Rohit Prasad: The Indian engineer who is the brain behind Alexa

Alexa, who is your creator? "I was invented by Amazon." This is Alexa's normal answer to the question. What she does not reveal, is that the person who breathed life into Alexa, and led the technological side of the project almost since its inception five years ago, is Rohit Prasad, an engineer from Ranchi, Jharkhand.

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Prasad, with his colleague Toni Reid who focuses on the consumer experience, was number 15 on the list of 100 people in technology, business and the media. 2017

Jeff Bezos, Susan Fowler, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and Satya Nadella were among the 14 people in front of him. Recode said that Prasad and Reid had made Alexa a household name.

Star Trek Inspired the Indian Technician to Create Alexa


The Indian Rohit Prasad was ranked 9th (and Reid No. 10) in the 100 Most Creative People of Fast Company in Business in 2017. Fast Company said Prasad and Reid had turned Alexa into a "consumer experience defining the category".

Prasad still has family in Ranchi and visits the city once a year and a half. Last week was one of those visits. On Thursday, he spent nearly an hour talking to YOU ​​over the phone from the capital of Jharkhand. "My dad was working for Mecon, my grandfather for HEC (Heavy Engineering Corp), so I have three generations here," he says. This is the kind that puts you at ease. "I'm still the Times of India.It's my # 1 source of information to understand what's happening in India," was the second line of the conversation.Prasad studied at DAV High School. For engineering, he has had several offers, including from IIT-Roorkee.He chose the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, at Ranchi. "I decided to stay closer to home, "he says.

He completed his engineering degree in electronics and communication in 1997, then at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the United States, where he did an innovative research in low-speed speech coding for applications without thread. It's probably there that his interest in speech recognition has begun.

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For the next 14 years, he was with BBN Technologies, an R & D branch of the Raytheon Defense Company. BBN was one of the founding sites of ARPANET, a predecessor of the Internet.

It was also one of the leading R & D sites for voice recognition, natural language comprehension and machine learning in general. Prasad was deputy director of this business unit, leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers, developers and program managers. sponsored government and commercial projects on a large scale.

In 2013, he moved to Amazon to use the same skills to try to revolutionize the way customers interact with Amazon products and services.

Two years ago, he was renamed chief scientist of artificial intelligence of Alexa. "The trip was exciting – if you look back five years, talking to a remote device, in the middle of a lot of noise, was only science fiction." We grew up in the era Star Trek, which inspired us, "he says.

Captain Kirk and the crew give voice commands, such as "Give me a distortion gear", instead of pressing buttons or navigating a menu.

Touch is ineffective, says Prasad. In home automation, this means that if you need to turn on the garage light, you have to find your phone, find the app, click on it, find the right light, and then get the result. "It's too much of a step, instead you can just tell Alexa, turn on the garage light."

Prasad says the project had four big challenges. One, the system must recognize speech. Secondly, once he recognizes speech, he must give meaning to words, or what is called natural language comprehension. Third, it must have enough resources to implement the user command. And four, the abilities need to improve each day, understand the context of the user to give the best result.

Prasad says that the inflection point for Alexa came in 2015 when Amazon allowed third-party developers to develop skills for Alexa and integrate voice service into their apps or devices.

Suddenly, Alexa was able to perform countless tasks and be present anywhere. Amazon's market share for smart home speakers – where Google Home is potentially great – is estimated by some at 76%.

Why does Alexa use the most? Music is the most popular – asking Alexa to play a particular song. In homes that have smart devices, Alexa is used a lot to turn on the lights, to switch shows on television. "My favorite, since I have family in India and I am in the United States, is to communicate via the Alexa app – video call, drop off in my mom's kitchen, or when I'm traveling, fall in my children at home, "says Prasad. The latter is a feature that works as an intercom among those who have Alexa devices.

The launch of Alexa in India was the fourth, after the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. And Prasad admits that India has been the most disheartening. Wide variety of accents, languages, mixed languages. "People ask Alexa," weather kya hai "(how long is it) There is a lot of that mixed language coming in. People say names like Amitabh Bachchan very differently."

Prasad says that Alexa is addressing much of this issue very effectively today, but says that she will improve as she learns more and more. more interactions. He is particularly happy with the way Alexa talks. "It's very Indian, the focus is very neutral, it must sound nice to a Tamil speaker, to a Bengali speaker, to a Kannada speaker." That should not sound funny, and we have accomplished that, "he says.

His current goal is to improve Alexa's basic intelligence, allowing him to handle ambiguous commands and perform complex tasks – like planning a vacation. "So it will be a lot more human," he says.

And yes, in India, he has to deal with the frequent use of the Hindu word "Achcha". It often sounds like Alexa, it tends to wake up Alexa when someone uses the word. "We have taken steps to make Alexa sensitive to the difference," says Prasad.