AI and the application of it within digital assistants is the current frontier that many companies are fighting. At the head of the pack, by a substantial amount, is Google with Google Assistant and Amazon with Alexa. In a bid to extend the lead that many say they have Google have expanded their team with a very valuable addition.
Ashwin Ram, now the former Senior Manager and Lead for Alexa AI at Amazon has changed sides and is now the Technical Director for AI for Google Cloud in the Office of the CTO. He made the announcement of his new position in a post on LinkedIn. In the post he states that:
Google arguably has the best AI on the planet; my role will be to help make that AI even better and broadly available to everyone.
As you would imagine, AI is very early in its lifetime and as such people who are experts at what Mr Ram do is very rare and as such this is a great coup for Google. Although Google already has a lead on Amazon in this area there are many things that Google could still learn from Amazon so hopefully this helps Google Assistant improve even more.
Where his research leads will be exciting to watch but you can be sure that Google will be helping him and the team of AI researchers to push all known boundaries to push AI into areas we never though possible. The next few years will be very interesting to see where AI takes us, hopefully not to Skynet stage.
Which AI digital assistant do you prefer? Have you used Alexa much?
