Panos Panay is the senior vice president of Devices & Services at Amazon. Daniel Rausch is the Vice President of Alexa at Amazon. The two join Big Technology Podcast to discuss how the company rearchitected Alexa, blending a deterministic system with the latest generative AI technology to create something that can both turn your lights off and speak with you about philosophy. We also discuss how all big tech companies seem to be converging on the same contextually aware, general AI assistant, and why Amazon believes Alexa has a chance to win. Tune in for a front row perspective on one of the tech industry's biggest AI projects. Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction to Amazon's revamped Alexa 2:09 - The challenge of keeping existing users while rebuilding Alexa 4:56 - Technical architecture: Re-engineering Alexa from the ground up 8:39 - How Alexa handles deterministic vs. non-deterministic commands 13:27 - The speed/latency challenge with natural language AI 16:20 - Real-world examples: "Don't play music in the baby's room" 19:34 - Technical challenges of the live demo 24:43 - The vision and competitive landscape for voice assistants 27:56 - Amazon's advantages in the home environment 30:41 - Family calendars and multi-user functionality 32:52 - Mobile strategy and cross-device continuity 35:15 - Agentic AI capabilities in the new Alexa 40:53 - Proactive vs. reactive assistant features 44:30 - Trust, privacy, and data management 47:34 - The importance of screens for Alexa devices 51:39 - Voice AI as the future of artificial intelligence