Neural networks have a long and rich history in automatic speech recognition. In this talk, we present a brief primer on the origin of deep learning in spoken language, and then explore today’s world of Alexa. Alexa is the AWS service that understands spoken language and powers Amazon Echo. Alexa relies heavily on machine learning and deep neural networks for speech recognition, text-to-speech, language understanding, and more. We also discuss the Alexa Skills Kit, which lets any developer teach Alexa new skills.