Publication

Exploration of language-specific self-attention parameters for multilingual end-to-end speech recognition

By Brady Houston, Katrin Kirchhoff

2022

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In the last several years, end-to-end (E2E) ASR models have mostly surpassed the performance of hybrid ASR models. E2E is particularly well suited to multilingual approaches because it doesn’t require language-specific phone alignments for training. Recent work has improved multilingual E2E modeling over naive data pooling on up to several dozen languages by using both language-specific and language-universal model parameters, as well as providing information about the language being presented to the network. Complementary to previous work we analyze language-specific parameters in the attention mechanism of Conformer-based encoder models. We show that using language-specific parameters in the attention mechanism can improve performance across six languages by up to 12% compared to standard multilingual baselines and up to 36% compared to monolingual baselines, without requiring any additional parameters during monolingual inference nor fine-tuning.

Neural encoding enables more-efficient recovery of lost audio packets

Jean-Marc Valin, Mike Goodwin

March 24, 2023

By leveraging neural vocoding, Amazon Chime SDK’s new deep-redundancy (DRED) technology can reconstruct long sequences of lost packets with little bandwidth overhead.

Conversational AI / Natural-language processing
UIUC

Amazon launches AICE Center at UIUC

Staff writer

March 23, 2023

The center will support UIUC researchers in their development of novel approaches to conversational AI systems.

Conversational AI / Natural-language processing
Djordje Zlatanovic

A new paradigm for partnership between industry and academia

Prem Natarajan, Anne Szeto

March 23, 2023

How Amazon is shaping a set of initiatives to enable academia-based talent to harmonize their passions, life stations, and career ambitions.

Intern - Economics, Prime Science

US, WA, Seattle

We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to work with large and complicated data sets. Knowledge of econometrics, as well as basic familiarity with Python (or R, Matlab, or equivalent) is necessary, and experience with SQL would be a plus. These are full-time positions at 40 hours per week, with compensation being awarded on an hourly basis. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis at Internet speed 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. Roughly 85% of previous cohorts have converted to full time scientist employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com.

Applied Scientist Intern

US, WA, Bellevue

As an applied scientist, you will use your experience to initiate the design, development, execution and implementation of scientific research projects. Working closely with fellow research scientists and product managers, you will use your experience in modeling, statistics, and simulation to design models of new policies, simulate their performance, and evaluate their benefits and impacts to cost, reliability, and speed of our fulfillment network. Our teams are looking for experience in network and combinatorial optimization, algorithms, data structures, statistics, and/or machine learning. This position requires superior analytical thinking, and ability to apply their technical and statistical knowledge to identify opportunities for real world applications. You should be able to mine and analyze large data, and be able to use necessary programming and statistical analysis software/tools to do so. Amazon has positions available for Research Scientists in multiple locations across the US and Canada.

Intern - Economics, Seller Fees

US, WA, Virtual Contact Center-WA

We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to work with large and complicated data sets. Some knowledge of econometrics, as well as basic familiarity with Python is necessary, and experience with SQL and UNIX would be a plus. These are full-time positions at 40 hours per week, with compensation being awarded on an hourly basis. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis at Internet speed 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. Roughly 85% of previous cohorts have converted to full time scientist employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com. About the team The Selling Partner Fees team owns the end-to-end fees experience for two million active third party sellers. We own the fee strategy, fee seller experience, fee accuracy and integrity, fee science and analytics, and we provide scalable technology to monetize all services available to third-party sellers. Within the Science team, our goal is to understand the impact of changing fees on Seller (supply) and Customers (demand) behavior (e.g. price changes, advertising strategy changes, introducing new selection etc.) as well as using this information to optimize our fee structure and maximizing our long term profitability.

Senior Applied Scientist, Global Search Quality

US, WA, Seattle

This is a unique opportunity to build technology and science that millions of people will use every day. Are you excited about working on large scale Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL)? We are embarking on a multi-year journey to improve the shopping experience for customers globally. Amazon Search team creates customer-focused search solutions and technologies that makes shopping delightful and effortless for our customers. Our goal is to understand what customers are looking for in whatever language happens to be their choice at the moment and help them find what they need in Amazon's vast catalog of billions of products. As Amazon expands to new geographies, we are faced with the unique challenge of maintaining the bar on Search Quality due to the diversity in user preferences, multilingual search and data scarcity in new locales. We are looking for an applied researcher to work on improving search on Amazon using NLP, ML, and DL technology. As an Applied Scientist, you will lead our efforts in query understanding, semantic matching (e.g. is a drone the same as quadcopter?), relevance ranking (what is a "funny halloween costume"?), language identification (did the customer just switch to their mother tongue?), machine translation (猫の餌を注文する). This is a highly visible role with a huge impact on Amazon customers and business. As part of this role, you will develop high precision, high recall, and low latency solutions for search. Your solutions should work for all languages that Amazon supports and will be used in all Amazon locales world-wide. You will develop scalable science and engineering solutions that work successfully in production. You will work with leaders to develop a strategic vision and long term plans to improve search globally. We are growing our collaborative group of engineers and applied scientists by expanding into new areas. This is a position on Global Search Quality team in Seattle Washington. We are moving fast to change the way Amazon search works. Together with a multi-disciplinary team you will work on building solutions with NLP/ML/DL at its core. Along the way, you’ll learn a ton, have fun and make a positive impact on millions of people. Come and join us as we invent new ways to delight Amazon customers.

Applied Scientist, Global Search Quality

US, WA, Seattle

This is a unique opportunity to build technology and science that millions of people will use every day. Are you excited about working on large scale Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL)? We are embarking on a multi-year journey to improve the shopping experience for customers globally. Amazon Search team creates customer-focused search solutions and technologies that makes shopping delightful and effortless for our customers. Our goal is to understand what customers are looking for in whatever language happens to be their choice at the moment and help them find what they need in Amazon's vast catalog of billions of products. As Amazon expands to new geographies, we are faced with the unique challenge of maintaining the bar on Search Quality due to the diversity in user preferences, multilingual search and data scarcity in new locales. We are looking for an applied researcher to work on improving search on Amazon using NLP, ML, and DL technology. As an Applied Scientist, you will lead our efforts in query understanding, semantic matching (e.g. is a drone the same as quadcopter?), relevance ranking (what is a "funny halloween costume"?), language identification (did the customer just switch to their mother tongue?), machine translation (猫の餌を注文する). This is a highly visible role with a huge impact on Amazon customers and business. As part of this role, you will develop high precision, high recall, and low latency solutions for search. Your solutions should work for all languages that Amazon supports and will be used in all Amazon locales world-wide. You will develop scalable science and engineering solutions that work successfully in production. You will work with leaders to develop a strategic vision and long term plans to improve search globally. We are growing our collaborative group of engineers and applied scientists by expanding into new areas. This is a position on Global Search Quality team in Seattle Washington. We are moving fast to change the way Amazon search works. Together with a multi-disciplinary team you will work on building solutions with NLP/ML/DL at its core. Along the way, you’ll learn a ton, have fun and make a positive impact on millions of people. Come and join us as we invent new ways to delight Amazon customers.

Intern - Economics

US, WA, Seattle

The retail pricing science and research group is a team of scientists and economists who design and implement the analytics powering pricing for Amazon’s on-line retail business. The team uses world-class analytics to make sure that the prices for all of Amazon’s goods and services are aligned with Amazon’s corporate goals. We are seeking an experienced high-energy Economist to help envision, design and build the next generation of retail pricing capabilities. You will work at the intersection of economic theory, statistical inference, and machine learning to design new methods and pricing strategies to deliver game changing value to our customers. Roughly 85% of previous intern cohorts have converted to full time scientist employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com. Key job responsibilities Amazon’s Pricing Science and Research team is seeking an Economist to help envision, design and build the next generation of pricing capabilities behind Amazon’s on-line retail business. As an economist on our team, you will work at the intersection of economic theory, statistical inference, and machine learning to design new methods and pricing strategies with the potential to deliver game changing value to our customers. This is an opportunity for a high-energy individual to work with our unprecedented retail data to bring cutting edge research into real world applications, and communicate the insights we produce to our leadership. This position is perfect for someone who has a deep and broad analytic background and is passionate about using mathematical modeling and statistical analysis to make a real difference. You should be familiar with modern tools for data science and business analysis. We are particularly interested in candidates with research background in applied microeconomics, econometrics, statistical inference and/or finance. A day in the life Discussions with business partners, as well as product managers and tech leaders to understand the business problem. Brainstorming with other scientists and economists to design the right model for the problem in hand. Present the results and new ideas for existing or forward looking problems to leadership. Deep dive into the data. Modeling and creating working prototypes. Analyze the results and review with partners. Partnering with other scientists for research problems. About the team The retail pricing science and research group is a team of scientists and economists who design and implement the analytics powering pricing for Amazon’s on-line retail business. The team uses world-class analytics to make sure that the prices for all of Amazon’s goods and services are aligned with Amazon’s corporate goals.

Intern - Economics, Retail Pricing Science and Research

US, CA, San Francisco

The retail pricing science and research group is a team of scientists and economists who design and implement the analytics powering pricing for Amazon's on-line retail business. The team uses world-class analytics to make sure that the prices for all of Amazon's goods and services are aligned with Amazon's corporate goals. We are seeking an experienced high-energy Economist to help envision, design and build the next generation of retail pricing capabilities. You will work at the intersection of statistical inference, experimentation design, economic theory and machine learning to design new methods and pricing strategies for assessing pricing innovations. Roughly 85% of previous intern cohorts have converted to full time scientist employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com. Key job responsibilities Amazon's Pricing Science and Research team is seeking an Economist to help envision, design and build the next generation of pricing capabilities behind Amazon's on-line retail business. As an economist on our team, you will will have the opportunity to work with our unprecedented retail data to bring cutting edge research into real world applications, and communicate the insights we produce to our leadership. This position is perfect for someone who has a deep and broad analytic background and is passionate about using mathematical modeling and statistical analysis to make a real difference. You should be familiar with modern tools for data science and business analysis. We are particularly interested in candidates with research background in experimentation design, applied microeconomics, econometrics, statistical inference and/or finance. A day in the life Discussions with business partners, as well as product managers and tech leaders to understand the business problem. Brainstorming with other scientists and economists to design the right model for the problem in hand. Present the results and new ideas for existing or forward looking problems to leadership. Deep dive into the data. Modeling and creating working prototypes. Analyze the results and review with partners. Partnering with other scientists for research problems. About the team The retail pricing science and research group is a team of scientists and economists who design and implement the analytics powering pricing for Amazon's on-line retail business. The team uses world-class analytics to make sure that the prices for all of Amazon's goods and services are aligned with Amazon's corporate goals.

Intern - Economics

US, WA, Bellevue

We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to work with large and complicated data sets. Some knowledge of econometrics, as well as basic familiarity with Python is necessary, and experience with SQL and UNIX would be a plus. These are full-time positions at 40 hours per week, with compensation being awarded on an hourly basis. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis at Internet speed 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. Roughly 85% of interns from previous cohorts have converted to full time economics employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com.

Intern - Economics, Customer Instock Value

US

The Amazon Supply Chain Optimization Technology (SCOT) organization is looking for an Intern in Economics to work on exciting and challenging problems related to Amazon's worldwide inventory planning. SCOT provides unique opportunities to both create and see the direct impact of your work on billions of dollars’ worth of inventory, in one of the world’s most advanced supply chains, and at massive scale. We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to work with large and complicated data sets. We are looking for a PhD candidate with exposure to Program Evaluation/Causal Inference. Knowledge of econometrics and Stata/R/or Python is necessary, and experience with SQL, Hadoop, and Spark would be a plus. These are full-time positions at 40 hours per week, with compensation being awarded on an hourly basis. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis at Internet speed 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. Roughly 85% of previous cohorts have converted to full time scientist employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com.

Intern - Economics, Selling Partner Fees Team

US, WA, Seattle

The Selling Partner Fees team owns the end-to-end fees experience for two million active third party sellers. We own the fee strategy, fee seller experience, fee accuracy and integrity, fee science and analytics, and we provide scalable technology to monetize all services available to third-party sellers. We are looking for an Intern Economist with excellent coding skills to design and develop rigorous models to assess the causal impact of fees on third party sellers’ behavior and business performance. As a Science Intern, you will have access to large datasets with billions of transactions and will translate ambiguous fee related business problems into rigorous scientific models. You will work on real world problems which will help to inform strategic direction and have the opportunity to make an impact for both Amazon and our Selling Partners.