Corn Ranch , commonly referred to as Launch Site One (LSO) , is a spaceport owned and operated by Blue Origin which is located approximately 30 miles north of the town of Van Horn, Texas, United States .
109-444: The 670-square-kilometer (165,000-acre) land was purchased by Jeff Bezos in 2004. The company uses the spaceport for testing and launch services for its New Shepard rocket. The launch site has a sub-orbital launch pad and also has a number of rocket engine test stands . The engine test cells are at the site to support the hydrolox , methalox and storable propellant engines that are used. There are three test cells for testing
218-631: A Montessori school in Albuquerque when he was 2. Ted struggled with alcohol and with his finances. Jacklyn left her husband to live with her parents, filing for divorce in June 1965 when Jeff was 17-months-old. After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos in April 1968. Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted 4-year-old Jeff, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos. Jacklyn, her husband, and her son left
327-889: A $ 600-million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of Amazon Web Services. In October of that year, Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world. In May 2016, Bezos sold slightly more than one million shares of his holdings in the company for $ 671 million, the largest sum he had ever raised from selling some of his Amazon stock. On August 4, 2016, Bezos sold another million of his shares for $ 756.7 million. A year later, Bezos took on 130,000 new employees when he ramped up hiring at company distribution centers. By January 19, 2018, his Amazon stock holdings had appreciated to slightly over $ 109 billion; months later he began to sell stock to raise cash for other enterprises, in particular, Blue Origin . On January 29, 2018, he
436-469: A 4.2 GPA and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi . Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE), summa cum laude . After Bezos graduated from college in 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel , Bell Labs , and Andersen Consulting , among others. He first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up , where he was tasked with building
545-574: A Speech Understanding Research program, aiming to reach a minimum vocabulary of 1,000 words. Companies and academia including IBM, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Stanford Research Institute took part in the program. The result was "Harpy", it mastered about 1000 words, the vocabulary of a three-year-old and it could understand sentences. It could process speech that followed pre-programmed vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar structures to determine which sequences of words made sense together, and thus reducing speech recognition errors. In 1986, Tangora
654-454: A business to provide 24x7 support to customers. It provides quick responses, which enhances a customer's experience. Amazon enables Alexa "Skills" and Google "Actions", essentially applications that run on the assistant platforms. Virtual assistants have a variety of privacy concerns associated with them. Features such as activation by voice pose a threat, as such features requires the device to always be listening. Modes of privacy such as
763-681: A fair amount of job security". Around 750 employees at The Washington Post went on a brief strike in December 2023 in response to Bezos' plans to lay off staff. In 2024, Bezos blocked the Washington Post ' s editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election . The move was criticized by former editor Marty Baron , who considered it to be an act of "disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage" and said that it would invite intimidation of Bezos by Donald Trump. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan also resigned in
872-640: A fourth unit in that building for $ 5.3 million in 2012. In February 2020, Bezos purchased the Warner Estate from David Geffen for $ 165 million, a record price paid for a residence in the Los Angeles area. The previous record high price of $ 150 million was paid by Lachlan Murdoch for the Chartwell Mansion . During the COVID-19 pandemic , it was reported that Bezos's fortune had grown by $ 24 billion, citing
981-607: A human process, which explains the rise of microwork in the last decade. That is, remotely using some people worldwide doing some repetitive and very simple tasks for a few cents, such as listening to virtual assistant speech data, and writing down what was said. Microwork has been criticized for the job insecurity it causes, and for the total lack of regulation: The average salary was 1,38 dollar/hour in 2010, and it provides neither healthcare nor retirement benefits, sick pay , minimum wage . Hence, virtual assistants and their designers are controversial for spurring job insecurity, and
1090-735: A life-extension research firm hoping to slow or stop the process of aging. Bezos is involved in the healthcare sector, which includes investments in Unity Biotechnology, GRAIL , Juno Therapeutics , and Zocdoc . In January 2018, an announcement was made concerning Bezos's role within a new, unnamed healthcare company. This venture, later named Haven , is expected to be a partnership between Amazon, JPMorgan , and Berkshire Hathaway . Bezos also supports philanthropic efforts through direct donations and non-profit projects funded by Bezos Expeditions. Bezos used Bezos Expeditions to fund several philanthropic projects, including an Innovation center at
1199-473: A low profile until 2006 when it purchased a large tract of land in West Texas for a launch and test facility. After the company gained the public's attention during the late 2000s, Bezos additionally indicated his interest in reducing the cost of space travel for humans while also increasing the safety of extraterrestrial travel. In September 2011, one of the company's uncrewed prototype vehicles crashed during
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#17328728973931308-511: A millionaire in 1997 after raising $ 54 million through Amazon's initial public offering (IPO). He was first included on the Forbes World's Billionaires list in 1999 with an estimated net worth of $ 10.1 billion, which placed his on the 19th position in the world and 10th in the USA. His net worth decreased to $ 6.1 billion a year later, a 40.5% drop. His wealth plummeted even more
1417-487: A network for international trade . Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co , a newly created hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling from 1990 until 1994. Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president by age 30. In spring 1994, Bezos read that web usage
1526-639: A new orbital launch vehicle was under development and would make its first flight in the late-2010s. Later in November, Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle successfully rocketed into space and reached its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a vertical landing back at the launch site in West Texas. In 2016, Bezos allowed select journalists to visit, tour, and photograph his facility. He has repeatedly called for increased inter-space energy and industrial manufacturing to decrease
1635-444: A paper that showed audio commands undetectable for the human ear could be directly embedded into music or spoken text, thereby manipulating virtual assistants into performing certain actions without the user taking note of it. The researchers made small changes to audio files, which cancelled out the sound patterns that speech recognition systems are meant to detect. These were replaced with sounds that would be interpreted differently by
1744-450: A registered net worth of $ 112 billion. He unseated Bill Gates ($ 90 billion), who was $ 6 billion ahead of Warren Buffett ($ 84 billion), ranked third. He is considered the first registered centi-billionaire (not adjusted for inflation ). His wealth, in 2017–18 terms, equaled that of 2.7 million Americans. Bezos's net worth increased by $ 33.6 billion from January 2017 to January 2018. This increase outstripped
1853-645: A short-hop test flight. Although the crash was viewed as a setback, news outlets noted how far the company went from its founding-to-date in advancing spaceflight . After the crash, Bezos has been superstitiously wearing his "lucky" Texas Cowboy boots to all rocket launches. In May 2013, Bezos met with Richard Branson , chairman of Virgin Galactic , to discuss commercial spaceflight opportunities and strategies. He has been compared to Branson and Elon Musk as all three are billionaires who prioritize spaceflight among their business interests. In 2015, Bezos announced that
1962-549: A short-order line cook during the breakfast shift. Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida . He was high school valedictorian , a National Merit Scholar , and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982. In his graduation speech, Bezos told the audience he dreamed of the day when mankind would colonize space . A local newspaper quoted his intention "to get all people off
2071-531: A start capital of $ 3 billion and an executive team led by Hal Barron . Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of "a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan". During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare. Journalist Mark O'Connell criticized Bezos's relentless customer focus as "very small" in terms of impact on humanity as
2180-542: A suborbital flight aboard New Shepard 4. Current launch license and experimental permits from the US government Federal Aviation Administration authorize flights of New Shepard rockets. The site became active on November 13, 2006 with the goal of providing commercial tourist flights to space. The launch pad is located at 31°25′23″N 104°45′26″W / 31.422927°N 104.757152°W / 31.422927; -104.757152 , about 2.9 km (1.8 mi) north of
2289-585: A surge in demand from households on lockdown shopping on Amazon. He further expanded his residential holdings in February 2022, purchasing a $ 16.13-million-dollar apartment at a 24-story boutique condominium, located across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron neighbourhood, where he already owns all the units on the top floors. Bezos is the owner of the Y721 , a luxury superyacht estimated to cost more than $ 500,000,000; it
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#17328728973932398-891: A total value of $ 4 billion. Bezos announced that he intended to sell 50 million shares in Amazon over the next year. In September 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup . Bezos has long expressed an interest in space travel and the development of human life in the Solar System. His 1982 high school valedictorian senior graduation speech was followed up with a Miami Herald interview in which he expressed an interest to build and develop hotels, amusement parks, and colonies for human beings who were in orbit. The 18-year-old Bezos stated that he wanted to preserve Earth from overuse through resource depletion . Rob Meyerson led Blue Origin from 2003 to 2017 and served as its first president. After its founding, Blue Origin maintained
2507-421: A two-pizza rule—a preference that meetings are small enough for two pizzas to feed everyone in the boardroom. When interviewing candidates for jobs at Amazon, he has stated he considers three inquiries: can he admire the person, can the person raise the common standard , and under what circumstances could the person become exemplary. In 2018, it was reported that he met with Amazon investors for just six hours
2616-404: A user's manner of expression and voice characteristics can implicitly contain information about his or her biometric identity, personality traits, body shape, physical and mental health condition, sex, gender, moods and emotions, socioeconomic status and geographical origin. Notable developer platforms for virtual assistants include: In previous generations of text chat-based virtual assistants,
2725-692: A variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence . It is the world's largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue , and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch. Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015 and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth; he flew into space on Blue Origin NS-16 in 2021. He purchased
2834-413: A virtual assistant using the voice, a wake word might be used. This is a word or groups of words such as "Hey Siri", "OK Google" or "Hey Google", "Alexa", and "Hey Microsoft". As virtual assistants become more popular, there are increasing legal risks involved. Virtual assistants may be integrated into many types of platforms or, like Amazon Alexa, across several of them: Virtual assistants can provide
2943-407: A whole, a sentiment technologist Tim O'Reilly agreed with. His business practices projected a public image of prudence and parsimony with his own wealth and that of Amazon. In 1999, Bezos was worth $ 10 billion yet drove a 1996 Honda Accord . Throughout the early 2000s, he was perceived to be geeky or nerdy. Bezos was seen by some as needlessly quantitative and data-driven. This perception
3052-402: A wide variety of services. These include: Conversational commerce is e-commerce via various means of messaging, including via voice assistants but also live chat on e-commerce Web sites , live chat on messaging applications such as WeChat , Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp and chatbots on messaging applications or Web sites. A virtual assistant can work with customer support team of
3161-419: A year. Instead of using presentation slides , Bezos requires high-level employees to present information with six-page narratives. Since 1998, Bezos has published an annual letter for Amazon shareholders wherein he frequently refers to five principles: focus on customers, not competitors; take risks for market leadership ; facilitate staff morale; build a company culture ; and empower people. Bezos maintains
3270-461: Is a voice-only virtual assistant with singular authentication . This voice-activated device accesses user data to perform common tasks like checking weather or making calls, raising privacy concerns due to the lack of secondary authentication. Added value of the virtual assistants can come among others from the following: In 2019 Antonio A. Casilli , a French sociologist , criticized artificial intelligence and virtual assistants in particular in
3379-459: Is always Day 1" to describe his growth mindset . Bezos used what he called a "regret-minimization framework" while working at D. E. Shaw and again during the early years of Amazon. He described this life philosophy by stating: "When I'm 80, am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes." During the 1990s and early 2000s at Amazon, he
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3488-424: Is an American business magnate best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon , the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. He is the second wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of US$ 230 billion as of November 13, 2024, according to Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaires Index . He was the wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, according to both
3597-885: Is based on its LaMDA program to generate text responses to questions asked based on information gathered from the web . While ChatGPT and other generalized chatbots based on the latest generative AI are capable of performing various tasks associated with virtual assistants, there are also more specialized forms of such technology that are designed to target more specific situations or needs. Virtual assistants work via: Many virtual assistants are accessible via multiple methods, offering versatility in how users can interact with them, whether through chat, voice commands, or other integrated technologies. Virtual assistants use natural language processing (NLP) to match user text or voice input to executable commands. Some continually learn using artificial intelligence techniques including machine learning and ambient intelligence . To activate
3706-911: Is the largest yacht in the world. According to Forbes Bezos was the second-wealthiest person in America and the third-wealthiest person in the world in 2023. Bezos is the second-wealthiest person in the world according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index . His net worth is about US$ 197 billion as of February 2024. Bezos is known for creating an adversarial environment at Amazon, as well as insulting and verbally abusing his employees . As journalist Brad Stone revealed in his book The Everything Store , Bezos issued remarks to his employees such as "I'm sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?", "Are you lazy or just incompetent?", and "Why are you ruining my life?" Additionally, Bezos reportedly pitted Amazon teams against each other, and once refused to give Amazon employees city bus passes in order to discourage them from leaving
3815-506: Is verified by a high number of frequent users and the substantial growth of worldwide user numbers of virtual digital assistants. In mid-2017, the number of frequent users of digital virtual assistants is estimated to be around 1 bn worldwide. In addition, it can be observed that virtual digital assistant technology is no longer restricted to smartphone applications, but present across many industry sectors (incl. automotive , telecommunications, retail , healthcare and education). In response to
3924-644: The Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes . Bezos was born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami . He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science . He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from 1986 to early 1994. Bezos founded Amazon in mid-1994 on a road trip from New York City to Seattle . The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to
4033-633: The Asia-Pacific region, with its main players located in India and China is predicted to grow at an annual growth rate of 40% (above global average) over the 2016–2024 period. Virtual assistants should not be only seen as a gadget for individuals, as they could have a real economic utility for enterprises. As an example, a virtual assistant can take the role of an always available assistant with an encyclopedic knowledge. And which can organize meetings, check inventories, verify informations. Virtual assistants are all
4142-754: The International Trade Union Confederation named Bezos the "World's Worst Boss", with its general secretary Sharan Burrow saying: "Jeff Bezos represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the North American corporate model", while in 2019, Harvard Business Review , which ranked Bezos the best-performing CEO for 4 years in a row since 2014, did not rank him even in the top 100, citing Amazon's "relatively low ESG ( environment , social , and governance ) scores" that reflect "risks created by working conditions and employment policies, data security , and antitrust issues." During
4251-748: The Seattle Museum of Flight . In September 2021, Bezos co-founded Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner . Altos Labs is a well-funded biotechnology company dedicated to harnessing cellular reprogramming to develop longevity therapeutics . The company has recruited prominent scientists such as Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte (known for work on rejuvenation through reprogramming), Steve Horvath (known for work in epigenetic aging clocks ), and Shinya Yamanaka (the Nobel Prize -winning inventor of cellular reprogramming in mammalian cells). The company left stealth mode and launched on January 19, 2022, with
4360-593: The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Lawrence retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas , where his grandson would spend many summers in his youth and which he would later purchase and expand from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha). Jeff displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency and once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger half-siblings out of his room. The family moved to Miami, Florida , where Jeff attended Miami Palmetto High School . In high school, he worked at McDonald's as
4469-510: The iPhone 4S on 4 October 2011. Apple Inc. developed Siri following the 2010 acquisition of Siri Inc. , a spin-off of SRI International , which is a research institute financed by DARPA and the United States Department of Defense . Its aim was to aid in tasks such as sending a text message, making phone calls, checking the weather or setting up an alarm. Over time, it has developed to provide restaurant recommendations, search
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4578-718: The third quarter of 2021 he would step down from his role as CEO of Amazon to become the Executive Chairman of the Amazon Board. He was succeeded as CEO by Andy Jassy . On February 2, 2021, Bezos sent an email to all Amazon employees, telling them the transition would give him "the time and energy [he] need[s] to focus on the Day 1 Fund , the Bezos Earth Fund , Blue Origin , The Washington Post , and [his] other passions." In February 2024, Bezos sold 24 million shares in Amazon at
4687-674: The "wealthiest person in modern history" by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index , Fortune , MarketWatch , The Wall Street Journal , and Forbes . In 2019, Bezos's wealth was reduced by the divorce from his wife MacKenzie Bezos . According to Forbes , had the Washington state common law applied to their divorce without a prenuptial agreement, Bezos's wealth could have been equitably divided with his ex-wife; however, she eventually received 25% of Bezos's Amazon shares, then valued at approximately $ 36 billion, making her
4796-427: The 2020s, the emergence of artificial intelligence based chatbots , such as ChatGPT , has brought increased capability and interest to the field of virtual assistant products and services. Radio Rex was the first voice activated toy, patented in 1916 and released in 1922. It was a wooden toy in the shape of a dog that would come out of its house when its name is called. In 1952, Bell Labs presented "Audrey",
4905-400: The 43rd spot on the ranking from 68th. After a rumor broke out that Amazon was developing a smartphone , Bezos's net worth rose to $ 30.5 billion in 2014. A year later, he entered the top ten when he increased his net worth to a total of $ 50.3 billion. Bezos rose to become the fifth richest person in the world hours before market close ; he gained $ 7 billion in one hour. By
5014-472: The AIs they propose are still human in the way that they would be impossible without the microwork of millions of human workers. Privacy concerns are raised by the fact that voice commands are available to the providers of virtual assistants in unencrypted form, and can thus be shared with third parties and be processed in an unauthorized or unexpected manner. Additionally to the linguistic content of recorded speech,
5123-519: The Automatic Digit Recognition machine. It occupied a six- foot-high relay rack, consumed substantial power, had streams of cables and exhibited the myriad maintenance problems associated with complex vacuum-tube circuitry. It could recognize the fundamental units of speech, phonemes. It was limited to accurate recognition of digits spoken by designated talkers. It could therefore be used for voice dialing, but in most cases push-button dialing
5232-473: The Internet" than anyone else. Bezos has been characterized as a notoriously opportunistic CEO who operates with little concern for obstacles and externalities . During the early 2010s, Bezos solidified his reputation for aggressive business practices, and his public image began to shift. Bezos started to wear tailored clothing ; he weight trained , pursued a regimented diet and began to freely spend his money. His physical transformation has been compared to
5341-640: The President's negative comments; this reduced Bezos's personal wealth by $ 10.7 billion. Weeks later, Bezos recouped his losses when academic reports out of Stanford University indicated that Trump could do little to regulate Amazon in any meaningful way. During July 2018, a number of members of the U.S. Congress called on Bezos to detail the applications of Amazon's face recognition software, Rekognition . Criticism of Amazon's business practices continued in September 2018 when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced
5450-635: The Seattle Museum of History and Industry and the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics at Princeton Neuroscience Institute . In 2013, Bezos Expeditions funded the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. They were positively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission's S-1C stage from July 1969. The engines are currently on display at
5559-597: The Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act and accused Amazon of receiving corporate welfare . This followed revelations by the non-profit group New Food Economy which found that one third of Amazon workers in Arizona , and one tenth of Amazon workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio , relied on food stamps. While preparing to introduce the bill, Sanders opined: "Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to
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#17328728973935668-456: The US and the UK to document their medical records. In 2001 Colloquis publicly launched SmarterChild , on platforms like AIM and MSN Messenger . While entirely text-based SmarterChild was able to play games, check the weather, look up facts, and converse with users to an extent. The first modern digital virtual assistant installed on a smartphone was Siri , which was introduced as a feature of
5777-452: The area and asked Ted to discontinue contact, to which he agreed. After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico , the family moved to Houston, Texas , so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon . Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. Jeff's maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of
5886-468: The assistant was often represented by an avatar (a.k.a. interactive online character or automated character ) — this was known as an embodied agent . Digital experiences enabled by virtual assistants are considered to be among the major recent technological advances and most promising consumer trends. Experts claim that digital experiences will achieve a status-weight comparable to 'real' experiences, if not become more sought-after and prized. The trend
5995-605: The books, and negotiating the company's first freight contracts—the foundation was laid for this garage-run operation to grow exponentially. Prior to settling in Seattle, Bezos had investigated setting up his company at an Indian reservation near San Francisco in order to avoid paying taxes. Bezos initially named his new company Cadabra but later changed the name to Amazon after the Amazon River in South America, in part because
6104-429: The check-out building. The landing pad is located at 31°27′06″N 104°45′46″W / 31.4517°N 104.7628°W / 31.4517; -104.7628 , about 6.1 km (3.8 mi) north of a check-out building and 3.2 km (2 mi) north of the launch pad. Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( / ˈ b eɪ z oʊ s / BAY -zohss ; né Jorgensen ; born January 12, 1964)
6213-449: The cloud and used by Google to improve the performance of Google Assistant, but only if the VAA feature is turned on. The privacy policy of Amazon's virtual assistant, Alexa, states that it only listens to conversations when its wake word (like Alexa, Amazon, Echo) is used. It starts recording the conversation after the call of a wake word, and stops recording after 8 seconds of silence. It sends
6322-477: The companies targeted by his proposal have placed an increased focus on part-time workers to escape benefit obligations. On October 2, 2018, Bezos announced a company-wide wage increase, which Sanders applauded. The American workers who were being paid the minimum wage had this increased to $ 15 per hour, a decision that was interpreted as support for the Fight for $ 15 movement. In February 2021, Bezos announced that in
6431-490: The company nearly went bankrupt, he closed distribution centers and laid off 14% of the Amazon workforce. In 2003, Amazon rebounded from financial instability and turned a profit of $ 35 million. In November 2007, Bezos launched the Amazon Kindle . According to a 2008 Time profile, Bezos wished to create a device that allowed a " flow state " in reading similar to the experience of video games. In 2013, Bezos secured
6540-400: The earth and see it turned into a huge national park". After graduating from high school in 1982, Bezos attended Princeton University. He initially majored in physics but later switched to electrical engineering and computer science. On 13 September 2018, during a talk at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. , Bezos revealed that his classmate at Princeton Yasantha Rajakarunanayake who
6649-503: The economic development (in GDP terms) of more than 96 countries around the world. During March 9, Bezos earned $ 230,000 every 60 seconds. The Motley Fool estimated that if Bezos had not sold any of his shares from its original public offering in 1997, his net worth would sit at $ 181 billion in 2018. According to Quartz , his net worth of $ 150 billion in July 2018 was enough to purchase
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#17328728973936758-516: The email address jeff@amazon.com as an outlet for customers to reach out to him and the company. Although he does not respond to the emails, he forwards some of them with a question mark in the subject line to executives, who then attempt to address the issues. Bezos has cited Jeff Immelt of New Enterprise Associates , Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway , Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase , and Bob Iger of The Walt Disney Company as major influences on his leadership style. Bezos first became
6867-450: The entire stock markets of Nigeria , Hungary , Egypt , Luxembourg , and Iran . Following the report by Quartz , Amazon workers in Poland , (Germany), and Spain participated in demonstrations and labor strikes to draw attention to his growing wealth and the lack of compensation, labor rights, and satisfactory working conditions of select Amazon workers. On July 17, 2018, he was designated
6976-596: The first time on November 24, 2017, and he was formally designated the wealthiest person in the world by Forbes on March 6, 2018, with a net worth of $ 112 billion. In March 2018, Bezos dispatched Amit Agarwal, Amazon's global senior vice president, to India with $ 5.5 billion to localize operations throughout the company's supply chain routes. Later in the month, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon and Bezos, specifically, of sales tax avoidance, misusing postal routes , and anti-competitive business practices. Amazon's share price fell by 9% in response to
7085-476: The following way: At a first level the fact that the consumer provides free data for the training and improvement of the virtual assistant, often without knowing it, is ethically disturbing. But at a second level, it might be even more ethically disturbing to know how these AIs are trained with this data. This artificial intelligence is trained via neural networks , which require a huge amount of labelled data. However, this data needs to be labelled through
7194-550: The following year, dropping 66.6% to $ 2.0 billion. He lost $ 500 million the following year, which brought his net worth down to $ 1.5 billion. The following year, his net worth increased by 66.66% to $ 2.5 billion. From 2005 to 2007, he quadrupled his net worth to $ 8.7 billion. After the financial crisis and succeeding economic recession , his net worth would decrease to $ 6.8 billion—a 17.7% drop. His wealth rose by 85.2% in 2010, leaving him with $ 12.6 billion. This percentage increase ascended him to
7303-528: The form of dividends . Bezos uses the term "work–life harmony" instead of the more standard " work–life balance " because he believes that balance implies that you can only have one and not the other. He believes that work and home life are interconnected, informing and calibrating each other. Journalist Walt Mossberg dubbed the idea that someone who cannot tolerate criticism or critique should not do anything new or interesting " The Bezos Principle ". Bezos does not schedule early morning meetings and enforces
7412-426: The industry over the next years, due to the significant impact of BYOD ( Bring Your Own Device ) and enterprise mobility business models. Furthermore, the increasing demand for smartphone-assisted platforms are expected to further boost the North American intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) industry growth. Despite its smaller size in comparison to the North American market, the intelligent virtual assistant industry from
7521-552: The internet, and provide driving directions. In November 2014, Amazon announced Alexa alongside the Echo. In April 2017 Amazon released a service for building conversational interfaces for any type of virtual assistant or interface. In the 2020s, artificial intelligence (AI) systems like ChatGPT have gained popularity for their ability to generate human-like responses to text-based conversations. In February 2020, Microsoft introduced its Turing Natural Language Generation (T-NLG), which
7630-556: The late 2010s, Bezos reversed his reputation for being reluctant to spend money on non-business-related expenses. His relative lack of philanthropy compared to other billionaires has drawn a negative response from the public since 2016. Bezos has been known to publicly contest claims made in critical articles, as exemplified in 2015 when he sent a memo to employees denouncing a New York Times piece. Day 1: start up Day 2: stasis Day 3: irrelevance Day 4: "excruciating, painful decline" Day 5: death Bezos has stated "it
7739-496: The major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $ 250 million and manages many other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions . In September 2021, Bezos co-founded Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner . The first centibillionaire on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index and the second ever to have eclipsed the feat since Bill Gates in 1999, Bezos
7848-447: The market launch of the first smartphone IBM Simon in 1994 laid the foundation for smart virtual assistants as we know them today. In 1997, Dragon's Naturally Speaking software could recognize and transcribe natural human speech without pauses between each word into a document at a rate of 100 words per minute. A version of Naturally Speaking is still available for download and it is still used today, for instance, by many doctors in
7957-511: The methalox BE-4 engine, two of which support full-thrust and full-duration burns, and one that supports short-duration, high-pressure preburner tests. The spaceport also includes a vehicle processing facility and an astronaut training facility. The companies first human spaceflight launched from Launch Site One (LS1) on July 20, 2021. The flight, dubbed NS-16 , carried its founder Jeff Bezos , his brother Mark Bezos , test pilot and Mercury 13 member Wally Funk , and Dutchman Oliver Daemen on
8066-497: The moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage?" He later said: "Bezos could play a profound role. If he said today, nobody who is employed at Amazon will receive less than a living wage, it would send a message to every corporation in America." Sanders's efforts elicited a response from Amazon which pointed to the 130,000 jobs it created in 2017 and called the $ 28,446 figure for its median salary "misleading" as it included part-time workers. However, Sanders countered that
8175-447: The more important that their integration in small and middle-sized enterprises often consists in an easy first step through the more global adaptation and use of Internet of Things (IoT) . Indeed, IoT technologies are first perceived by small and medium-sized enterprises as technologies of critical importance, but too complicated, risky or costly to be used. In May 2018, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley , published
8284-453: The most likely phonemes to follow a given phoneme. Still each speaker had to individually train the typewriter to recognize his or her voice, and pause between each word. In 1983, Gus Searcy invented the "Butler In A Box", an electronic voice home controller system. In the 1990s, digital speech recognition technology became a feature of the personal computer with IBM , Philips and Lernout & Hauspie fighting for customers. Much later
8393-498: The name begins with the letter A , which is at the beginning of the alphabet. At the time, website listings were alphabetized, so a name starting with "A" would appear sooner when customers conducted online searches. In addition, he regarded "Amazon," the name of the world's largest river as fitting for what he hoped would become the world's largest online bookstore. He accepted an estimated $ 300,000 from his parents as an investment in Amazon. He warned many early investors that there
8502-502: The negative costs associated with business-related pollution . In December 2017, New Shepard successfully flew and landed dummy passengers , amending and pushing its human space travel start date into late 2018. To execute this program, Blue Origin built six of the vehicles to support all phases of testing and operations: no-passenger test flights, flights with test passengers, and commercial-passenger weekly operations. Since 2016, Bezos has spoken more freely about his hopes to colonize
8611-706: The newspaper as a media and technology company by reconstructing its digital media, mobile platforms, and analytics software. After a surge in online readership in 2016, the paper was profitable for the first time since Bezos made the purchase in 2013. Bezos makes personal investments through his venture capital vehicle, Bezos Expeditions. He was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $ 250,000 in 1998. That $ 250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock, worth about $ 3.1 billion in 2017. He also invested in Unity Biotechnology ,
8720-653: The office. Throughout his early years of ownership of The Washington Post , Bezos was accused of having a potential conflict of interest with the paper. Bezos and the newspaper's editorial board have dismissed accusations that he unfairly controlled the paper's content, and Bezos maintains that the paper is independent. Bezos' treatment of employees at The Washington Post has also drawn scrutiny. In 2018, more than 400 Washington Post employees wrote an open letter to Bezos criticizing his poor wages and benefits for his employees. The letter demanded "Fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and
8829-626: The online sale of music and video, and by the end of the year he had expanded the company's products to include a variety of other consumer goods . Bezos used the $ 54 million raised during the company's 1997 equity offering to finance the aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors. In 2000, Bezos borrowed $ 2 billion from banks, as its cash balances dipped to only $ 350 million. In 2002, Bezos led Amazon to launch Amazon Web Services , which compiled data from weather channels and website traffic . In late 2002, rapid spending from Amazon caused it financial distress when revenues stagnated. After
8938-451: The part of the program. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people. This gave name to the ELIZA effect ,
9047-402: The previous year. His wealth's rapid growth from 2016 to 2017 sparked a variety of assessments about how much money Bezos earned on a controlled, reduced time scale. On October 10, 2017, he made an estimated $ 6.24 billion in 5 minutes, slightly less than the then annual gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan . On March 6, 2018, Bezos was designated the wealthiest person in the world , with
9156-403: The recorded conversation to the cloud. It is possible to delete the recording from the cloud by visiting 'Alexa Privacy' in 'Alexa'. Apple states that it does not record audio to improve Siri. Instead, it claims to use transcripts. Transcript data is only sent if it is deemed important for analysis. Users can opt out anytime if they don't want Siri to send the transcripts in the cloud. Cortana
9265-408: The significant R&D expenses of firms across all sectors and an increasing implementation of mobile devices, the market for speech recognition technology is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 34.9% globally over the period of 2016 to 2024 and thereby surpass a global market size of US$ 7.5 billion by 2024. According to an Ovum study, the "native digital assistant installed base" is projected to exceed
9374-433: The solar system , and has been selling US$ 1 billion in Amazon stock each year to capitalize Blue Origin in an effort to support this endeavor. In May 2018, Bezos maintained that the primary goal of Blue Origin is to preserve the natural resources of Earth by making the human species multi-planetary . He announced that New Shepard would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. In July 2018, it
9483-559: The suggestion of his friend, Don Graham . To execute the sale, he established limited liability company Nash Holdings to serve as a holding company through which he would own the newspaper. The sale closed on October 1, 2013, and Nash Holdings took control. In March 2014, Bezos made his first significant change at The Washington Post and lifted the online paywall for subscribers of a number of U.S. local newspapers in Texas , Hawaii, and Minnesota . In January 2016, Bezos set out to reinvent
9592-457: The system and command it to dial phone numbers, open websites or even transfer money. The possibility of this has been known since 2016, and affects devices from Apple, Amazon and Google. In addition to unintentional actions and voice recording, another security and privacy risk associated with intelligent virtual assistants is malicious voice commands: An attacker who impersonates a user and issues malicious voice commands to, for example, unlock
9701-587: The tendency to unconsciously assume computer behaviors are analogous to human behaviors; that is, anthropomorphisation, a phenomenon present in human interactions with virtual assistants. The next milestone in the development of voice recognition technology was achieved in the 1970s at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania with substantial support of the United States Department of Defense and its DARPA agency, funded five years of
9810-792: The third-richest woman in the world. Bezos retained his interest in The Washington Post and Blue Origin, as well as voting control of the shares received by his ex-wife. In June 2019, Bezos purchased three adjoining apartments overlooking Madison Square Park in Manhattan , including a penthouse , for a combined total of US$ 80 million, making this one of the most expensive real estate purchases within New York City in 2019. Bezos had also purchased three adjoining apartments at 25 Central Park West in Manhattan for $ 7.65 million in 1999; he bought
9919-573: The time the Forbes list was calculated in March 2016, his net worth was registered at $ 45.2 billion. However, just months later in October 2016, his wealth increased by $ 16.2 billion to $ 66.5 billion, unofficially ranking him the third-richest person in the world, behind Warren Buffett . After sporadic jumps in Amazon's share price, in July 2017 he briefly unseated Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as
10028-455: The transformation of Amazon; he is often referred to as the metonym of the company. Since 2017, he has been portrayed by Kyle Mooney and Steve Carell on Saturday Night Live , usually as an undercutting, domineering figure. His physical appearance increased the public's perception of him as a symbolically dominant figure in business and in popular culture, wherein he has been parodied as an enterprising supervillain . In May 2014,
10137-499: The virtual security button have been proposed to create a multilayer authentication for virtual assistants. The privacy policy of Google Assistant states that it does not store the audio data without the user's permission, but may store the conversation transcripts to personalise its experience. Personalisation can be turned off in settings. If a user wants Google Assistant to store audio data, they can go to Voice & Audio Activity (VAA) and turn on this feature. Audio files are sent to
10246-1190: The wake of the decision. Because of his wealth and influence, Bezos has sometimes been described as an oligarch . Virtual assistant A virtual assistant ( VA ) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to simulate human conversation, such as via online chat , to facilitate interaction with their users. The interaction may be via text, graphical interface, or voice - as some virtual assistants are able to interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices. In many cases, users can ask their virtual assistants questions, control home automation devices and media playback, and manage other basic tasks such as email, to-do lists, and calendars - all with verbal commands. In recent years, prominent virtual assistants for direct consumer use have included Apple 's Siri , Amazon Alexa , Google Assistant , and Samsung 's Bixby . Also, companies in various industries often incorporate some kind of virtual assistant technology into their customer service or support. Into
10355-426: The wealthiest person in the world. Bezos would continue to sporadically surpass Gates throughout the month of October 2017 after Amazon's share price fluctuated. His net worth surpassed $ 100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017, after Amazon's share price increased by more than 2.5%. When the 2017 list was issued, Bezos's net worth was registered at $ 72.8 billion, adding $ 27.6 billion from
10464-492: The world's population by 2021, with 7.5 billion active voice AI–capable devices. According to Ovum, by that time "Google Assistant will dominate the voice AI–capable device market with 23.3% market share, followed by Samsung's Bixby (14.5%), Apple's Siri (13.1%), Amazon's Alexa (3.9%), and Microsoft's Cortana (2.3%)." Taking into consideration the regional distribution of market leaders, North American companies (e.g. Nuance Communications , IBM , eGain ) are expected to dominate
10573-513: Was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, Bezos had always planned to expand to other products. Three years after Bezos founded Amazon, he took it public with an initial public offering (IPO). In response to critical reports from Fortune and Barron's , Bezos maintained that the growth of the Internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble . In 1998, Bezos diversified into
10682-454: Was able to recognize 16 spoken words and the digits 0 to 9. The first natural language processing computer program or the chatbot ELIZA was developed by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s. It was created to "demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial". ELIZA used pattern matching and substitution methodology into scripted responses to simulate conversation, which gave an illusion of understanding on
10791-452: Was an upgrade of the Shoebox, it was a voice recognizing typewriter. Named after the world's fastest typist at the time, it had a vocabulary of 20,000 words and used prediction to decide the most likely result based on what was said in the past. IBM's approach was based on a hidden Markov model , which adds statistics to digital signal processing techniques. The method makes it possible to predict
10900-663: Was announced that Bezos had priced commercial spaceflight tickets from $ 200,000 to $ 300,000 per person. On July 20, 2021, he launched on the NS-16 mission with his half-brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk , and Oliver Daemen . He launched nine days after Richard Branson launched on board the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission. Bezos's suborbital flight lasted over 10 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (107.0 km). On August 5, 2013, Bezos announced his purchase of The Washington Post for $ 250 million in cash, at
11009-486: Was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico , as the son of Jacklyn (née Gise) and Ted Jorgensen . At the time of Jeff's birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high-school student and his father was 19. Ted was a Danish American unicyclist born in Chicago to a family of Baptists. After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school, bringing her baby with her. Jeff attended
11118-420: Was characterized as trying to quantify all aspects of running the company, often listing employees on spreadsheets and basing executive decisions on data. To push Amazon forward, Bezos developed the mantra "Get Big Fast", establishing the company's need to scale its operations to produce market dominance. He favored diverting Amazon profits back into the company in lieu of allocating it amongst shareholders in
11227-478: Was cheaper and faster, rather than speaking the consecutive digits. Another early tool which was enabled to perform digital speech recognition was the IBM Shoebox voice-activated calculator, presented to the general public during the 1962 Seattle World's Fair after its initial market launch in 1961. This early computer, developed almost 20 years before the introduction of the first IBM Personal Computer in 1981,
11336-410: Was detailed by Alan Deutschman, who described him as "talking in lists" and "[enumerating] the criteria, in order of importance, for every decision he has made." Select accounts of his persona have drawn controversy and public attention. Notably, journalist Brad Stone wrote a book that described Bezos as a demanding boss as well as hyper-competitive , and opined that Bezos perhaps "bet the biggest on
11445-548: Was featured in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial . On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $ 2 billion. Due to the growth of Alibaba in China, Bezos has often expressed interest in expanding Amazon into India . On July 27, 2017, Bezos momentarily became the world's wealthiest person over Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates when his estimated net worth increased to just over $ 90 billion. His wealth surpassed $ 100 billion for
11554-500: Was growing at a rate of 2300% a year and eventually decided to establish an online bookstore . He and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott , left their jobs at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue , Washington on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a cross-country drive from New York City to Seattle . With Bezos at the helm and Scott taking an integral role in its operation—writing checks, keeping track of
11663-480: Was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $ 150 billion in July 2018. In August 2020, according to Forbes , he had a net worth exceeding $ 200 billion. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as the CEO and president of Amazon and took over the role of executive chairman. Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy succeeded Bezos as the CEO and president of Amazon. Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen
11772-639: Was of Sri Lankan origin, some 30 years ago had defeated him to solve a mathematical problem and as a result, Bezos himself admitted that he gave up his dreams of becoming a theoretical physicist. Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club , one of Princeton's 11 eating clubs . In addition, he was the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). He had
11881-451: Was then the "largest language model ever published at 17 billion parameters." On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT was launched as a prototype and quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. The advent of ChatGPT and its introduction to the wider public increased interest and competition in the space. In February 2023, Google began introducing an experimental service called "Bard" which
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