How machine learning can bridge the communication gap

In October 2019, an Amazon employee in Melbourne, Australia, bumped into another person while cycling on the road. As she was assuring that person that she would help, she realised he was deaf and mute and had no idea what she was saying. That awkward situation could have been avoided if assistive technology was on hand to facilitate communication between the two parties. Following the incident, a team led by Santanu Dutt, head of technology for Southeast Asia at Amazon Web Services, got down to work. Within 10 days or so, Dutt's team had built a machine learning model that was trained on sign languages.