TBH I've wondered from the very beginning how far they would get just hardcoding the top 1000 questions people ask instead of whatever crappy ML it debuted with. These things are getting better, but I was always shocked how they could ship such an obviously unfinished, broken prototype that got basics so wrong because it avoided doing something "manually". It always struck me as so deeply unserious as to be untrustworthy.

I guess I should have been clearer...

There are tons of common queries about the future. Being able to handle them should be built into the AI to know that if something hasn't happened, to give other relevant details. (and yes, I agree with your Alexa speculation)

Alexa at least used to just do trivial textual pattern matching hardly any more advanced than a 1980's text adventure for custom skills, and it seemed hardly more advanced than that for the built in stuff. Been a long time since I looked at it, so maybe that has changed but you can get far with very little since most users will quickly learn the right "incantations" and avoid using complex language they know the device won't handle.