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Panos Panay

👤 Person
570 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

You know, you asked a broader question, but let me just talk about Alexa. You want the element of connecting to thousands and thousands of APIs, partners that have been connected to Alexa forever. You're trying to manage hundreds of millions of customers who already have the product. You want to update as many of those devices as you possibly can. meaning you don't wanna leave a customer behind.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

You know, you asked a broader question, but let me just talk about Alexa. You want the element of connecting to thousands and thousands of APIs, partners that have been connected to Alexa forever. You're trying to manage hundreds of millions of customers who already have the product. You want to update as many of those devices as you possibly can. meaning you don't wanna leave a customer behind.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

And you know, there will be some devices that are eight, nine years old that won't work, but everything else, most things will, like relative to what's used in the market today. So you gotta carry forward all that history because people still love Alexa. You know, we're still growing. We still have usage that's higher than you would expect. Can't leave those customers behind.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

And you know, there will be some devices that are eight, nine years old that won't work, but everything else, most things will, like relative to what's used in the market today. So you gotta carry forward all that history because people still love Alexa. You know, we're still growing. We still have usage that's higher than you would expect. Can't leave those customers behind.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

And you know, there will be some devices that are eight, nine years old that won't work, but everything else, most things will, like relative to what's used in the market today. So you gotta carry forward all that history because people still love Alexa. You know, we're still growing. We still have usage that's higher than you would expect. Can't leave those customers behind.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

Like that's the worst thing. We focus on not doing that. So there's that element. Sitting on top of an LLM, you're now going, okay, just talking is just not that interesting, although awesome. Like having ambient conversation, I think it's a superpower moving forward for Alexa. It's different today on Alexa. It's like point, shoot, ask the question, hope to get the answer.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

Like that's the worst thing. We focus on not doing that. So there's that element. Sitting on top of an LLM, you're now going, okay, just talking is just not that interesting, although awesome. Like having ambient conversation, I think it's a superpower moving forward for Alexa. It's different today on Alexa. It's like point, shoot, ask the question, hope to get the answer.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

Like that's the worst thing. We focus on not doing that. So there's that element. Sitting on top of an LLM, you're now going, okay, just talking is just not that interesting, although awesome. Like having ambient conversation, I think it's a superpower moving forward for Alexa. It's different today on Alexa. It's like point, shoot, ask the question, hope to get the answer.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

With my team a year ago, we'd be in meetings, in product meetings, and we'd be talking, And people would say, you know, let me show you the new Alexa with a demo and they would Alexa speak to it. And it was like, nope, speak normal. Like go to natural conversation. Don't adjust your speech to, for Alexa, like that's exactly what you don't want if you want natural conversation.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

With my team a year ago, we'd be in meetings, in product meetings, and we'd be talking, And people would say, you know, let me show you the new Alexa with a demo and they would Alexa speak to it. And it was like, nope, speak normal. Like go to natural conversation. Don't adjust your speech to, for Alexa, like that's exactly what you don't want if you want natural conversation.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

With my team a year ago, we'd be in meetings, in product meetings, and we'd be talking, And people would say, you know, let me show you the new Alexa with a demo and they would Alexa speak to it. And it was like, nope, speak normal. Like go to natural conversation. Don't adjust your speech to, for Alexa, like that's exactly what you don't want if you want natural conversation.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

It's hard though, you know, you've been training people for, we've been training ourselves for 10 years. You know, calling a timer is, can you set a timer for eight minutes? Calling a timer on the new Alexa is, I'm making a ramen egg. gotcha, I'll set a timer for eight minutes. Like where she just proactively comes back and sets it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

It's hard though, you know, you've been training people for, we've been training ourselves for 10 years. You know, calling a timer is, can you set a timer for eight minutes? Calling a timer on the new Alexa is, I'm making a ramen egg. gotcha, I'll set a timer for eight minutes. Like where she just proactively comes back and sets it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

It's hard though, you know, you've been training people for, we've been training ourselves for 10 years. You know, calling a timer is, can you set a timer for eight minutes? Calling a timer on the new Alexa is, I'm making a ramen egg. gotcha, I'll set a timer for eight minutes. Like where she just proactively comes back and sets it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

I didn't demo that yesterday because I didn't want the timer headline, but it's really badass experience. You know, it's really cool. And so there's a level of like that transformation where I'm off topic, let me go back. At the end of the day, the LLM needs to be able to now, you know, it's the base layer. Then you got the next layer, which is just a series of different models.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

I didn't demo that yesterday because I didn't want the timer headline, but it's really badass experience. You know, it's really cool. And so there's a level of like that transformation where I'm off topic, let me go back. At the end of the day, the LLM needs to be able to now, you know, it's the base layer. Then you got the next layer, which is just a series of different models.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

I didn't demo that yesterday because I didn't want the timer headline, but it's really badass experience. You know, it's really cool. And so there's a level of like that transformation where I'm off topic, let me go back. At the end of the day, the LLM needs to be able to now, you know, it's the base layer. Then you got the next layer, which is just a series of different models.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

picking the right model to do the job. And then that model is basically picking the right expert. And so the LLM plays a role, especially in the natural side of it. But as it makes it through the stack, it narrows down for accuracy, it narrows down for speed, it then narrows down for holding memory and personalizing it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

picking the right model to do the job. And then that model is basically picking the right expert. And so the LLM plays a role, especially in the natural side of it. But as it makes it through the stack, it narrows down for accuracy, it narrows down for speed, it then narrows down for holding memory and personalizing it.

Decoder with Nilay Patel
Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

picking the right model to do the job. And then that model is basically picking the right expert. And so the LLM plays a role, especially in the natural side of it. But as it makes it through the stack, it narrows down for accuracy, it narrows down for speed, it then narrows down for holding memory and personalizing it.