Amazon on AWS: Seamlessly integrating physical and emerging digital technologies

One area that personally fascinates me is how digital technologies are increasingly shaping the physical spaces around us, such as our homes and workplaces. Amazon Alexa is a great example of this--an on-demand AI assistant that exists in the cloud but that we can access with our voices to control the lighting in our homes, run our sprinklers, and lock our doors. This is the embodiment of our physical environment evolving due to enhancements provided by digital technologies. The natural language processing, machine learning models, speech synthesis, and all of the other complexity is performed in a digital system that sits beyond the walls of your home but is able to connect to that door lock and perform a physical action on your behalf. For an end user, the beauty of Alexa is that they don't have to know how any of this works, which parts are physical or digital; it just makes their lives better.