Amazon Launches $2.5 Million Alexa Prize For College Students Building Bots (venturebeat.com) 16
Amazon has announced the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million award for college students who develop technology to make it more natural to talk with company's Alexa virtual assistant. Amazon said it hopes to build a socialbot on Alexa which is capable of conversing with people about popular topics and news events. VentureBeat adds: Up to ten teams will be sponsored by Amazon and receive a $100,000 stipend, Alexa-enabled devices, free AWS services, and support from the Alexa team. [...] The first contest will be held at AWS re:invent in November 2017. Among other bot-building contests, the Watson Group at IBM has prizes and cash for anyone who can make bots that talk to each other.
Godwin'd (Score:2)
Who talks to bots? (Score:2)
Are there people who want to talk to bots about "popular topics and news events"?
I mean, really?
I don't.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm wondering the same thing. Who are these people that want to talk to devices? Even Apple's new AirPods require you to control them with speech.
I can type and read much faster than I can speak/listen, plus I'm not too excited about always-on microphones that are connected to the Internet.
Bots that talk to each other (Score:2)
Like ntpd?
So lonely... (Score:2)
I'm so lonely, even Alexa refuses to talk to me anymore.
Age discrimination... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because if you manage to do it, you'd realize that it's actually worth a lot more than just $100k.
All students (they hope) will see is 'wow, I might be able to pay off my loans with this!'
Much cheaper (Score:2)
Thank paying for a whole team and their operating budget for a year...
Way to take the cheap route, Amazon...
At some point, I am sure that the entirety of Amazon's human workforce will consist of Jeff Bezos...