Posts Tagged ‘cognitive media’

28 Nov

Conversational AI: The Science behind the Alexa Prize

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Talks. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Conversational agents are exploding in popularity. However, much work remains in the area of social conversation as well as free-form conversation over a broad range of domains and topics. To advance the state of the art in conversational AI, Amazon launched the Alexa Prize, a 2.5-million-dollar university competition where sixteen selected university teams were challenged to build conversational agents, known as “socialbots”, to converse coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics such as Sports, Politics, Entertainment, Fashion and Technology for 20 minutes.

The Alexa Prize offered the academic community a unique opportunity to perform research with a live system used by millions of users. The competition provided university teams with real user conversational data at scale, along with the user-provided ratings and feedback augmented with annotations by the Alexa team. This enabled teams to effectively iterate and make improvements throughout the competition while being evaluated in real-time through live user interactions.

To build their socialbots, university teams combined state-of-the-art techniques with novel strategies in the areas of Natural Language Understanding, Context Modeling, Dialog Management, Response Generation, and Knowledge Acquisition. To support the teams’ efforts, the Alexa Prize team made significant scientific and engineering investments to build and improve Conversational Speech Recognition, Topic Tracking, Dialog Evaluation, Voice User Experience, and tools for traffic management and scalability.

This paper outlines the advances created by the university teams as well as the Alexa Prize team to achieve the common goal of solving the problem of Conversational AI.

Conversational AI: The Science behind the Alexa Prize

by Ashwin Ram, Rohit Prasad, Chandra Khatri, Anu Venkatesh, Raefer Gabriel, Qing Liu, Jeff Nunn, Behnam Hedayatnia, Ming Cheng, Ashish Nagar, Eric King, Kate Bland, Amanda Wartick, Yi Pan, Han Song, Sk Jayadevan, Gene Hwang, Art Pettigrue

Proceedings of the 2017 Alexa Prize
Invited talk at NIPS-2017 Workshop on Conversational AI
Invited talk at re:Invent 2017 (with Spyros Matsoukas)

READ THE PAPER:

arxiv.org/abs/1801.03604

WATCH THE TALK:

youtu.be/pn5QJQZjGpM

			

		


	
		

			

				29
				Aug
			

			
Announcing the 2017 Alexa Prize Finalists

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Opinion, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .			

			

				
We’ve hit another milestone in the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million university competition to advance conversational AI. University teams from around the world have been hard at work to create a socialbot, an AI capable of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics and news events for 20 minutes.


I am now excited to announce the university teams that will be competing in the finals! After hundreds of thousands of conversations, the two socialbots with the highest average customer ratings during the semifinal period are Alquist from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Sounding Board from the University of Washington in Seattle. The wildcard team is What’s Up Bot from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.


READ MORE:


developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/783df492-4770-4b11-81ac-59e009669d56/announcing-the-2017-alexa-prize-finalists


 

			

		


	
		

			

				1
				Jun
			

			
Conversational AI: Voice-Based Intelligent Agents

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .			

			

				
As we moved from the age of the keyboard, to the age of touch, and now to the age of voice, natural conversation in everyday language continues to be one of the ultimate challenges for AI. This is a difficult scientific problem involving knowledge acquisition, natural language understanding, natural language generation, context modeling, commonsense reasoning and dialog planning, as well as a complex product design problem involving user experience and conversational engagement.


I will talk about why Conversational AI is hard, how conversational agents like Amazon Alexa understand and respond to voice interactions, how you can leverage these technologies for your own applications, and the challenges that still remain.


Variants of this talk presented (click links for video):


 


Keynote talks at The AI Conference (2017), O’Reilly AI Conference (2017), The AI Summit (2017), Stanford ASES Summit (2017), MLconf AI Conference (2017), Global AI Conference (2016).


 


Distinguished lectures at Georgia Tech/GVU (2017), Northwestern University (2017).


 


Keynote panel at Conversational Interaction Conference (2016).




 


Lightning TED-style talks at IIT Bay Area Conference (2017), Intersect (2017).


 



			

		


	
		

			

				18
				May
			

			
Join the Alexa Prize Journey and Test the Socialbots

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Opinion, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .			

			

				
On September 29, 2016, Amazon announced the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million university competition to advance conversational AI through voice. In April, university teams from around the world assembled at the appropriately named Day 1 building in Seattle for the Alexa Prize Summit. The event was a base camp for teams to share learnings and make preparations for the most challenging leg of their journey: to build and scale an AI capable of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans for 20 minutes.


As they build their “socialbots,” they will encounter esoteric problems like context modeling and dialog planning as well as exoteric problems like user experience and conversational engagement. And they will need all the help they can get.


We invite you to join the students on their journey and help them along the way. You can interact with their socialbots simply by saying, “Alexa, let’s chat” on any device with Alexa.


READ MORE:

developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/e4cc64d1-f334-4d2d-8609-5627939f9bf7/join-the-alexa-prize-journey-and-test-the-socialbots


 

			

		


	
		

			

				23
				Feb
			

			
Making The Future Possible: Conversational AI in Amazon Alexa

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Opinion, Talks.			Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .			

			

				
No longer is AI solely a subject of science fiction. Advances in AI have resulted in enabling technologies for computer vision, planning, decision making, robotics, and most recently spoken language understanding. These technologies are driving business growth, and releasing workers to engage in more creative and valuable tasks.


I’ll talk about the moved from the age of the keyboard, to the age of touch, and are now entering the age of voice. Alexa is making this future possible. Amazon is committed to fostering a robust cloud-based voice service, and it is this voice service that the innovators of today, tomorrow, and beyond will be building. It is this voice service—and the ecosystem around it—that awaits the next generation of AI talent.


Keynote at Udacity Intersect Conference, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA, March 8, 2017.


 


READ MORE:


blog.udacity.com/2017/02/dr-ashwin-ram-intersect-2017-speaker.html


VIEW THE TALK:


linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6286681682187812864


 

			

		


	
		

			

				14
				Nov
			

			
Announcing the Sponsored Teams for the 2016-2017 Alexa Prize

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Opinion, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .			

			

				
On September 29, 2016, Amazon announced the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million university competition to advance conversational AI through voice. We received applications from leading universities across 22 countries. Each application was carefully reviewed by senior Amazon personnel against a rigorous set of criteria covering scientific contribution, technical merit, novelty, and ability to execute. Teams of scientists, engineers, user experience designers, and product managers read, evaluated, discussed, argued, and finally selected the ten teams who would be invited to participate in the competition. Wait, make that twelve; we received so many good applications from graduate and undergraduate students that we decided to sponsor two additional teams.


Today, we’re excited to announce the 12 teams selected to compete with an Amazon sponsorship.


READ MORE:


developer.amazon.com/blogs/post/Tx1UXVV4VJTPYTL/announcing-the-sponsored-teams-for-the-2016-2017-alexa-prize

			

		


	
		

			

				29
				Sep
			

			
The Alexa Prize: $2.5M to Advance Conversational AI

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Language, Learning, Opinion, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .			

			

				
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming ubiquitous. With advances in technology, algorithms, and sheer compute power, it is now becoming practical to utilize AI techniques in many everyday applications including transportation, healthcare, gaming, productivity, and media. Yet one seemingly intuitive task for humans still eludes computers: natural conversation. Simple and natural for humans, voice communication in everyday language continues to be one of the ultimate challenges for AI.


Today, we are pleased to announce the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million university competition to advance conversational AI through voice. Teams of university students around the world are invited to participate in the Alexa Prize (see contest rules for details). The challenge is to create a socialbot, an Alexa skill that converses coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes. We challenge teams to invent an Alexa socialbot smart enough to engage in a fun, high quality conversation on popular topics for 20 minutes.


Are you up to the challenge?


READ MORE:


developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx221UQAWNUXON3/Are-you-up-to-the-Challenge-Announcing-the-Alexa-Prize-2-5-Million-to-Advance-Co

			

		


	
		

			

				15
				Jan
			

			
A Group-Based Mobile Application to Increase Adherence in Exercise and Nutrition Programs: A Factorial Design Feasibility Study

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , .			

			

				
Novel methods of promoting self-monitoring and social support are needed to ensure long-term maintenance of behavior change. In this paper, we directly investigate the effects of group support in an exercise and nutrition program delivered by an mHealth application called Fittle.


Our first specific study aim was to explore whether social support improved adherence in wellness programs. Our second specific study aim was to assess whether media types (ePaper vs mobile) were associated with different levels of compliance and adherence to wellness programs. The third aim was to assess whether the use of an mHealth application led to positive changes to participants’ eating behavior, physical activity, and stress level, compared to traditional paper-based programs.


Conclusions: The team-based Fittle app is an acceptable and feasible wellness behavior change intervention and a full randomized controlled trial to investigate the efficacy of such an intervention is warranted.


A Group-Based Mobile Application to Increase Adherence in Exercise and Nutrition Programs: A Factorial Design Feasibility Study


by Honglu Du, Anusha Venkatakrishnan, Michael Youngblood, Ashwin Ram, Peter Pirolli


Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) mHealth uHealth, 4(1), 2016.


mhealth.jmir.org/2016/1/e4/

			

		


	
		

			

				8
				Jul
			

			
Augmented Social Cognition for Consumer Health and Wellness

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Health & Wellness, Talks, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , .			

			

				
In a recent Wall Street Journal essay, Marc Andreessen wrote: “Software is eating the world. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software. Healthcare and education are next up for fundamental software-based transformation.”


What is the impending disruption in healthcare, and what new technologies are driving it? I argue that the problem is not healthcare but health: creating new consumer-centric approaches to health and wellness that increase engagement, improve health literacy and promote behavior change.


The web is evolving from information (portals) to interaction (social/mobile) to influence: shaping attitudes and behaviors. This creates a unique opportunity to address the problem of consumer health and wellness. But, to do this effectively requires a new kind of technology: user modeling. It also requires an innovation methodology that is fundamentally about people, not technology.


At PARC, our research in Augmented Social Cognition is centered around the confluence of three technologies: social, mobile, and user modeling. I discuss these technologies and explain how we leverage artificial Intelligence (AI) and case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques to model users and create effective and sustainable behavior change.


Invited talk at CBR-2013 Industry Day, Saratoga Springs, NY, July 8, 2013.


VIEW SLIDES:



			

		


	
		

			

				17
				Jun
			

			
From Dr Google, to Dr Facebook, and beyond…

			

			Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0.			Tagged: , , .			

			

				
I recently appeared on the ABC Health Report radio program.


Joel Werner: Do you ever go online to search for symptoms that you’re experiencing? I do it all the time, and it’s a trend that has picked up the nickname ‘Dr Google’. For Ashwin Ram, Dr Google is just one step on the path to future healthcare…


			

		


	
		

			
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