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Sage: A multimodal knowledge graph-based conversational agent for complex task guidance

By University of California, Santa Cruz
2023
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This paper presents Sage, a task-oriented multimodal conversational agent devel- oped for the Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge 2. Focusing on cooking and DIY tasks, Sage integrates task-oriented dialogues with engaging general chats for a human-like interaction model. Its innovative hierarchical dialogue state management, based on hierarchical state machines, enables a flexible conversation flow managing both cross-task and inner-task intents. To offer comprehensive task- related insights, Sage employs a multimodal task knowledge graph, integrating diverse online data with advanced image generation and large language model techniques. Moreover, Sage pioneers an open-domain intent grounding approach with a T5-based model for high-level intent classification and an LLM-based model for open-domain demand understanding. These strategies allow Sage to handle complex user requests, fostering dynamic, relevant conversations. At the end of the semifinals, Sage achieved an average rating of 3.57/5.0.

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Manager, Applied Scientist
IN, TS, Hyderabad
Welcome to the Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team (WWR&R) at Amazon.com. WWR&R is an agile, innovative organization dedicated to ‘making zero happen’ to benefit our customers, our company, and the environment. Our goal is to achieve the three zeroes: zero cost of returns, zero waste, and zero defects. We do this by developing products and driving truly innovative operational excellence to help customers keep what they buy, recover returned and damaged product value, keep thousands of tons of waste from landfills, and create the best customer returns experience in the world. We have an eye to the future – we create long-term value at Amazon by focusing not just on the bottom line, but on the planet. We are building the most sustainable re-use channel we can by driving multiple aspects of the Circular Economy for Amazon – Returns & ReCommerce. Amazon WWR&R is comprised of business, product, operational, program, software engineering and data teams that manage the life of a returned or damaged product from a customer to the warehouse and on to its next best use. Our work is broad and deep: we train machine learning models to automate routing and find signals to optimize re-use; we invent new channels to give products a second life; we develop highly respected product support to help customers love what they buy; we pilot smarter product evaluations; we work from the customer backward to find ways to make the return experience remarkably delightful and easy; and we do it all while scrutinizing our business with laser focus. You will help create everything from customer-facing and vendor-facing websites to the internal software and tools behind the reverse-logistics process. You can develop scalable, high-availability solutions to solve complex and broad business problems. We are a group that has fun at work while driving incredible customer, business, and environmental impact. We are backed by a strong leadership group dedicated to operational excellence that empowers a reasonable work-life balance. As an established, experienced team, we offer the scope and support needed for substantial career growth. Amazon is earth’s most customer-centric company and through WWR&R, the earth is our customer too. Come join us and innovate with the Amazon Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team!
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US, CA, Palo Alto
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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! In Prime Video READI, our mission is to automate infrastructure scaling and operational readiness. We are growing a team specialized in time series modeling, forecasting, and release safety. This team will invent and develop algorithms for forecasting multi-dimensional related time series. The team will develop forecasts on key business dimensions with optimization recommendations related to performance and efficiency opportunities across our global software environment. As a founding member of the core team, you will apply your deep coding, modeling and statistical knowledge to concrete problems that have broad cross-organizational, global, and technology impact. Your work will focus on retrieving, cleansing and preparing large scale datasets, training and evaluating models and deploying them to production where we continuously monitor and evaluate. You will work on large engineering efforts that solve significantly complex problems facing global customers. You will be trusted to operate with complete independence and are often assigned to focus on areas where the business and/or architectural strategy has not yet been defined. You must be equally comfortable digging in to business requirements as you are drilling into design with development teams and developing production ready learning models. You consistently bring strong, data-driven business and technical judgment to decisions. You will work with internal and external stakeholders, cross-functional partners, and end-users around the world at all levels. Our team makes a big impact because nothing is more important to us than delivering for our customers, continually earning their trust, and thinking long term. You are empowered to bring new technologies to your solutions. If you crave a sense of ownership, this is the place to be.
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US, WA, Seattle
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Applied scientist, Agentic AI, AWS Agentic AI
IL, Tel Aviv
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Applied scientist, Agentic AI, AWS Agentic AI
IL, Haifa
Come join the AWS Agentic AI science team in building the next generation models for intelligent automation. AWS, the world-leading provider of cloud services, has fostered the creation and growth of countless new businesses, and is a positive force for good. Our customers bring problems that will give Applied Scientists like you endless opportunities to see your research have a positive and immediate impact in the world. You will have the opportunity to partner with technology and business teams to solve real-world problems, have access to virtually endless data and computational resources, and to world-class engineers and developers that can help bring your ideas into the world. As part of the team, we expect that you will develop innovative solutions to hard problems, and publish your findings at peer reviewed conferences and workshops. We are looking for world class researchers with experience in one or more of the following areas - autonomous agents, API orchestration, Planning, large multimodal models (especially vision-language models), reinforcement learning (RL) and sequential decision making.
Principal Applied Scientist, Last Mile Delivery Automation
US, MA, Westborough
We are seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to lead the development of our autonomous driving stack for last-mile delivery vehicles. In this role, you will drive technical innovation, architect advanced autonomous systems, and lead a team of researchers and engineers in pushing the boundaries of what's possible in autonomous delivery. Key job responsibilities As the Principal Applied Scientist, you will architect and evolve LMDA's autonomous driving stack for last-mile delivery vehicles. Your role involves driving research and development in key areas such as perception, prediction, planning, and control. You will develop novel algorithms and approaches to solve complex challenges in urban autonomous navigation. A critical aspect of your role will be leading system-level architecture decisions and setting technical direction for the autonomous systems team. You will mentor and develop a team of scientists and engineers, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence. This involves close collaboration with cross-functional teams including hardware, safety, and operations to ensure seamless integration of autonomous systems. As a senior technical leader, you will represent LMDA's technical capabilities to partners, customers, and at industry conferences. In this role, you will define and execute the technical roadmap for LMDA's autonomous systems. This includes identifying key research areas and technological advancements that will drive LMDA's competitive advantage. A crucial aspect of your role will be balancing long-term research goals with near-term product delivery needs. You will lead the integration of various autonomous subsystems into a cohesive, performant stack. This includes developing and implementing strategies for optimizing system performance across hardware and software. You will also design and oversee testing and validation frameworks for autonomous systems. About the team Last Mile Delivery Automation (LMDA) is at the forefront of revolutionizing the logistics industry through advanced autonomous vehicle technology. Our mission is to create safe, efficient, and scalable autonomous solutions for last-mile delivery, reducing costs and environmental impact while improving delivery speed and reliability.
Senior Research Scientist , Worldwide Grocery Stores Technologies
US, VA, Arlington
he WWGST (Worldwide Grocery Stores Tech) teams are seeking a highly motivated Senior Research Scientist (Level 6) to join our team that is focused on building new technologies for grocery stores. We are a team of applied scientists invent new algorithms (especially artificial intelligence, computer vision and sensor fusion) to improve customer experiences in grocery shopping such as Dash Cart or Self-CheckOut. The Amazon Dash Cart is a smart shopping cart that uses sensors to keep track of what a shopper has added. Once done, they can bypass the checkout lane and just walk out. The cart comes with convenience features like a store map, a basket that can weigh produce, and product recommendations. Amazon Dash Cart’s are available at Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods. Learn more about the Dash Cart at https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=21289116011 Key job responsibilities As a Senior Research Scientist, you will help solve a variety of technical challenges and mentor other junior scientists. You will be leader of the science team to resolve the hard problems. You will play an active role in translating business and functional requirements into concrete deliverables and build quick prototypes or proofs of concept in partnership with other technology leaders within the team. You will tackle challenging, novel situations every day and given the size of this initiative, you’ll have the opportunity to work with multiple technical teams at Amazon in different locations. You should be comfortable with a degree of ambiguity that’s higher than most projects and relish the idea of solving problems that, frankly, haven’t been solved before - anywhere. Along the way, we guarantee that you’ll learn a ton, have fun and make a positive impact on millions of people. About the team Diverse Experiences Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred 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. 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 flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Mentorship and 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.
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