Tur discusses his experience from his early days working on DARPA programs, how he’s seen the field of conversational AI evolve, and more about the machine learning technologies that provide teachable moments for Alexa.
Conversational AI / Natural-language processing

Alexa & Friends features Gokhan Tur, Alexa AI senior principal scientist

Hear Tur discuss his experience from his work on DARPA programs, how he’s seen the field of conversational AI evolve, and more.

By Staff writer
September 28, 2020
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Amazon recently unveiled a host of new devices and AI services, including the ability for Alexa customers to directly teach Alexa. Among other things, this service helps Alexa "learn new concepts on the fly" by having her ask questions to fill gaps in her understanding—similar to what we do as humans.

On October 1, Jeff Blankenburg and Gokhan Tur met for a live interview to discuss Tur’s experience from his early days working on DARPA programs, how he’s seen the field of conversational AI evolve, and more about the machine learning technologies that provide teachable moments for Alexa.

Tur has spent the past 20 years within the industry exploring the field of human/machine conversational language understanding systems. He has helped research and develop some of today’s leading voice technology systems across a diverse set of companies, and today leads research efforts related to helping Alexa become more conversational, natural, context-aware, knowledgeable, and self-learning.

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Data Scientist
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon is looking for an outstanding Data Scientist to join the AWS Product Analytics team. This is your opportunity to be a core part of the team that has direct impact on affecting the long term roadmap of the AWS EC2 Product Team. This role is within a larger Data science, Business Intelligence & Data engineering team that focuses on broad data exploration, quantitative methodology, and statistical modeling to drive actionable data intelligence in AWS.Since early 2006, AWS has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure platform in the cloud. AWS is a high-growth, fast-moving division within Amazon with a start-up mentality where new and diverse challenges arise every day. On the AWS Product Analytics team you will be surrounded by people that are exceptionally talented, bright, and driven, and believe that world class Data Science is critical to our success. To help build this growing team, you must be highly analytical and possess a strong passion for analytics and accountability, set high standards with a focus on superior business success. We take working hard, having fun, and making history seriously. AWS sets the standard for functionality, cost, and performance for many cloud based services, but it’s still early days for cloud computing, and there are boundless opportunities to continue to redefine the world of cloud computing - come help us make history!As a Data Scientist, you will discover and solve real world problems by analyzing large amounts of business data, defining new metrics and business cases, designing simulations and experiments, creating models, and collaborating with colleagues in business, software, and research. You will get the exciting opportunity to work on some of the world’s largest and diverse datasets. The successful candidate will have a strong quantitative background and can thrive in an environment that leverages statistics, machine learning, operations research, econometrics, and business analysis.Here at AWS, we embrace our differences. We are committed to furthering our culture of inclusion. We have ten employee-led affinity groups, reaching 40,000 employees in over 190 chapters globally. We have innovative benefit offerings, and host annual and ongoing learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences. Amazon’s culture of inclusion is reinforced within our 14 Leadership Principles, which remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and earn trust.Work/Life BalanceOur team puts a high value on work-life balance. It isn’t about how many hours you spend at home or at work; it’s about the flow you establish that brings energy to both parts of your life. We believe striking the right balance between your personal and professional life is critical to life-long happiness and fulfillment. We offer flexibility in working hours and encourage you to find your own balance between your work and personal lives.Mentorship & Career GrowthOur team is dedicated to supporting new members. We have a broad mix of experience levels and tenures, and we’re building an environment that celebrates knowledge sharing and mentorship. Our senior members enjoy one-on-one mentoring and thorough, but kind, code reviews. We care about your career growth and strive to assign projects based on what will help each team member develop into a better-rounded engineer and enable them to take on more complex tasks in the future.
Research Scientist, Device Design Group
US, NH, Virtual Location - New Hampshi
The Amazon Device and Services Design Group (DDG) creates revolutionary products used by millions of customers around the world every day - including Echo, Fire TV, Alexa Communications, and more. Within DDG, the DDG Research team is one of the behind-the-scenes teams that enables Amazon’s Devices’ leaders to make informed decisions based on sound mixed-method research and analytics. We are seeking an exceptional Research Scientist to join our team to help us derive insights that serve our customers. If you are inquisitive, passionate about how research can improve decision making, enjoy weaving data into a telling story, and like your research to have real world impact, we want you on our team.As a successful Research Scientist, you:· Are enthusiastic about collaborating with a cross-functional team of UX designers, researchers (qualitative and quantitative), business partners, design technologists, and developers to provide actionable insights.· Demonstrate excellent statistical skills and are excited about learning new methods.· Are naturally curious about people, especially their motivations, attitudes, and behaviors.· Excel when interacting with business and technical partners whether you are chatting, sending a written message, writing a technical report, or conducting a presentation.· Enjoy working with stakeholders to define their key business needs and deliver on those commitments.· Innovate on behalf of your customers by proactively implementing improvements and taking steps to address challenges that they had not yet identified.· Are drawn to ambiguous, complex problems.· Surface and question both your own and others’ underlying assumptions.· Persuade decision makers at all levels of the organization to take aligned action on research findings – inspire and help them internalize opportunities to delight our customers and differentiate our service.· Define, execute, and invent research methods appropriate to the questions at hand, including but not limited to field research, surveys, lab studies, remote testing, and A-B tests.
Intern - Economics
US, PA, Pennsylvania
The Amazon Economics Team is hiring Interns in Economics. 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 Stata or R is necessary, and experience with SQL, UNIX, and Sawtooth 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, data scientists and MBAʼs. 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 50% of research assistants from previous cohorts have converted to full time data science or economics employment at Amazon. If you are interested, please send your CV to our mailing list at econ-internship@amazon.com.Amazon is an Equal Opportunity-Affirmative Action Employer – Minority / Female / Disability / Veteran / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation
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