Conversational AI: Chatbots that work

I’m a big Conversational AI enthusiast, from ELIZA to ALEXA and all that’s to come. The ability for artificial intelligence to understand the complexities and nuances of human conversation is remarkable and is rapidly becoming a dominate means for businesses to interact with their users. Applying it is as much an art as it is a science. Conversational AI by Andrew Freed is a necessary guide to scientifically create your Conversational AI game-plan for assembling your masterpiece software bot. Bravo Andrew!As an author of a few books, I really appreciate the readability of this book. The chapters are logically laid out, and figures are numerous and crystal clear. I particularly like the flow-charts and “alert sections” e.g., Terminology Alert. Also, the is subtle humor in the figures that made me not want to overlook any in fear of missing one.While the book is useful regardless of your choice of conversational AI technology, I particularly like the examples where Watson Assistant was used. It has been a while since I’ve looked at WA, and the examples in the book, make it all that much more inviting.If you have any interest and/or need to build digital workers, this is your book. It is an essential guide for hitting the ground running and getting results immediately.I host a podcast called “The Art of Automation”, which is all about AI-powered Automation in the Enterprise. I am going to invite Andrew to be a guest on the podcast to further highlight this must read!

I've been in the tech realm for quite sometime and have helped develop many conversational AI platforms, focusing mostly on AI Assistant dialog flows and Language Model training (Speech to Text / Text to Speech). Years ago when I first started, I took a timely approach to my learning by hunting and pecking around on the internet searching for answers, hoping to find my golden nugget. Now, you're given the luxury of having all the answers right in front of you. It's truly the feather in your cap. Even as someone who’s worked with assistants for years, I’ve learned many new things by reading this book.Though this book walks you through creating and testing your own assistant in surgical detail, you don't have to be a developer to read it. This book will also greatly benefit business leaders as the author provides best practices not only from a development standpoint, but from a business organization standpoint as well. He provides an ironed out process of how to build your dream team, and what steps are needed for your teams success. Everything is laid out for you.In other words, this can be for anyone interested in AI assistants: developers, product owners, scrum masters, architects, testing teams, etc.Highly recommended!!

The book is a nice first project. Good introduction to concepts.