Thursday, September 29, 2016

Amazon Offers Up $2.5 Million Prize For Conversational AI Bot

Seattle-based Amazon said Thursday it is putting up $2.5 million in prizes, to spur the creation of conversational, artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which can converse with humans for 20 minutes about popular topics and news events. According to Amazon, the new Alexa Prize will award $500,000 in a prize to a university team which creates a "socialbot" with the highest performance in the competition, with an additional $1M to be awarded to that team's university if that bot can converse for 20 minutes "coherently and engagingly". Amazon also said it will offer up a $100,000 stipend for up to ten teams to work on the contest--which runs until November of 2017.