Alexa Prize Proceedings

The Alexa Prize Proceedings publishes the research in conversational AI from the competition. Amazon works closely with university teams to provide a testbed for research to address the challenges with dialog management, natural language understanding, contextual modeling, commonsense reasoning and response generation, and these proceedings seek to capture the advances in those areas that result from these efforts. Authors are free to make additional hardcopy publishing arrangements, but Amazon will not produce hardcopies of these volumes.
12 results found
  • Carnegie Mellon University
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    Tartan is a multi-domain task-oriented bot that assists users with two different tasks: 1. cooking with recipes from Whole Foods and 2. doing projects from WikiHow. The bot’s system is divided into two stages. In the first stage, the bot assists the user in identifying a task that they want to do. In the second stage, the bot guides the users through sequences of step-by-step instructions. We developed
  • University of Glasgow
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    We present GRILLBot, a multi-modal task-oriented voice assistant to guide users through complex real-world tasks for the Alexa TaskBot Challenge. An effective TaskBot has to guide a user through a long and complex task, be engaging, and help solve problems along the way. GRILLBot achieves this in the domains of cooking and home improvement by helping search over a large task corpus with mixed- initiative
  • Texas A&M University
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    In this paper, we present Howdy Y’all, a multi-modal task-oriented dialogue agent developed for the 2021-2022 Alexa Prize TaskBot competition. Our design principles guiding Howdy Y’all aim for high user satisfaction through friendly and trustworthy encounters, minimization of negative conversation edge cases, and wide coverage over many tasks. Hence, Howdy Y’all is built upon a rapid prototyping platform
  • National Taiwan University
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    This paper introduces Miutsu, National Taiwan University’s Alexa Prize TaskBot, which is designed to assist users in completing tasks requiring multiple steps and decisions in two different domains – home improvement and cooking. We overview our system design and architectural goals, and detail the proposed core elements, including question answering, task retrieval, social chatting, and various conversational
  • Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    We present TacoBot, a task-oriented dialogue system built for the inaugural Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge, which assists users in completing multi-step cooking and home improvement tasks. TacoBot is designed with a user-centered principle and aspires to deliver a collaborative and accessible dialogue experience. Towards that end, it is equipped with accurate language understanding, flexible dialogue management
  • University of Pennsylvania
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    We describe QuakerBot, a dialog system that helps users with household tasks and a participant in the Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge. QuakerBot can process a variety of user requests, search for instructions from web resources such as wikiHow or Whole Foods Market recipes, answer related questions, and so on. Its components simultaneously consist of large language models with an impressive few-shot performance
  • NOVA University Lisbon
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    This paper describes the vision, scientific contributions, and technical details of the Task Wizard (TWIZ) team’s participation in the Alexa TaskBot Challenge 2021. Our bot design envisions the support of an engaging experience, where users are guided through multimodal conversations, towards the successful completion of the selected task. This is achieved through four key principles: a) robust dialog interaction
  • University College London
    Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a long-standing area of exploration in the research community and has now penetrated both academia and industries with products such as Siri and Alexa. In this work, we present COoking-aNd-DIy-TAsk-based (Condita) ChatBot, a task-oriented dialogue system, for the 2021 Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge. Condita provides an engaging multi-modal agent that assists
  • Since its inception in 2016, the Alexa Prize program has enabled hundreds of university students to explore and compete to develop conversational agents through the SocialBot Grand Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to build agents capable of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes, while achieving an average rating of at least 4.0/5.0. However, as conversational
  • Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 1 Proceedings
    2022
    As people learn to interact with AI assistants such as Alexa, their needs change and become more complex. Alexa must evolve accordingly, and offer more sophisticated experiences, which require addressing increasingly complex AI research challenges. In the last few years, Amazon has offered university teams a chance to partner with Amazon scientists in order push the boundaries of the state of the art in

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US, WA, Seattle
Are you motivated to explore research in ambiguous spaces? Are you interested in conducting research that will improve associate, employee and manager experiences at Amazon? Do you want to work on an interdisciplinary team of scientists that collaborate rather than compete? Join us at PXT Central Science! The People eXperience and Technology Central Science Team (PXTCS) uses economics, behavioral science, statistics, and machine learning to proactively identify mechanisms and process improvements which simultaneously improve Amazon and the lives, wellbeing, and the value of work to Amazonians. We are an interdisciplinary team that combines the talents of science and engineering to develop and deliver solutions that measurably achieve this goal. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist for People Experience and Technology (PXT) Central Science, you will be working with our science and engineering teams, specifically on re-imagining Generative AI Applications and Generative AI Infrastructure for HR. Applying Generative AI to HR has unique challenges such as privacy, fairness, and seamlessly integrating Enterprise Knowledge and World Knowledge and knowing which to use when. In addition, the team works on some of Amazon’s most strategic technical investments in the people space and support Amazon’s efforts to be Earth’s Best Employer. In this role you will have a significant impact on 1.5 million Amazonians and the communities Amazon serves and ample scope to demonstrate scientific thought leadership and scientific impact in addition to business impact. You will also play a critical role in the organization's business planning, work closely with senior leaders to develop goals and resource requirements, influence our long-term technical and business strategy, and help hire and develop science and engineering talent. You will also provide support to business partners, helping them use the best scientific methods and science-driven tools to solve current and upcoming challenges and deliver efficiency gains in a changing marke About the team The AI/ML team in PXTCS is working on building Generative AI solutions to reimagine Corp employee and Ops associate experience. Examples of state-of-the-art solutions are Coaching for Amazon employees (available on AZA) and reinventing Employee Recruiting and Employee Listening.
US, WA, Seattle
Our team's mission is to improve Shopping experience for customers interacting with Amazon devices via voice. We work with Alexa and multiple other teams to research and develop advanced state-of-the-art speech technologies. Do you want to be part of the team developing the latest technology that impacts the customer experience of ground-breaking products? Then come join us and make history. Key job responsibilities We are looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Research Scientist with a background in Machine Learning to help build industry-leading Speech and Language technology. As a Research Scientist at Amazon you will work with talented peers to develop novel algorithms and modelling techniques to drive the state of the art in speech synthesis. Position Responsibilities: * Participate in the design, development, evaluation, deployment and updating of data-driven models for Speech and Language applications. * Participate in research activities including the application and evaluation of Speech and Language techniques for novel applications. * Research and implement novel ML and statistical approaches to add value to the business.
US, WA, Seattle
We are building GenAI based shopping assistant for Amazon. We reimage Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience that helps you find answers to product questions, perform product comparisons, receive personalized product suggestions, and so much more, to easily find the perfect product for your needs. We’re looking for the best and brightest across Amazon to help us realize and deliver this vision to our customers right away. This will be a once in a generation transformation for Search, just like the Mosaic browser made the Internet easier to engage with three decades ago. If you missed the 90s—WWW, Mosaic, and the founding of Amazon and Google—you don’t want to miss this opportunity.
US, WA, Seattle
The Private Brands team is looking for an Applied Scientist to join the team in building science solutions at scale. Our team applies Optimization, Machine Learning, Statistics, Causal Inference, and Econometrics/Economics to derive actionable insights. We are an interdisciplinary team of Scientists, Engineers, and Economists and primary focus on building optimization and machine learning solutions in supply chain domain with specific focus on Amazon private brand products. Key job responsibilities You will work with business leaders, scientists, and economists to translate business and functional requirements into concrete deliverables, including the design, development, testing, and deployment of highly scalable optimization solutions and ML models. This is a unique, high visibility opportunity for someone who wants to have business impact, dive deep into large-scale problems, enable measurable actions on the consumer economy, and work closely with scientists and economists. As a senior scientist, you bring business and industry context to science and technology decisions. You set the standard for scientific excellence and make decisions that affect the way we build and integrate algorithms. Your solutions are exemplary in terms of algorithm design, clarity, model structure, efficiency, and extensibility. You tackle intrinsically hard problems, acquiring expertise as needed. You decompose complex problems into straightforward solutions. We are particularly interested in candidates with academic and/or practical background in Operations Research and Machine Learning. Experience in applying Operations Research and/or ML to supply chain problems is a plus.
US, CA, San Diego
The Private Brands team is looking for an Applied Scientist to join the team in building science solutions at scale. Our team applies Optimization, Machine Learning, Statistics, Causal Inference, and Econometrics/Economics to derive actionable insights. We are an interdisciplinary team of Scientists, Engineers, and Economists and primary focus on building optimization and machine learning solutions in supply chain domain with specific focus on Amazon private brand products. Key job responsibilities You will work with business leaders, scientists, and economists to translate business and functional requirements into concrete deliverables, including the design, development, testing, and deployment of highly scalable optimization solutions and ML models. This is a unique, high visibility opportunity for someone who wants to have business impact, dive deep into large-scale problems, enable measurable actions on the consumer economy, and work closely with scientists and economists. As a scientist, you bring business and industry context to science and technology decisions. You set the standard for scientific excellence and make decisions that affect the way we build and integrate algorithms. Your solutions are exemplary in terms of algorithm design, clarity, model structure, efficiency, and extensibility. You tackle intrinsically hard problems, acquiring expertise as needed. You decompose complex problems into straightforward solutions. We are particularly interested in candidates with experience in predictive and machine learning models and working with distributed systems. Academic and/or practical background in Machine Learning are particularly relevant for this position. Familiarity and experience in applying Operations Research techniques to supply chain problems is a plus.
US, CA, San Diego
Amazon Private Brands is looking for a Data Scientist to join our Private Brand Intelligence (PBI) Sourcing Guidance team. PBI applies Machine Learning, Statistics, and Econometrics/Economics to derive actionable insights about the complex economy of Amazon’s retail business and develop statistical models and algorithms to drive strategic business decisions and improve operations. About the team We are an interdisciplinary team of Scientists, Economists, and Engineers, incubating and building day one solutions using cutting-edge technology, to solve some of the toughest business problems at Amazon. About the role You will work with business leaders, PMs, scientists, and economists to deep dive existing business problems, translate them into business and functional requirements and design concrete deliverables. These deliverables can include the design, development, testing of new in-house statistical models/ML models/Optimization engines, etc. and/or partnering with our sister teams to develop an improved version of an existing model/system. This is a unique, high visibility opportunity for someone who wants to have business impact, dive deep into large-scale economic problems and enable measurable actions on the consumer economy. We are particularly interested in candidates with experience applying stat, ML and OR concepts to business problems. To learn more about Amazon Science, please visit https://www.amazon.science (https://www.amazon.science/).
FR, Courbevoie
Amazon launched the Generative AI Innovation Center (GenAIIC) in June 2023 to help AWS customers accelerate the use of generative AI to solve business and operational problems and promote innovation in their organization. This is a team of strategists, data scientists, engineers, and solution architects working step-by-step with customers to build bespoke solutions that harness the power of generative AI.(https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/6/aws-announces- generative-ai-innovation-center). We’re looking for Data Scientists capable of using generative AI and other techniques to design, evangelize, and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You will work directly with customers and innovate in a fast-paced organization that contributes to game-changing projects and technologies. You will design and run experiments, research new algorithms, and find new ways of optimizing risk, profitability, and customer experience. Key job responsibilities As a Data Scientist, you will - Collaborate with AI/ML scientists, engineers, and architects to research, design, develop, and evaluate cutting-edge generative AI algorithms to address real-world challenges - Interact with customers directly to understand the business problem, help and aid them in implementation of generative AI solutions, deliver briefing and deep dive sessions to customers and guide customer on adoption patterns and paths to production - Create and deliver best practice recommendations, tutorials, blog posts, sample code, and presentations adapted to technical, business, and executive stakeholder - Provide customer and market feedback to Product and Engineering teams to help define product direction About the team The team helps customers imagine and scope the use cases that will create the greatest value for their businesses, select and train or fine tune the right models, define paths to navigate technical or business challenges, develop proof-of-concepts, and make plans for launching solutions at scale. The Generative AI Innovation Center team provides guidance on best practices for applying generative AI responsibly and cost efficiently. Diverse Experiences AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.
AE, Dubai
Amazon launched the Generative AI Innovation Center (GenAIIC) in June 2023 to help AWS customers accelerate the use of generative AI to solve business and operational problems and promote innovation in their organization. This is a team of strategists, data scientists, engineers, and solution architects working step-by-step with customers to build bespoke solutions that harness the power of generative AI.(https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/6/aws-announces- generative-ai-innovation-center). We’re looking for Data Scientists capable of using generative AI and other techniques to design, evangelize, and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You will work directly with customers and innovate in a fast-paced organization that contributes to game-changing projects and technologies. You will design and run experiments, research new algorithms, and find new ways of optimizing risk, profitability, and customer experience. Emirati national is required. Key job responsibilities As a Data Scientist, you will - Collaborate with AI/ML scientists, engineers, and architects to Research, design, develop, and evaluate cutting-edge generative AI algorithms to address real-world challenges - Interact with customers directly to understand the business problem, help and aid them in implementation of generative AI solutions, deliver briefing and deep dive sessions to customers and guide customer on adoption patterns and paths to production - Create and deliver best practice recommendations, tutorials, blog posts, sample code, and presentations adapted to technical, business, and executive stakeholder - Provide customer and market feedback to Product and Engineering teams to help define product direction About the team The team helps customers imagine and scope the use cases that will create the greatest value for their businesses, select and train or fine tune the right models, define paths to navigate technical or business challenges, develop proof-of-concepts, and make plans for launching solutions at scale. The Generative AI Innovation Center team provides guidance on best practices for applying generative AI responsibly and cost efficiently. Diverse Experiences AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.
US, WA, Seattle
Have you ever thought about what it takes to detect and prevent fraudulent activity among hundreds of millions of eCommerce transactions across the globe? What would you do to increase trust in an online marketplace where millions of buyers and sellers transact? How would you build systems that evolve over time to proactively identify and neutralize new and emerging fraud threats? Our mission in Buyer Risk Prevention (BRP) is to make Amazon the safest place to transact online. BRP designs and builds systems, risk models and operational processes that minimize risk and maximize trust in Amazon. The Data Science Leader, BRP Risk Mining, will lead the team to develop best-in-class science and analytics systems. We are looking for a strong technical leader to help develop advanced scientific solutions and drive critical customer, partner, and business impact. You will collaborate closely with engineering peers as well as business stakeholders to drive end-to-end business problems/metrics and directly impact the profitability of the company. Key job responsibilities Key responsibilities: Understand various businesses/operations across BRP Hire, Grow, and Develop excellent scientific and analytic talent. Partner with Sr. Leaders across the organization to frame business problems, establish Scientific vision, and execute roadmap. Partner with Product and Engineering teams to bring modeling solutions to frontline applications across the business. Set the scientific culture and leadership within the BRP Risk Mining team, advocating for Science at leadership level Be able to translate and communicate out Science driven results Identify new opportunities to leverage Science within the organization
GB, London
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2025 Internship in Data Science? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for a customer obsessed Data Scientist Intern who can innovate in a business environment, building and deploying machine learning models to drive step-change innovation and scale it to the EU/worldwide. If this describes you, come and join our Data Science teams at Amazon for an exciting internship opportunity. If you are insatiably curious and always want to learn more, then you’ve come to the right place. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science If you have questions about Amazon Science internships, please feel free to sign up for one of our upcoming informational sessions via the ‘Events Calendar’ in our Science Intern landing page; https://amazonscienceopportunities.splashthat.com/ Key job responsibilities As a Data Science Intern, you will have following key job responsibilities: • Work closely with scientists and engineers to architect and develop new algorithms to implement scientific solutions for Amazon problems. • Work on an interdisciplinary team on customer-obsessed research • Experience Amazon's customer-focused culture • Create and Deliver Machine Learning projects that can be quickly applied starting locally and scaled to EU/worldwide • Build and deploy Machine Learning models using large data-sets and cloud technology. • Create and share with audiences of varying levels technical papers and presentations • Define metrics and design algorithms to estimate customer satisfaction and engagement A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact, visionary person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK). Please note these are not remote internships.