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A Primer On Conversational AI

Learning About Conversational AI and How It Can Help Humans

Natural Language Processing Notes

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Introduction

I’m sure we’ve all been in a position where we’ve tried to contact our bank, but before we can speak to an assistant, we have to go through some sort of automated system. How annoying is it when these systems simply can’t understand us? After minutes of back and forths and struggling to understand the system refers us to a real person to handle our query and take us through the exact same process.

It’s frustrating!

If we are going to be having conversations with a computer, we’d at least want for it to replicate a human interaction as much as possible otherwise what’s the point! We need computers to communicate and speak like us, but we know that’s not really how computers work – unless you teach them…

What is Conversational AI?

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) comprises a set of technologies that power automated messaging tools, like chatbots, and speech-enabled applications, such as voice assistants. Users can talk to these technologies since they are created to offer human-like engagements between computers and humans.

These technologies often leverage a large amount of data, Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to aid in imitating human-like interactions which include recognizing speech, as well as text, then translating their meaning.

However, the type of Conversation AI we are accustomed to is known as Weak AI (or Narrow AI in some circles but the terms are interchangeable). Weak, not because of its lack of capability, but due to the fact the tools we are accustomed to only implement a limited part of mind – In other words, they are focused on performing another field of tasks.

On the other hand, there’s strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Strong AI is usually what’s depicted in sci-fi movies – well with a little less exaggeration; This type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still a theoretical concept that Wikipedia describes as "the hypothetical ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can." [Source: Wikipedia].

Use Cases

As previously stated, Weak AI is being adopted by various enterprises despite being called weak – In fact, if we look at the Technology‘s ability to aid businesses in becoming profitable, we probably wouldn’t look at it as being weak. Some examples of Conversational AI in enterprise include:

  • Customer Support is often quite repetitive hence it’s being replaced by online chatbots that can help customers along the customer journey
  • Reducing barriers to entry with technologies that involve text-to-speech and vice versa
  • Improving operational efficiency in Health care
  • Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Home
  • Optimizing much of the Human Resources (HR) processes

Benefits of Conversational AI

There are many factors that make conversational AI appealing to businesses, hence I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some form of it in businesses across various industries in the future.

Improved Productivity -With conversational AI, automated support is available 24/7 to handle the simple requests. In turn, this feat free’s up customer service representatives to divert their attention to more complex customer concerns that are out of reach of a conversational AI.

Reduced Customer Care Cost – Customer care carries an extremely high operating cost, but with conversational AI, requests by customers could be handled at a higher volume than if a human was on the other end of the line. Therefore, customers could be provided with relevant and useful information much faster.

Interactive Brand Messaging – The likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have done this quite well with their respective voice assistants. Virtual Assistants allow you to personify your brand which allows you to meet your customer at their place of preference which is beyond display ads, social media, and other web sources.

Better Experience for Employees – As previously stated, menial tasks can be taken away from human agents and delegated to virtual assistants that don’t ever get bored of doing the same thing over and over (in fact, they get better). This leaves room for humans to focus on more complex tasks as well as develop their people skills to build new or hone existing customer relationships.

Wrap Up

Although most conversational AI applications are currently limited in their problem-solving skills, they are still very effective tools that are capable of reducing time and improving cost efficiency in tasks that are repetitive in nature, such as customer interactions. To further add, conversational AI is a great tool to use to free employees so that they can be focused more on tasks that bring more value to the business and interactions with customers that require more involvement.

On the whole, conversational AI applications have shown that they are capable of imitating human-like conversational experiences effectively, thereby resulting in much more satisfied customers.

Thanks for reading…

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