How Amazon Rebuilt Alexa From The Ground Up — With Panos Panay and Daniel Rausch

Big Technology Podcast

Alex Kantrowitz

Technology, Religion & Spirituality, Business News, Business, Religion, Science, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Management, Marketing, Politics, News Commentary, Government, Investing, Tech News, Social Sciences, News

4.6 • 395 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Panos Panay is the senior vice president of Devices & Services at Amazon. Daniel Rausch is the Vice President of Alexa at Amazon. The two join Big Technology Podcast to discuss how the company rearchitected Alexa, blending a deterministic system with the latest generative AI technology to create something that can both turn your lights off and speak with you about philosophy. We also discuss how all big tech companies seem to be converging on the same contextually aware, general AI assistant, and why Amazon believes Alexa has a chance to win. Tune in for a front row perspective on one of the tech industry's biggest AI projects. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Amazon leaders who spearheaded the new Alexa are here in studio to talk about what it took to rebuild the pioneering AI and where voice AI is headed in the age of large language models.
0:12.0	That's coming up right after this.
0:15.0	Hi, I'm Jonathan Fields.
0:16.6	Tune in to my podcast for conversations about the sweet spot between work, meaning, and joy,
0:22.9	and also listen to other people's questions about how to get the most out of that thing we call
0:27.5	work. Check out SPART wherever you enjoy podcasts.
0:33.2	Struggling to keep up with customers, with Agent Force and Salesforce Data Cloud,
0:37.2	deploy AI agents that know your customers and act on their own.
0:40.4	That's because Data Cloud brings all your data to Agent Force, no matter where it lives.
0:44.6	Get started at Salesforce.com slash data.
0:48.4	Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond.
0:59.5	We are joined today by Panos Penae, Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices and Services,
1:03.0	and Daniel Rauch, Amazon's vice president of Alexa,
1:09.4	for a fascinating conversation about what it took to rebuild Alexa, effectively from the ground up.
1:11.8	Gentlemen, so great to see you, welcome to the show.
1:13.2	Thanks, man.
1:14.3	So great to be here.
1:15.3	It sounded kind of fun.
1:17.9	You both must be relieved to have this out.
1:18.6	Yeah.
1:20.4	I mean, excited.
1:23.3	Relieved is a tricky word on this one.
	...

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