Amazon Steps up Pace in Artificial Intelligence Race

Amazon.com Inc this week announced a flurry of new machine learning features for its Amazon Web Services cloud computing business, raising its challenge to Silicon Valley's biggest tech firms for the lead in artificial intelligence.

The new offerings will enable AWS customers to develop and quickly "train" their own artificial intelligence algorithms, build software applications capable of translating language on the fly, analyze video, and scan text for trends or key phrases.

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to machines carrying out tasks that are normally associated with human intelligence. Machine learning (ML) is a subset of AI in which sophisticated computer algorithms are developed to recognize patterns in large volumes of data to solve problems on their own.

For example, with two of the new AWS features a company could quickly transcribe customer phone calls and then analyze the text for customer sentiment.

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[For some perspective on multi-billionaire Amazon/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, see: Jeff Bezos & Amazon.com]