without a pilot. Putin watched how the hybrid car “Toyota Prius” drove away and went into the courtyard of “Yandex”. The President thanked for the demonstration.