Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Amazon Launches $2.5 Million AI Contest for College Students

A new contest from Amazon aims to accelerate the field of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and make its Alexa voice assistant even more chatty. The inaugural Alexa Prize contest challenges university and college students around the world to develop a “socialbot” that can that can hold a conversation with a human for 20 minutes.

Students will use the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) to build their socialbots. They will advance several areas of conversational AI, including “knowledge of acquisition, natural language understanding, natural language generation, context modeling, commonsense reasoning and dialog planning,” according to the Amazon announcement.

Amazon will award the following prizes:

  • Up to 10 teams will receive a $100,000 stipend, Alexa-enabled devices, free AWS services and support from the ASK team;
  • A $500,000 prize for the team that creates the best socialbot; and
  • A $1 million grand prize for the winning team’s college or university if they build a bot that can hold a coherent and engaging conversation “on popular topics” with a human for 20 minutes.

Teams can enter the contest between Sept. 29 and Oct. 28. On Nov. 14, participants will be announced and the competition will begin. 

To learn more about the Alexa Prize, visit the contest site.

About the Author

Sri Ravipati is Web producer for THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • artificial intelligence on laptop

    OpenAI to Combine AI Products into Desktop 'Superapp'

    OpenAI is reportedly developing a desktop application that would combine several of its emerging AI products into a single platform, according to reports, marking the latest step in the company's effort to transform ChatGPT from a standalone chatbot into a broader productivity and automation environment.

  • woman surrounded by virtual hologram icons

    Beyond AI Adoption: Designing Learning for an Age of Abundant Intelligence

    Higher education was designed for a world in which access to knowledge, expertise, feedback, mentorship, and authentic learning experiences were inherently scarce. By making many forms of intelligence increasingly abundant, AI is inherently redefining the existing paradigm.

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.

  • Profile silhouette of a person thoughtfully touching their chin, overlaid with transparent data visualizations and digital interface elements suggesting artificial intelligence and analytics.

    The Institutional Knowledge Shift Is Reshaping Higher Ed IT

    Higher education IT leaders are navigating a quiet but consequential transition: Experienced team members are retiring or leaving for private-sector roles, and the teams replacing them are smaller, newer, and often stretched thin. The result is a structural shift in how technology decisions are made, executed, and sustained.