Bots at Sea and Bots on TV
So many insightful speech & text articles this week! For the full list you can always go to cognitionx.com where our daily AI news from all topics are shared. Also, in case you weren’t aware, this is a by-product of our day-to-day technology research … if you’re curious, below are a few things our team is focusing on currently:
- Plain-English landscape view of text and speech solutions today. 2018 was a disruptive year with big changes in cost and quality. Our work covers 80+ products from speech to text to text understanding. Learn more here.
- NLP lab for developers: get up to speed with the universe of text and speech analysis tools in a single day. No data science required. Let us know if this sounds interesting by replying to this mail.
- Business success with chatbots in telecommunications: the case studies are flowing in. Let us know if you’d like our report.
On to our plain-English news. This week we have competitions for teaching AI to learn on its own, an interview with a conversation design expert who shares tips for successful chatbot conversations, chatbots running on land and sailing out to sea, and an AI that can justify the decisions it makes.
Also in this issue of Speaking Naturally:
- 🤖Designing great conversations: podcast interview
- 🐷Applying Conversational AI to Chinese New Year
- 💰Another funding announcement in the AI for speech and text space
- 🤖CognitionX’s experience with a conversational running coach
Leading the Pack
Chatbots spread from hotels to Sea Cruisers
What’s the best way to let thousands of passengers on a luxury cruise ship discover activities taking place, learn information about onboard services, and ask ship-related questions in seven different languages? Sounds like a job for a chatbot!
Read More
AI hosts in China on TV
We’ve seen AI hosts in China before (see Nov 12 issue) and this Chinese New Year you can see the latest progress on this phenomenon.
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How a sassy chatbot got me to run
Here’s an amazing digital personal trainer you can use right now to improve health in an easy way. Imagine a coach tracking your progress telling you to keep going! Full transcript and samples available.
Read More
Numbers that Matter
$23M in funding for Verbit
Verbit (a startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and currently expanding into the U.S.) has raised $23 million in funding, bringing the total raised for the company to $34 million. They use AI to automatically transcribe and caption audio and video files.
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Smarter Conversations
Interview: Natural Language Design Expert
A poorly designed chatbot can be detrimental to a business.
Hans van Dam (director of Robocopy) is an expert in “natural language design” and gives his thoughts on how we can change the way AI interacts with customers. “Many companies start by creating a flowchart, focusing on the business process … In actually, you want to take it the other way around. Start with a user.”
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CognitionX Research
Chatbots in Telecommunications: Business Case Studies (NEW REPORT)
If you’re a senior leader in the telecommunications sector, curious about the potential of a conversational AI strategy, CognitionX’s latest report on chatbot case studies for telcos is designed to help accelerate your ability to create strategies with confidence.
The questions the report explores:
- What does good look like for chatbots in the telecommunications sector?
- What are some examples of successful case studies?
- What do they cost and return-on-investment windows?
- + many others
£195+VAT for one license, £995+VAT for 10 licenses of this report
Register Interest: Chatbots in Telcos
Under the Hood
Can AI justify its decisions?
If you request a song to be played, say “Yellow Submarine”, a virtual assistant is intelligent enough to recommend similar songs afterward, like “Hey Jude” or “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da”.
But if you ask the assistant “why it arrived at the song Hey Jude from the song Yellow Submarine?” it would not explain the reasoning behind its decision. But maybe not for much longer.
