Heriot-Watt claims podium place in Amazon artificial intelligence competition

A Scottish university reached the final three of a prestigious international competition dedicated to advancing conversational artificial intelligence (AI). A team of Phd students from Heriot-Watt saw more than 100 entries from 22 countries including the likes of Harvard and Princeton to become the only UK institution to be placed in the Alexa Prize. A nine-strong team, named What's Up Bot, won plaudists from judges for their artificial intelligence software named Alana, which can understand and respond to human conversation. The annual competition is organised by online retail giant Amazon and is named after the Alexa voice command system that powers Amazon Echo. The team of PhD students from Heriot-Watt's school of mathematical and computer sciences finished behind fellow finalists, the Czech Technical University and eventual winners, the University of Washington, at a ceremony held in Las Vegas on Tuesday, 28 November.