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SUMMARY:EVi  (An Amazon Company) Tech Talk - Answering any question\, in a
 ny language\, in one second or less - William Tunstall-Pedoe\, Evi
DTSTART:20141027T131500Z
DTEND:20141027T143000Z
UID:TALK55003@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jan Samols
DESCRIPTION: Evi (formerly True Knowledge) is a Cambridge based business s
 pecializing in the automatic answering of questions on any subject. Amazon
  acquired Evi in October 2012 and the team is now housed in the new Amazon
  development centre in Castle Park. The Evi smartphone application (iPhone
 \,  Android and Fire phone and tablets) can already answer unlimited numbe
 rs of open-domain questions asked by customers using voice. This talk will
  explain the deep technology behind the application\, the problems and cha
 llenges the team have had and what is needed to scale to a world where eve
 ryone has instant access to all available information simply by asking for
  it.\n\nWilliam Tunstall-Pedoe is the entrepreneur who founded Evi (former
 ly True Knowledge)\, a Cambridge-based Artificial Intelligence technology 
 business that makes the Evi product. The vision for the business was a wor
 ld where people could find out any information they needed just by asking 
 naturally for it – the computer would understand them and give them back
  exactly what they wanted. Founded in 2006 with the core technology and a 
 patent application\, the vision has stayed exactly the same\, though the b
 usiness went through multiple pivots to find success. \n\nThe business was
  initially funded by the founder\, followed by seven rounds of equity fund
 ing from friends and family through to venture capital. The business achie
 ved a successful exit to Amazon in October 2012 and Amazon now has a major
  presence in the city with a development centre housing the Evi team and o
 thers in Castle Park. William has lived in Cambridge since graduating in C
 omputer Science from Cambridge University. Previous products include a com
 mercial chess-playing program\, the first and only program which can solve
  and explain cryptic crossword clues and the AI anagram-generating softwar
 e which was used by Dan Brown to create the anagrams that appeared in the 
 Da Vinci Code book and movie.\n\n\n
LOCATION:FW11\, Computer Laboratory
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