In the 2nd Quarter of the MSTI program at Global Innovation Exchange, University of Washington, we had a course called the History and Future of Technology. The course aims to give us an understanding and appreciation of past trends in technology to understand the trajectories of technology and how they change over time. This paper was the piece of work for the final assignment. In the article, I explored the path of Amazon Echo/Alexa’s development, and its impact on the society.
Abstract
In 2015, the Seattle-based company Amazon released Amazon Echo, a voice command device that connects to the company’s voice-controlled virtual assistant service Alexa. This research paper will introduce the development path of Amazon Echo/Alexa—how was it conceived, what were the critical decisions made. As the voice-based-command product relatively belongs to a new category, its optimal research and development approach has not been well defined; Amazon initiated the Alexa Prize for university talents to challenge specific topics, we can have a glimpse into the crucial technical challenge in a conversation AI product through this competition. This paper will also cover the ecosystem of the voice-command service industry, its impact on the society, debates, and controversies around such services.
Keywords: Amazon Alexa, conversational AI, natural language processing, machine learning, virtual assistant
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