Rohit Prasad: Amazon Alexa and Conversational AI

About this episode

<p>Rohit Prasad is the vice president and head scientist of Amazon Alexa and one of its original creators.</p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast.</span>&#160;If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to <a href="https://lexfridman.com/ai">https://lexfridman.com/ai</a> or connect with @lexfridman on <a href="https://twitter.com/lexfridman">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/@lexfridman">Medium</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman">YouTube</a> where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/artificial-intelligence/id1434243584">Apple Podcasts</a> or support it on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman">Patreon</a>.</p> <p>This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cash-app/id711923939">App Store</a>, <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareup.cash&#38;hl=en_US">Google Play</a>), use code &#8220;LexPodcast&#8221;.&#160;</p> <p>The episode is also supported by ZipRecruiter. Try it: <a href="http://ziprecruiter.com/lexpod">http://ziprecruiter.com/lexpod</a></p> <p>Here&#8217;s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.</p> <p>00:00 &#8211; Introduction<br /> 04:34 &#8211; Her<br /> 06:31 &#8211; Human-like aspects of smart assistants<br /> 08:39 &#8211; Test of intelligence<br /> 13:04 &#8211; Alexa prize<br /> 21:35 &#8211; What does it take to win the Alexa prize?<br /> 27:24 &#8211; Embodiment and the essence of Alexa<br /> 34:35 &#8211; Personality<br /> 36:23 &#8211; Personalization<br /> 38:49 &#8211; Alexa&#8217;s backstory from her perspective<br /> 40:35 &#8211; Trust in Human-AI relations<br /> 44:00 &#8211; Privacy<br /> 47:45 &#8211; Is Alexa listening?<br /> 53:51 &#8211; How Alexa started<br /> 54:51 &#8211; Solving far-field speech recognition and intent understanding<br /> 1:11:51 &#8211; Alexa main categories of skills<br /> 1:13:19 &#8211; Conversation intent modeling<br /> 1:17:47 &#8211; Alexa memory and long-term learning<br /> 1:22:50 &#8211; Making Alexa sound more natural<br /> 1:27:16 &#8211; Open problems for Alexa and conversational AI<br /> 1:29:26 &#8211; Emotion recognition from audio and video<br /> 1:30:53 &#8211; Deep learning and reasoning<br /> 1:36:26 &#8211; Future of Alexa<br /> 1:41:47 &#8211; The big picture of conversational AI</p>