AI pioneer Andrej Karpathy thinks book reading needs an AI upgrade. Amazon may already be working on it.
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- Andrej Karpathy recently suggested AI can enhance ebook reading with interactive features.
- Amazon may already be thinking about this for its Kindle ebooks.
- The company is looking for an applied scientist to improve the reading and publishing experience.
AI pioneer and OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy thinks AI can significantly improve how people read books. Amazon may already be thinking about how to do this for its Kindle ebooks business.
In a series of posts on X this week, Karpathy proposed building an AI application that can read books together with humans, answering questions and generating discussion around the content. He said it would be a "huge hit" if Amazon or some other company built it.
A recent job post by Amazon suggests the tech giant may be doing just that.
Amazon is looking for a senior applied scientist for the "books content experience" team who will be "leveraging advances in AI to improve the reading experience for Kindle customers," according to job post.
The goal is "unlocking capabilities like analysis, enhancement, curation, moderation, translation, transformation and generation in Books based on Content structure, features, Intent, Synthesis and publisher details," it added.
The role will not just focus on the reading experience but also the broader publishing and distribution space. The Amazon team wants to "streamline the publishing lifecycle, improve digital reading, and empower book publishers through innovative AI tools and solutions to grow their business on Amazon," the job post reads.
Three phases
Amazon identified three major phases of the book lifecycle and sees AI potentially improving each one.
- First up is the publishing part where books are created.
- Second is the reading experience where AI can help building new features and "representation" in books and drive higher reading "engagement."
- The third stage is "Reporting" to help improve sales & business growth," the job post explained.
An Amazon spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
"I love this idea"
There seems to be huge demand for this type of service, based on the response to Karpathy's X post.
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison wrote under the post that it's "annoying" to have to build this AI feature on his own, and added that it will be "awesome when it's super streamlined."
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian wrote, "I love this idea."
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?
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