The Rise of Conversational AI
Montreal Bots Meetup Kickoff, Microsoft
Zafarali Ahmed (@zafarali)
www.zafarali.me
What are bots?
An automated service that a user can interact with using conversation.
What’s the big deal?
Language is the most natural form of communication.
No Download.
Device and Operating System Agnostic.
iPad
Android
iPhone
Web
Byte Size, On the Go.
Places to Eat/Movies
Weather
News
Shopping
Reminders
That’s where the users are.
Data as of April 2016 from: Statista.com
Monthly Active Millions of Users
A BILLION.
Examples
Siri
Alexa
You can’t see me!
Amy
SkyScanner
Why now?
Neural Networks to Understand Language
Hi, Can I book a table for two on Sunday 5:30PM?
People: 2�Day: 20/11/2016�Time: 17:30
Intent Detection
> Sure Zaf, I’ve made the reservation.
Response Generation
> I’m sorry, our restaurant is fully booked at that time. How about 7:00PM?
Going Deep
Szegedy, Christian, et al. "Going deeper with convolutions." Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. 2015.
Platforms and Frameworks
New Platforms for Developers:
Frameworks for Developers and Enthusiasts
My Journey: MinervaBot
Why? Example: What time is comp 551?
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
Why? Example: 500 level biology courses?
1 2
3 4
Why? Other Examples
Printers in Trottier?
Is the McConnell Caf open?
Is the McLennan Library open?
Solution: Course Look Up
Solution: Printer Lookup
Solution: Buildings
Challenges: Many ways to say the same thing
Who teaches COMP 551?�Who is the professor for applied machine learning?�Show me courses about machine learning.�What time is machine learning in the fall?�MACHINE LEARNING!!!
I’m hungry�Cafeterias in mclennan?�Where can i get food near schulich?�Is vua open?
Challenges: Data…
My Solution: Plugins
Can I answer this query?
Is the user asking for help?
Context, History, Past Queries
Is the query about a building?
Is the query about a course?
Open source and modularized!
Future
Now I have data! Can I train algorithms?
Lightweight Response Network
What is the meaning of life?
I think it’s 42. Want to ask me something that I know the answer to?
Questions
Final Notes: