Five Finalists Chosen for the Grand Challenge 5 of Alexa Prize SocialBot
Introduction:
Five university teams have been selected to participate in the final live interactions phase of the Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 5 (SGC5). These teams have been chosen based on customer feedback and the scientific merit of their technical papers. The selected universities include Czech Technical University, Prague; University of California, Santa Cruz; Stanford University; University of California, Santa Barbara; and Stevens Institute of Technology. Alexa customers can interact with these university socialbots by saying “Alexa, let’s discuss” on Amazon Echo or Fire TV devices. The winning teams will be determined during the SocialBot Grand Challenge finals event in August, and they have the chance to win cash prizes totaling $650,000. This is an exciting opportunity for university students to launch innovations and obtain feedback from Alexa customers. The ultimate goal of the challenge is to earn a $1 million research grant for the university that meets the Grand Challenge. In addition to overall performance, there will also be awards for scientific innovation in conversational AI.
Full Article: Five Finalists Chosen for the Grand Challenge 5 of Alexa Prize SocialBot
University teams have been selected to participate in the final live interactions phase of the Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 5 (SGC5). These teams were chosen based on customer feedback and the scientific merit of their technical papers. The selected teams will have their publications featured on the Amazon Science website.
The Five University Teams Selected:
1. Alquist – Czech Technical University, Prague (Faculty advisor: Jan Šedivý)
2. Athena – University of California, Santa Cruz (Faculty advisor: Xin Wang)
3. Chirpy Cardinal – Stanford University (Faculty advisor: Christopher Manning)
4. GauchoChat – University of California, Santa Barbara (Faculty advisor: Xifeng Yan)
5. NAM – Stevens Institute of Technology (Faculty advisor: Jia Xu)
Customers can interact with these university socialbots by saying “Alexa, let’s discuss” on Amazon Echo or Fire TV devices. The student teams will receive customer ratings and feedback to improve their bots as they compete for a total cash prize of $650,000. The finals phase allows the university teams to implement their latest innovations and adjust their approach based on customer feedback.
The winners of the SocialBot Grand Challenge will be determined during the finals event in August. The Alexa Prize, a partnership program between industry and academia, provides an experimentation platform and tools for scientific discovery. University students have the opportunity to launch their innovations online and adapt based on feedback from Alexa customers.
The SGC5 teams face a new challenge of providing a compelling multimodal user experience, integrating speech with visuals. They are exploring various approaches, including emotive avatars, synchronized graphics and multimedia, image generation, and multimodal dialogue using hints and touch input.
The goal is to meet the Grand Challenge by earning a composite score of 4.0 or higher and having coherent and engaging conversations with the socialbot for 20 minutes. The first team to achieve this will win a $1 million research grant for their university.
This year’s SocialBot Grand Challenge incorporates multimodal customer experiences, allowing for verbal conversations as well as presentation of images or text on Echo screen devices or Fire TV. Teams can enhance their customer interactions by including diverse and meaningful information.
There are two sets of awards for this year: one for overall social interaction performance and another for scientific innovation. Cash prizes will be awarded to the first, second, and third-place teams in each category.
Each university selected for the challenge receives a $250,000 research grant, Alexa-enabled devices, free AWS cloud computing services, access to Amazon scientists, and various tools and support from the Alexa Prize team.
In previous challenges, participating teams have improved the state of the art for open domain dialogue systems, including natural language understanding, response generation models, common sense knowledge modeling, and dialogue policies. Some of the previous winners include teams from Czech Technical University, Stanford University, University of Buffalo, Emory University, University of Washington, and University of California, Davis.
Summary: Five Finalists Chosen for the Grand Challenge 5 of Alexa Prize SocialBot
Five university teams have been selected to participate in the final live interactions phase of the Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 5 (SGC5). These teams were chosen based on customer feedback and the scientific merit of their technical papers. The selected university teams are from Czech Technical University, Prague; University of California, Santa Cruz; Stanford University; University of California, Santa Barbara; and Stevens Institute of Technology. Alexa customers can interact with these university socialbots using Amazon Echo or Fire TV devices. The winning teams will be determined in August, and they will have the opportunity to win cash prizes and research grants. This year’s challenge also includes a focus on providing a multimodal user experience, combining speech with visuals. The ultimate goal is to achieve a composite score of 4.0 or higher from a panel of judges and maintain coherent and engaging conversations for 20 minutes. This year’s challenge also includes awards for overall performance and scientific innovation. The selected university teams receive research grants, Alexa-enabled devices, and access to Amazon scientists and tools to support their research and development efforts.
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