Dr Catherine Breslin on Building Alexa to Be More Human

In today’s episode, I speak to AI and Machine Learning Scientist and founder of Kingfisher Labs - Dr Catherine Breslin. Catherine spent several years in academic research before she joined the Amazon Alexa team during its infancy back in 2014. Whilst there, Catherine managed the Cambridge-based AI Alexa team which were working on inventing foundational Machine Learning tech to build intelligent conversational interfaces for a myriad of devices, apps, languages and environments. The team also worked on technology that enabled the automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding behind Amazon’s Alexa.

Catherine holds a First Class Honours degree in engineering and computer science from Oxford University, a Masters in the field of Speech, Text and Internet Technology from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Engineering and Automatic Speech Recognition, also from Cambridge.

In this fascinating conversation, we talk about how Catherine got into engineering and what led her to the field of speech recognition, what the early days of working on Alexa were like and what the wins and issues were when it first launched.

We also talk about the future of smart devices, what working on Alexa has taught her about human nature, how hard it is from a science perspective, to turn virtual assistants into true companions and how far out we are from achieving AGI - (artificial general intelligence).

I hope you enjoy it!

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Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

Catherine on Twitter @catherinebuk / Website / Instagram @catherinebreslin

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Series 1 of this podcast is sponsored by Sensate – the device which can help to reduce stress and anxiety in less than ten minutes a day. To get an exclusive $25 off your first purchase, simply head to Sensate and insert my discount code POD.