{"597024":{"#nid":"597024","#data":{"type":"event","title":"GVU Center Distinguished Lecture: Ashwin Ram, \u0022Conversational AI: Voice Based Intelligent Agents\u0022","body":[{"value":"\u003Ch2\u003EGVU Center Distinguished Lecture:\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch2\u003EConversational AI: Voice Based Intelligent Agents\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAs we move\u0026nbsp;from the dominance\u0026nbsp;of the keyboard, to that\u0026nbsp;of touch screens, and now to the age of voice interaction using\u0026nbsp;technology, natural conversation in everyday language continues to be one of the ultimate challenges for AI.\u0026nbsp;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\u0026nbsp;user experience and conversational engagement.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EI 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.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESpeaker Bio:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Ashwin Ram is Senior Manager of AI Science for Alexa, the intelligent agent that powers Amazon Echo and other devices. He leads R\u0026amp;D initiatives to create advanced technologies for conversational agents, including the university-facing Alexa Prize competition.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Ram is a distinguished artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and entrepreneur. He managed the Interactive Intelligence research area at PARC, leading a team to invent new behavior change technologies to help people adopt healthier lifestyles. He was a professor in the College of Computing at\u0026nbsp;Georgia Tech and director of the Cognitive Computing Lab, and is now an adjunct professor there. He has co-founded multiple startups, including OpenStudy (acquired by Brainly), an online social learning network, and Enkia\u0026nbsp;(acquired by Sentiment360), which developed AI software for\u0026nbsp;social media applications. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1989, his MS from University of Illinois in 1984, and his BTech from IIT Delhi\u0026nbsp;in 1982. He has published 2 books and over 100 scientific articles in international forums.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EHe is a closet anthropologist and loves travel, people and culture.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn this talk, we will discuss why Conversational AI is difficult and how you can leverage conversational agents like Amazon Alexa for your own applications. In addition we will consider challenges that still remain.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Conversational agents like Amazon Alexa can be leveraged for other applications."}],"uid":"33749","created_gmt":"2017-10-05 20:25:24","changed_gmt":"2017-10-06 12:42:54","author":"Dorie Taylor","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2017-10-19T16:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2017-10-19T18:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2017-10-19T18:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2017-10-19 20:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2017-10-19 22:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2017-10-19 22:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":["free_food"],"hg_media":{"355641":{"id":"355641","type":"image","title":"Ashwin Ram - Compressed","body":null,"created":"1449245756","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:15:56","changed":"1475895087","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:27","alt":"Ashwin Ram - Compressed","file":{"fid":"201349","name":"ashwin-ram.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ashwin-ram.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ashwin-ram.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":11759,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ashwin-ram.jpg?itok=BC4qIIZ5"}}},"media_ids":["355641"],"groups":[{"id":"1299","name":"GVU Center"},{"id":"69599","name":"IPaT"},{"id":"50876","name":"School of Interactive Computing"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1795","name":"Seminar\/Lecture\/Colloquium"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78761","name":"Faculty\/Staff"},{"id":"78771","name":"Public"},{"id":"174045","name":"Graduate students"},{"id":"78751","name":"Undergraduate students"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:gvu@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Egvu@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}