Making sure your AI agent can 'Hold the Conversation'

Making sure your AI agent can 'Hold the Conversation'; the evolution towards a more natural and continuous conversation driven by NLU

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The ability to talk to machines has been around for a long time, but we still have a way to go towards a truly natural conversation. Advancements in language understanding are allowing us to move beyond a command and control relationship towards a more natural and effortless way to engage with technology. Yet, designing conversations with AI can seem deceptively simple: Is it natural sounding? Does it have context of the previous conversations? Can it understand ambiguity? In this session, we’ll discuss how research advancements like on-device models, RNN-Ts, multilingual models and using artificial speech data have transformed our ability to process complex conversations, and why truly natural engagement is core to successful interactions. Product lead Valerie Nygaard will talk about how Google’s advanced research comes to life by using AI to enable faster, better experiences: It powers Google Assistant’s ability to answer open-ended questions, understand simple commands -- like just saying “stop” to turn off an alarm -- and ask a follow up question within known context, making interacting by voice much easier than before. It is also behind Duplex, a cutting-edge conversational AI technology that is able to respond naturally in phone conversations, saving people time and effort when booking reservations or getting information about local stores. Finally, she will share behind-the-scenes learnings as the industry continues to build on the latest speech technology.