Social

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.
93 results found
  • Gunrock 2.0: A user adaptive social conversational system
    University of California, Davis
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    Gunrock 2.0 is built on top of Gunrock with an emphasis on user adaptation. Gunrock 2.0 combines various neural natural language understanding modules, including named entity detection, linking, and dialog act prediction, to improve user understanding. Its dialog management is a hierarchical model that handles various topics, such as movies, music, and sports. The system-level dialog manager can handle
  • Athena: Constructing dialogues dynamically with discourse constraints
    University of California, Santa Cruz
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    This report describes Athena, a dialogue system for spoken conversation on popular topics and current events. We develop a flexible topic-agnostic approach to dialogue management that dynamically configures dialogue based on general principles of entity and topic coherence. Athena’s dialogue manager uses a contract-based method where discourse constraints are dispatched to clusters of response generators
  • Tartan: A two-tiered dialog framework for multi-domain social chitchat
    Carnegie Mellon University
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    Tartan is a social bot that engages users in sharing daily personal experiences in multiple domains. Our work contributes to Conversational AI in two aspects: 1) We extract common-sense knowledge expressed in large-scale user utterances in conversations, and find that more than 20% of the shared information is related to personal life, such as social relationships and individual activities. 2) Based on
  • DREAM technical report for the Alexa Prize 2019
    Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    Building a dialogue system able to talk fluently and meaningfully in an open domain conversation is one of the foundational challenges in the field of AI. Recent progress in NLP driven by the application of the deep neural networks and large language models opened new possibilities to solve many hard problems of the conversational AI. Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge gives a unique opportunity to test
  • ZOTBOT: using reading comprehension and commonsense reasoning in conversational agents
    University of California, Irvine
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    We describe the ZOTBOT system for open-ended conversations, designed for the Alexa Prize competition. We focus on two main shortcomings in existing conversational agents: lack of awareness in commonsense reasoning when responding to user utterances (resulting in nonsensical or uninteresting responses) and inability to understand semantics and converse naturally about fact-based articles in a compelling
  • Bernard: A stateful neural open-domain socialbot
    University of California, San Diego
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    We propose Bernard: a framework for an engaging open-domain socialbot. While the task of open-domain dialog generation remains a difficult one, we explore various strategies to generate coherent dialog given an arbitrary dialog history. We incorporate a stateful autonomous dialog manager using non-deterministic finite automata to control multi-turn conversations. We show that powerful pretrained language
  • Audrey: A personalized open-domain conversational bot
    University of Michigan
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 3 Proceedings
    2019
    Conversational Intelligence requires that a person engage on informational, personal and relational levels. Advances in Natural Language Understanding have helped recent chatbots succeed at dialog on the informational level. However, current techniques still lag for conversing with humans on a personal level and fully relating to them. The University of Michigan’s submission to the Alexa Prize Grand Challenge
  • Advancing the state of the art in open domain dialog systems through the Alexa Prize
    Chandra Khatri, Behnam Hedayatnia, Chandra Khatri, Anushree Venkatesh, Jeff Nunn, Yi Pan, Qing Liu, Han Song, Anna Gottardi, Sanjeev Kwatra, Sanju Pancholi, Ming Cheng, Qinglang Chen, Lauren Stubel, Karthik Gopalakrishnan
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 2 Proceedings
    2018
    Building open domain conversational systems that allow users to have engaging conversations on topics of their choice is a challenging task. Alexa Prize was launched in 2016 to tackle the problem of achieving natural, sustained, coherent and engaging open-domain dialogs. In the second iteration of the competition in 2018, university teams advanced the state of the art by using context in dialog models,
    Related: Innovations from the 2018 Alexa Prize
    Machine learning
  • Introduction to Alexa Prize 2018 Proceedings
    Dilek Hakkani-Tür
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 2 Proceedings
    2018
    Building conversational systems that enable natural language interactions with machines has been attractive to mankind since the early days of computing, as exemplified by earlier text-based systems such as ELIZA [Weizenbaum, 1966]. Previous work on conversational systems generally falls into two categories, task-oriented and socialbots. Task-oriented systems aim to help users accomplish a specific task
  • The 2018 Alexa Prize: Several steps forward in conversational AI
    Mari Ostendorf
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 2 Proceedings
    2018
    In September 2016, Amazon introduced a new problem in conversational Al, the Alexa Prize, which challenged student teams to build a socialbot that could converse with Alexa on a wide range of topics. The socialbot differs from task-oriented dialog systems that address explicit user goals associated with a constrained domain, and also differs from chatbot systems that only handle social chitchat. The socialbot
1
...
6
7
8
...
10

Latest news

The latest updates, stories, and more about Alexa Prize.
Load more

Work with us

See more jobs See more jobs
Principal Applied Scientist, Real-Time Conversational AI , AGI
US, WA, Seattle
We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to drive the research and development of real-time multimodal conversational AI. You will operate across two focus areas: advancing foundation models for speech and audio, and building the post-training systems (reward modeling, reinforcement learning) that shape natural, human-like conversational behavior. You will be the expert in your area while contributing across the full model lifecycle — from pre-training and architecture design through post-training alignment and real-time deployment. You will work at the frontier of what's possible in conversational AI, with the compute, data, and runway to pursue problems that few teams in the world have the resources to tackle. As a Principal Scientist, you will set the technical direction for your research area, influence the broader roadmap, and work closely with inference engineers to ensure your models are designed for real-time production deployment from inception. Key job responsibilities Foundation Model Scaling - Build and train large-scale multimodal foundation models for real-time speech and audio generation, from architecture design through production-scale training - Advance the scaling and efficiency of conversational modes, including the relationship between data, model size, and real time performance. - Design model architectures informed by hardware constraints and inference requirements, working with inference engineers to ensure models are servable from inception - Develop training methodologies for multimodal models that jointly process and generate speech, language, and audio in real-time streaming contexts Post-Training & Reinforcement Learning - Design and build reward models and reward functions for speech systems — capturing naturalness, fluency, conversational quality, and real-time responsiveness - Develop and apply reinforcement learning methods to shape conversational behavior — teaching models natural timing, responsiveness, and fluid interaction - Build the post-training pipeline from SFT through RL alignment, optimized for real-time multimodal outputs rather than text-only generation - Design evaluation frameworks that capture the quality dimensions unique to real-time conversation Real-Time Perception & Generation - Advance the team's capabilities in real-time perception - Work at the intersection of model architecture and production constraints to ensure multimodal capabilities function within hard real-time latency budgets
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Flight Dynamics Engineer, Amazon Leo Flight Dynamics
US, WA, Redmond
We are searching for a talented candidate with experience in orbital mechanics, orbit determination, launch vehicle trajectories, and launch vehicle mission planning. In this position, a successful candidate would serve as a Research Scientist in support of Amazon Leo’s constellation with particular focus on Launch Vehicle support. Strong analysis skills are required to develop engineering studies of complex large-scale dynamical systems. This position requires demonstrated expertise in computational analysis automation and tool development. Export Control Requirement: Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Key job responsibilities Working with the Leo GNC team, you will: • Perform spacecraft maneuver or navigation analysis in support of multi-disciplinary trades within the Amazon Leo team. • Contribute to prototype software development of flight algorithms. • Test and assess navigation software for integration into flight systems. • Assess and trouble-shoot the performance of Leo on-board GNSS hardware and software systems. • Work closely with GNC engineers to manage on-orbit performance and develop flight dynamics operations processes. • Manage engineering trades as needed for various launch vehicle mission designs. • Support Leo’s Launch Vehicle Mission Management team with technical expertise in Launch Vehicle trajectory requirements specification • Evaluate Launch Vehicle performance and compliance with mission requirements • Develop tools to support Mission Management planning for over 80 launches! • Work collaboratively with launch vehicle system technical teams About the team The Flight Dynamics team is responsible for the guidance, navigation, control and safety of the spaceflight of the Amazon Leo constellation. This team provides solutions to spaceflight challenges in constellation design, orbit selection, launch vehicle insertion requirements, navigation, trajectory design, space situational awareness, and space traffic coordination.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Data Scientist, Alexa AI
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Amazon is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Data Scientist with machine learning background to help build industry-leading Speech and Language technology. Our mission is to provide a delightful experience to Amazon’s customers by pushing the envelope in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Machine Learning (ML). Key job responsibilities Key job responsibilities Amazon is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Data Scientist with machine learning background to help build industry-leading Speech and Language technology. Our mission is to provide a delightful experience to Amazon’s customers by pushing the envelope in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Machine Learning (ML) and Computer Vision (CV). As part of our AI team in Amazon AWS, you will work alongside internationally recognized experts to develop data experiments, novel algorithms and data techniques to advance the state-of-the-art in human language technology. Your work will directly impact millions of our customers in the form of products and services that make use of speech and language technology. You will gain hands on experience with Amazon’s heterogeneous speech, text, and structured data sources, and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in spoken language understanding.
PhD Econ Intern, Store Economics and Science
US, WA, Seattle
We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to apply their causal inference / structural econometrics skillsets to solve real world problems. The intern will work in the area of Store Economics and Science (SEAS) and develop models to SEAS. Our PhD Economist Internship Program offers hands-on experience in applied economics, supported by mentorship, structured feedback, and professional development. Interns work on real business and research problems, building skills that prepare them for full-time economist roles at Amazon and beyond. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis collaborating with economists, scientists, and product managers. These skills will translate well into writing applied chapters in your dissertation and provide you with work experience that may help you with placement. About the team The Stores Economics and Science Team (SEAS) is a Stores-wide interdisciplinary team at Amazon with a "peak jumping" mission focused on disruptive innovation. The team applies science, economics, and engineering expertise to tackle the business's most critical problems, working to move from local to global optima across Amazon Stores operations. SEAS builds partnerships with organizations throughout Amazon Stores to pursue this mission, exploring frontier science while learning from the experience and perspective of others. Their approach involves testing solutions first at a small scale, then aligning more broadly to build scalable solutions that can be implemented across the organization. The team works backwards from customers using their unique scientific expertise to add value, takes on long-run and high-risk projects that business teams typically wouldn't pursue, helps teams with kickstart problems by building practical prototypes, raises the scientific bar at Amazon, and builds and shares software that makes Amazon more productive.
Applied Scientist , Prime Video Personalization and Discovery
US, WA, Seattle
Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video add-on subscriptions such as Apple TV+, Max, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video technologist, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! We are looking for a self-motivated, passionate and resourceful Applied Scientist to bring diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. You will spend your time as a hands-on machine learning practitioner and a research leader. You will play a key role on the team, building and guiding machine learning models from the ground up. At the end of the day, you will have the reward of seeing your contributions benefit millions of Amazon.com customers worldwide. Key job responsibilities Develop AI solutions for various Prime Video Personalization systems using Deep learning, GenAI, Reinforcement Learning, and optimization methods; Work closely with engineers and product managers to design, implement and launch AI solutions end-to-end; Design and conduct offline and online (A/B) experiments to evaluate proposed solutions based on in-depth data analyses; Effectively communicate technical and non-technical ideas with teammates and stakeholders; Stay up-to-date with advancements and the latest modeling techniques in the field; Publish your research findings in top conferences and journals. About the team Prime Video Personalization and Discovery team owns science solution to power personalized experience on various devices, from sourcing, relevance, ranking, to name a few. We work closely with the engineering and product teams to launch our solutions in production.
See more jobs
View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
Get more from Amazon Science
Subscribe to our newsletter

Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Social