News You Might Have Missed: Week of August 31, 2018

Google Assistant is Now Bilingual

From Thursday this week, Google Assistant is bilingual. Users can jump between two different languages across queries, without having to go back to their language settings. Once users select two of the supported languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese, from there on out they can speak to the Assistant in either language and the Assistant will respond in kind. Previously, users had to choose a single language setting for the Assistant, changing their settings each time they wanted to use another language, but now, it’s a simple, hands-free experience for multilingual households. Getting this to work, however, was not a simple, said Google. In fact, this was a multi-year effort that involved solving a lot of problems that can be grouped in three areas: Identifying Multiple Languages, Understanding Multiple Languages and Optimizing Multilingual Recognition for Google Assistant users. Google said to be working to teach the Google Assistant how to process more than two languages simultaneously.

Via GoogleBlog 

• I updated the setting on my Google Assistant as soon as the news was out and played around with my Google Home for a bit and was delighted with the experience.
• Set up took just a few clicks. Under the Google Assistant’s settings, I went under language and just clicked on the + to add Italian.
• I had used the translation feature in past from English into Italian and that worked quite well so I was pretty confident the answers to my requests would be good but I was curious about how Google Assistant would understand my Italian.
• Google’s blog explains the complexity of delivering this new feature and from my limited testing, it does seem quite a bit went into it as I was able to do some interesting things including mixing the two languages in the same sentence.
• I asked Google Assistant in Italian “how many inches equal to 5 centimeters” but as I could not remember the word for inches in Italian I used the English word. Google Assistant not only understood my question but replied back using the correct Italian word for inches, which, if you are curious, is “pollici”
• This would suggest that the two languages are used together to understand what the user is saying. I suppose that must be the case in order to be ready to reply to either one of the languages.
• I switched back and forth between Italian and English several times and there was no delay in the answer I was getting.
• It was also interesting that when I asked in Italian what the weather was the answer I received listed temperatures in Centigrade rather than Fahrenheit even if my preference for Google Assistant is set for the latter. The answer mirrored the measure used in Italy.
• Lastly, it was also interesting to note that Google Assistant had no problem answering back to my weather question with my location “Campbell” but when I asked for the weather in Campbell, Google Assistant struggled to understand until I tried to say it with a similar Italian accent to the one used by the Assistant.
• Like Google said in the blog, there are many multi-language households and adding bilingual support is an important competitive advantage.
• I also wonder how much it might play a role in closing the digital divide as many multilingual families have parents whose first language is not English and adopting a voice first technology in their own language might feel much less intimidating. We all remember the Italian grandma trying to speak to Google Assistant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2R0NSKtVA0

Microsoft Requires Paid Parental Leave for Subcontractors

Over the next 12 months, Microsoft will work with its U.S. suppliers to implement this new paid parental leave policy. It will require that suppliers offer their employees a minimum of 12 weeks paid parental leave, up to $1,000 per week. This change applies to all parents employed by Microsoft suppliers who take time off for the birth or adoption of a child. The new policy applies to suppliers with more than 50 employees and covers supplier employees who perform substantial work for Microsoft.  This minimum threshold applies to all of Microsoft suppliers across the U.S. and is not intended to supplant a state law that is more generous. Many of our suppliers already offer strong benefits packages to their employees, and suppliers are of course welcome to offer more expansive leave benefits to their employees.

Via Microsoft 

• The importance of this move is clear when you read some of the numbers Microsoft cites in the blog. Only 13% of private sector workers in the U.S. have access to paid parental leave.
• To understand the impact this move from Microsoft can have one needs to know that they currently have around 1,000 suppliers in the US
• This is not the first time Microsoft pushes its suppliers to do better when it comes to benefits. In 2015, they started demanding that their suppliers offered at least 15 days of paid leave
• This week’s request comes after Washington state changed the parental leave requirements through a legislation that will demand paid parental leave starting in 2020. Microsoft looked at that and decided to make its suppliers outside the state to align with it.
• With workers in the Gig economy growing, the topic of benefits is a hot one as adding benefits for these workers has tax implications and might have wage requirements.
• In 2017, Google was said to have more contractors than regular employees. Most of those contractors did not have access to the same benefits from stock rewards, free food or health benefits.
• Competition for talent is always high in tech and companies often use benefits to attract the best. A few years ago Apple, Google, and Facebook started to include Egg-freezing as a perk.
• Considering that According to the U.S Census Bureau millennials will comprising more than one of three adults in America by 2020 and 75% of the workforce by 2025 it is easy to see how benefits around children either making them or looking after them should be a priority for organizations.