e g a l l i v a s e k a t It t o b a e s i a r to Desiree García @thedezzie

Conversational systems and emerging AI

"Just add water"

"One size fits all"

Engineers couldn't do it alone.

Why do people want conversational systems?

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”

  • Miles Davis

Machines still have a hard time with language http://bit.ly/ai-language-problems

Simple conversational systems that are great

Complex conversational systems that are great

Time + Money

Is it convincing?

Is it convincing effective?

Content first

Content last

Intents Entities Dialog builder #greeting Conversation starts Condition #greeting Watson responses (0) No responses added Edit . Order pizza flow and some … Order pizza flow and some … Condition Condition No conditions set No conditions set Watson responses 20 We got ya down for a $topping pizza. Anything else Watson responses 20 We got ya down for a $topping pizza. Introduction

@location . @restaurant @cuisine

"In just minutes a day"

Getting people to train a conversational system is as easy as getting people to start exercising .

. http://www.r2d3.us/

Initial training ingestion employee manual Initial training improvement apprenticeship ongoing training refinement mastery

Content matters, because training matters

Deploy your conversational system app Assess its performance using human judgment Optimize its operating thresholds Retrain machine learning model with golden examples from humans 5. Lather, rinse, repeat

Deploy your conversational system app Assess its performance using human judgment Optimize its operating thresholds Retrain machine learning model with golden examples from humans 5. Lather, rinse, repeat

"Shut it down, shut it down!"

In AI, everyone is learning as they go along

They built teams.

developer domain expert sme content strategist ux designer

developer domain expert

Intents Entities Dialog builder #greeting Conversation starts Condition #greeting Watson responses (0) No responses added Edit . Order pizza flow and some … Order pizza flow and some … Condition Condition No conditions set No conditions set Watson responses 20 We got ya down for a $topping pizza. Anything else Watson responses 20 We got ya down for a $topping pizza. Introduction

@location . . #recommend @restaurant @cuisine

Empowering the creators

developer business domain expert data scientist

domain expert

"Ther e's w ater i n my room !" e k i l u o y d l "Wou e m o s u o y bring us to ice?"

They're closest to the content

moar content engineer data scientist domain expert business

How's your relationship to content?

moar content engineer data scientist domain expert business

"It's just content"

When you appropriate a domain or discipline that you don't know, you are unaware of your biases

"It's just content"

...what if you don't need AI?

Yay!

Inspiration for this talk

Would you put a baby in charge of customer support?

How about letting a toddler recommend medical treatment?

Or getting financial advice from a teenager?

It takes a village to raise a chatbot

Thank you! These slides live here: bit.ly/raising-chatbots An visual introduction to machine learning: r2d3.us A review of chatbot platforms bit.ly/chatbot-platforms An excellent guide to conversational design Conversational Design by Erika Hall (A Book Apart) Sparkle and Spin - A Book About Words, by Ann Rand and Paul Rand Twitter: @thedezzie Email: dezzie@automattic.com