I would argue that when I'm directly addressing the 'bot that controls my home automation, "it's cold in here" is a request. Even if I were talking to a human, that statement would be looking to open up a conversation or direct an action toward correcting the issue.
Dparker I'm sure technically Alexa can be categorized as Artificial Intelligence, though I'd love to know what criteria it meets to do so. Alexa certainly wouldn't be able to make sense of anything it's never heard before. I'm blissfully unaware of the true complexity of programming a system like Alexa. I can't claim to be as brainy as a top level silicon valley programmer by a long shot. All that said, nearly everything I've gotten my echo to do can be explained with simple, text-based if/then sequences. If programming were truly as basic as that, Alexa could be vastly improved simply by adding a bunch of phrases that mean the same thing to qualify as the trigger. So I'm sure there's something in there that makes that really difficult, and that question is the root of my frustration here - I just wish I could get a glimpse of what the real blockage is, programming wise. Theories are welcome.
A theory is a scientific statement of what-is-ness. You are actually seeking hypotheses.
So on to reality. And the reality is that Alexa, along with Siri and Cortana and "ok google", are a huge leap forward from where we were just a couple years ago.
What you are seeking is a level of contextuality that, frankly, even humans don't necessarily grasp sometimes. And truth be told, "it's cold in here" is NOT a factual statement. It is one person's opinion. Another person might very well find that room to be very warm! So to have an AI system that, upon one person saying "it's cold in here", kicks on the heat would be folly. JMO of course.
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