Are you up to the Challenge? Announcing the Alexa Prize: 2.5 Million to Advance Conversational Artificial Intelligence - Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming ubiquitous. With advances in technology, algorithms, and sheer compute power, it is now becoming practical to utilize AI techniques in many everyday applications including transportation, healthcare, gaming, productivity, and media. Simple and natural for humans, voice communication in everyday language continues to be one of the ultimate challenges for AI. Human conversation requires the ability to understand the meaning of spoken language, relate that meaning to the context of the conversation, create a shared understanding and world view between the parties, model discourse and plan conversational moves, maintain semantic and logical coherence across turns, and to generate natural speech. Today, we are pleased to announce the Alexa Prize, a 2.5 million university competition to advance conversational AI through voice.