Can Alexa be a Team Player?

Nearly every day we engage with others to accomplish a variety of tasks, from the mundane, like setting a budget, to surgeons in an operating room working with speed and precision to ensure patients receive the best possible outcomes. In these examples, everyone works as a team to achieve desired goals. Regrettably, today's conversational user interfaces (CUIs) are far from this reality of human teamwork, instead focusing on simple, dyadic interactions to satisfy the immediate needs of its owner. However, we envision CUIs becoming collaborative team players within existing human teams, unlocking an array of invaluable applications, from meeting facilitation to team training. Furthermore, such a team player CUI not only completes the tasks assigned to it, but also actively contributes to the strength, wellbeing, and optimal functioning of the team.