In this session, scientists from the Alexa team explore and discuss some of the AI challenges behind the Alexa Prize. Learn about the challenges of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and conversational interaction through stories from the founding members of the team that also built Amazon Echo and Alexa. We'll address the early difficulties of designing the algorithms for noise reduction for close-talk, near field, and far-field Alexa devices, and methods and frameworks they use for ASR, NLU and conversational interaction.