The artificial intelligence battle between Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant may have just heated up a notch as Ashwin Ram, previously the Senior Manager of Alexa AI, has joined Google as the Technical Director of AI at Google Cloud.
Posting on LinkedIn, Ram announced the move two days ago in a very short post by saying he believes that “Google arguably has the best AI on the planet.”
“Excited to share that I’m joining Google Cloud as Technical Director of AI in the Office of the CTO. 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.”
Aside from that, details are scarce as to what projects he’ll actually be involved in but it definitely sounds like Google is looking to push their Google Assistant and artificial intelligence capabilities out as widely and broadly as possible. Having been with Amazon for two years in the role of Senior Manager of Alexa AI, Ram was also the lead of the Alexa Prize, a university competition which tasks teams with creating a socialbot that can converse “coherently and engagingly” with humans for 20 minutes.
“I’ve had an awesome couple of years at Amazon Alexa working with some of the smartest people I know. Delighted to have had the opportunity to create and lead Alexa Prize and to experience this legendary Day 1 company from the inside.”
Prior to working for Amazon, Ram spent 5 years at PARC which also overlapped with 9 years spent as the Chariman of OpenStudy.com, which he co-founded.
What do you think about Ram leaving Amazon to join Google? Do you agree and think that Google has “the best” artificial intelligence “on the planet?” Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6373907064732946432/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: LinkedIn[/button][button link=”https://qz.com/1217188/amazon-alexas-head-ai-researcher-has-left-for-google/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Via: Quartz[/button]
