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Conversational AI

Building software and systems that help people communicate with computers naturally, as if communicating with family and friends.
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  • A graph of our whisper detector’s confidence in its classification (y-axis), across the duration of a single utterance (x-axis)
    Whisper to Alexa, and She’ll Whisper Back
    Zeynab Raeesy
    September 26, 2018
    If you’re in a room where a child has just fallen asleep, and someone else walks in, you might start speaking in a whisper, to indicate that you’re trying to keep the room quiet. The other person will probably start whispering, too.
    Conversational AI
  • Out_of_domain._CB486498512_.jpg
    Photo credit: Monster Ztudio / Shutterstock
    Learning to Recognize the Irrelevant
    Young-Bum Kim
    September 04, 2018
    A central task of natural-language-understanding systems, like the ones that power Alexa, is domain classification, or determining the general subject of a user’s utterances. Voice services must make finer-grained determinations, too, such as the particular actions that a customer wants executed. But domain classification makes those determinations much more efficient, by narrowing the range of possible interpretations.
    Conversational AI
  • Noisy_TV._CB486169992_.jpg
    How Alexa Is Learning to Ignore TV, Radio, and Other Media Players
    Viktor Rozgic, Shiva Sundaram
    August 31, 2018
    Echo devices have already attracted tens of millions of customers, but in the Alexa AI group, we’re constantly working to make Alexa’s speech recognition systems even more accurate.
    Conversational AI
  • Interspeech 2018 logo
    Alexa at Interspeech 2018: How interaction histories can improve speech understanding
    Larry Hardesty
    August 29, 2018
    Alexa’s ability to act on spoken requests depends on statistical models that translate speech to text and text to actions. Historically, the models’ decisions were one-size-fits-all: the same utterance would produce the same action, regardless of context.
    Conversational AI
  • Slot mapping
    How Alexa is learning to converse more naturally
    Arpit Gupta, Chetan Naik
    August 27, 2018
    To handle more-natural spoken interactions, Alexa must track references through several rounds of conversation. If, for instance, a customer says, “How far is it to Redmond?” and after the answer follows up by saying, “Find good Indian restaurants there”, Alexa should be able to infer that “there” refers to Redmond.
    Conversational AI
  • Björn Hoffmeister
    3 questions about Interspeech 2018 with Björn Hoffmeister
    Larry Hardesty
    August 24, 2018
    This year’s Interspeech — the largest conference in speech technology — will take place in Hyderabad, India, the first week of September. More than 40 Amazon researchers will be attending, including Björn Hoffmeister, the senior manager for machine learning in the Alexa Automatic Speech Recognition group. He took a few minutes to answer three questions about this year’s conference.
    Conversational AI
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Postdoctoral Scientist, Fulfillment Technology and Robotics
US, MA, Westborough
Amazon is looking for talented Postdoctoral Scientists to join our Fulfillment Technology and Robotics team for a one-year, full-time research position. The Innovation Lab in BOS27 is a physical space in which new ideas can be explored, hands-on. The Lab provides easier access to tools and equipment our inventors need while also incubating critical technologies necessary for future robotic products. The Lab is intended to not only develop new technologies that can be used in future Fulfillment, Technology, and Robotics products but additionally promote deeper technical collaboration with universities from around the world. The Lab’s research efforts are focused on highly autonomous systems inclusive of robotic manipulation of packages and ASINs, multi-robot systems utilizing vertical space, Amazon integrated gantries, advancements in perception, and collaborative robotics. These five areas of research represent an impactful set of technical capabilities that when realized at a world class level will unlock our desire for a highly automated and adaptable fulfillment supply chain. As a Postdoctoral Scientist you will be developing a coordinated multi-agent system to achieve optimized trajectories under realistic constraints. The project will explore the utility of state-of-the-art methods to solve multi-agent, multi-objective optimization problems with stochastic time and location constraints. The project is motivated by a new technology being developed in the Innovation Lab to introduce efficiencies in the last-mile delivery systems. Key job responsibilities In this role you will: * Work closely with a senior science advisor, collaborate with other scientists and engineers, and be part of Amazon’s diverse global science community. * Publish your innovation in top-tier academic venues and hone your presentation skills. * Be inspired by challenges and opportunities to invent new techniques in your area(s) of expertise.
Applied Scientist
US, CA, Santa Clara
Amazon is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Applied Scientist with a strong machine learning background to help build industry-leading language technology. Our mission is to provide a delightful experience to Amazon’s customers by pushing the envelope in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative AI, Large Language Model (LLM), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Machine Learning (ML), Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Responsible AI, Agent, Evaluation, and Model Adaptation. As part of our AI team in Amazon AWS, you will work alongside internationally recognized experts to develop novel algorithms and modeling 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, as well as contributing to the wider research community. You will gain hands on experience with Amazon’s heterogeneous text and structured data sources, and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in language understanding. The Science team at AWS Bedrock builds science foundations of Bedrock, which is a fully managed service that makes high-performing foundation models available for use through a unified API. We are adamant about continuously learning state-of-the-art NLP/ML/LLM technology and exploring creative ways to delight our customers. In our daily job we are exposed to large scale NLP needs and we apply rigorous research methods to respond to them with efficient and scalable innovative solutions. At AWS Bedrock, you’ll experience the benefits of working in a dynamic, entrepreneurial environment, while leveraging AWS resources, one of the world’s leading cloud companies and you’ll be able to publish your work in top tier conferences and journals. We are building a brand new team to help develop a new NLP service for AWS. You will have the opportunity to conduct novel research and influence the science roadmap and direction of the team. Come join this greenfield opportunity! About the team AWS Bedrock Science Team is a part of AWS Utility Computing AWS Utility Computing (UC) provides product innovations — from foundational services such as Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), to consistently released new product innovations that continue to set AWS’s services and features apart in the industry. As a member of the UC organization, you’ll support the development and management of Compute, Database, Storage, Internet of Things (Iot), Platform, and Productivity Apps services in AWS, including support for customers who require specialized security solutions for their cloud services. About the team 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.
Applied Scientist, Personalization
GB, MLN, Edinburgh
We’re looking for a Machine Learning Scientist in the Personalization team for our Edinburgh office experienced in generative AI and large models. You will be responsible for developing and disseminating customer-facing personalized recommendation models. This is a hands-on role with global impact working with a team of world-class engineers and scientists across the Edinburgh offices and wider organization. You will lead the design of machine learning models that scale to very large quantities of data, and serve high-scale low-latency recommendations to all customers worldwide. You will embody scientific rigor, designing and executing experiments to demonstrate the technical efficacy and business value of your methods. You will work alongside a science team to delight customers by aiding in recommendations relevancy, and raise the profile of Amazon as a global leader in machine learning and personalization. Successful candidates will have strong technical ability, focus on customers by applying a customer-first approach, excellent teamwork and communication skills, and a motivation to achieve results in a fast-paced environment. Our position offers exceptional opportunities for every candidate to grow their technical and non-technical skills. If you are selected, you have the opportunity to make a difference to our business by designing and building state of the art machine learning systems on big data, leveraging Amazon’s vast computing resources (AWS), working on exciting and challenging projects, and delivering meaningful results to customers world-wide. Key job responsibilities Develop machine learning algorithms for high-scale recommendations problems. Rapidly design, prototype and test many possible hypotheses in a high-ambiguity environment, making use of both quantitative analysis and business judgement. Collaborate with software engineers to integrate successful experimental results into large-scale, highly complex Amazon production systems capable of handling 100,000s of transactions per second at low latency. Report results in a manner which is both statistically rigorous and compellingly relevant, exemplifying good scientific practice in a business environment.
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!
Senior Data Scientist - APS, Publisher Products
US, CA, Palo Alto
Amazon’s Advertising Technology team builds the technology infrastructure and ad serving systems to manage billions of advertising queries every day. The result is better quality advertising for publishers and more relevant ads for customers. In this organization you’ll experience the benefits of working in a dynamic, entrepreneurial environment, while leveraging the resources of Amazon.com (AMZN), one of the world's leading companies. Amazon Publisher Services (APS) helps publishers of all sizes and on all channels better monetize their content through effective advertising. APS unites publishers with advertisers across devices and media channels. We work with Amazon teams across the globe to solve complex problems for our customers. The end results are Amazon products that let publishers focus on what they do best - publishing. The APS Publisher Products Engineering team is responsible for building cloud-based advertising technology services that help Web, Mobile, Streaming TV broadcasters and Audio publishers grow their business. The engineering team focuses on unlocking our ad tech on the most impactful Desktop, mobile and Connected TV devices in the home, bringing real-time capabilities to this medium for the first time. As a Data Scientist in our team, you will collaborate directly with developers and scientists to produce modeling solutions, you will partner with software developers and data engineers to build end-to-end data pipelines and production code, and you will have exposure to senior leadership as we communicate results and provide scientific guidance to the business. You will analyze large amounts of business data, automate and scale the analysis, and develop metrics (like ROAS, Share of Wallet) that will enable us to continually delight our customers worldwide. As a successful data scientist, you are an analytical problem solver who enjoys diving into data, is excited about investigations and algorithms, can multi-task, and can credibly interface between technical teams and business stakeholders. Your analytical abilities, business understanding, and technical aptitude will be used to identify specific and actionable opportunities to solve existing business problems and look around corners for future opportunities. Your expertise in synthesizing and communicating insights and recommendations to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication will enable you to answer specific business questions and innovate for the future. Major responsibilities include: · Utilizing code (Apache, Spark, Python, R, Scala, etc.) for analyzing data and building statistical models to solve specific business problems. · Collaborate with product, BIEs, software developers, and business leaders to define product requirements and provide analytical support · Build customer-facing reporting to provide insights and metrics which track system performance · Communicating verbally and in writing to business customers and leadership team with various levels of technical knowledge, educating them about our systems, as well as sharing insights and recommendations
Applied Scientist , Amazon
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon Advertising operates at the intersection of eCommerce and advertising, and is investing heavily in building a world-class advertising business. We are defining and delivering a collection of self-service performance advertising products that drive discovery and sales. Our products are strategically important to our Retail and Marketplace businesses driving long-term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks daily and are breaking fresh ground to create world-class products to improve both shopper and advertiser experience. With a broad mandate to experiment and innovate, we grow at an unprecedented rate with a seemingly endless range of new opportunities. The Ad Response Prediction team in Sponsored Products organization build advanced deep-learning models, large-scale machine-learning pipelines, and real-time serving infra to match shoppers’ intent to relevant ads on all devices, for all contexts and in all marketplaces. Through precise estimation of shoppers’ interaction with ads and their long-term value, we aim to drive optimal ads allocation and pricing, and help to deliver a relevant, engaging and delightful ads experience to Amazon shoppers. As the business and the complexity of various new initiatives we take continues to grow, we are looking for talented Applied Scientists to join the team. Key job responsibilities As a Applied Scientist II, you will: * Conduct hands-on data analysis, build large-scale machine-learning models and pipelines * Work closely with software engineers on detailed requirements, technical designs and implementation of end-to-end solutions in production * Run regular A/B experiments, gather data, perform statistical analysis, and communicate the impact to senior management * Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large-scale data analysis, machine-learning model development, model validation and serving * Provide technical leadership, research new machine learning approaches to drive continued scientific innovation * Be a member of the Amazon-wide Machine Learning Community, participating in internal and external MeetUps, Hackathons and Conferences
Sr. Applied Scientist, Prime Video Peak Forecasting
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! 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.
Applied Scientist, mmPROS Surface Transportaton Research Science
US, WA, Bellevue
mmPROS Surface Research Science seeks an exceptional Applied Scientist with expertise in optimization and machine learning to optimize Amazon's middle mile transportation network, the backbone of its logistics operations. Amazon's middle mile transportation network utilizes a fleet of semi-trucks, trains, and airplanes to transport millions of packages and other freight between warehouses, vendor facilities, and customers, on time and at low cost. The Surface Research Science team delivers innovation, models, algorithms, and other scientific solutions to efficiently plan and operate the middle mile surface (truck and rail) transportation network. The team focuses on large-scale problems in vehicle route planning, capacity procurement, network design, forecasting, and equipment re-balancing. Your role will be to build innovative optimization and machine learning models to improve driver routing and procurement efficiency. Your models will impact business decisions worth billions of dollars and improve the delivery experience for millions of customers. You will operate as part of a team of innovative, experienced scientists working on optimization and machine learning. You will work in close collaboration with partners across product, engineering, business intelligence, and operations. Key job responsibilities - Design and develop optimization and machine learning models to inform our hardest planning decisions. - Implement models and algorithms in Amazon's production software. - Lead and partner with product, engineering, and operations teams to drive modeling and technical design for complex business problems. - Lead complex modeling and data analyses to aid management in making key business decisions and set new policies. - Write documentation for scientific and business audiences. About the team This role is part of mmPROS Surface Research Science. Our mission is to build the most efficient and optimal transportation network on the planet, using our science and technology as our biggest advantage. We leverage technologies in optimization, operations research, and machine learning to grow our businesses and solve Amazon's unique logistical challenges. Scientists in the team work in close collaboration with each other and with partners across product, software engineering, business intelligence, and operations. They regularly interact with software engineering teams and business leadership.
Applied Scientist I, Seller Growth Science
US, WA, Seattle
Join us in the evolution of Amazon’s Seller business! The Seller Growth Science organization is the growth and development engine for our Store. Partnering with business, product, and engineering, we catalyze SP growth with comprehensive and accurate data, unique insights, and actionable recommendations and collaborate with WW SP facing teams to drive adoption and create feedback loops. We strongly believe that any motivated SP should be able to grow their businesses and reach their full potential supported by Amazon tools and resources. We are looking for an Applied Scientist I to lead us to identify data-driven insight and opportunities to improve our SP growth strategy and drive seller success. As a successful applied scientist on our talented team of scientists and engineers, you will solve complex problems to identify actionable opportunities, and collaborate with engineering, research, and business teams for future innovation. You need to be a sophisticated user and builder of statistical models and put them in production to answer specific business questions. You are an expert at synthesizing and communicating insights and recommendations to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication. You will continue to contribute to the research community, by working with scientists across Amazon, as well as collaborating with academic researchers and publishing papers (www.aboutamazon.com/research). Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist on the team, you will: - Identify opportunities to improve SP growth and development process and translate those opportunities into science problems via principled statistical solutions (e.g. ML, causal, DL, RL). - Hold us to a high standard of technical rigor and excellence in MLOps. - Execute roadmaps for complex science projects to help SP have a delightful selling experience while creating long term value for our shoppers. - Work with our engineering partners and draw upon your experience to meet latency and other system constraints. - Identify untapped, high-risk technical and scientific directions, and simulate new research directions that you will drive to completion and deliver. - Be responsible for communicating our science innovations to the broader internal & external scientific community.
Applied Scientist I, Amazon Smart Vehicles
US, WA, Seattle
The Amazon Smart Vehicles (ASV) science team is seeking a passionate and skilled Applied Scientist with extensive expertise in advanced LLM technologies. This role involves innovating in rapidly evolving areas of AI research, focusing on creating personalized services to enhance drivers' and passengers' experiences. Your work will aim to simplify their lives, keep them informed, entertained, productive, and safe on the road, with direct application to prominent Amazon products. If you have extensive expertise in LLMs, natural language processing, and machine learning, along with experience in high-performing research teams, this could be the perfect opportunity for you. Our dynamic and fast-paced environment demands a high level of independence in decision-making and the ability to drive ambitious research initiatives through to production. You will collaborate closely with other science and engineering teams, as well as business stakeholders, to ensure your contributions are both impactful and delivered with maximum efficiency. Key job responsibilities - Leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) - Work with talented peers to lead the development of novel algorithms and modeling techniques to advance the state of the art with LLMs - Collaborate with other science and engineering teams as well as business stakeholders to maximize the velocity and impact of your contributions. About the team This is an exciting moment to lead in AI research. As part of the Amazon Smart Vehicles science team, you have the opportunity to shape the future by enhancing information-driven experiences for Amazon customers around the globe. Your work will directly influence customers through innovative products and services powered by language and multimodal technology!
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