Build AI Chatbots: A New Solution to an Old Problem

Making good decisions in any domain requires having access to the right information at the right time. Personal computers, the Internet, and smartphones have been effective tools in accomplishing this task but they also have created information overload with adverse effects on decision making. In this meetup we intend to put the recent progress in AI chatbots in the context of making good decisions and whether they can provide a solution to the problem of information overload. A bigger picture that we would like to put forward, and open for discussion during the meetup, is to look at AI in general and AI chatbots in particular as a way to ‘activate the right knowledge’ for their human users at the right time to make better decisions.

Agenda

6:30-7:00pm Registration and networking

7:00-7:40pm Build a Chatbot in NodeJS using DialogFlow by Ashish Kumar

7:45-8:00pm The 5 Must-Haves for Selecting an Enterprise AI Chatbot Platform by Adi Subbarao

8:00-8:15pm Activation of Knowledge via Chatbots by Cirrus Shakeri

8:15-8:50pm Discussions and networking

In order to ground the discussions in the reality of what AI chatbots can accomplish today, we’ll start with a talk by Ashish Kumar who will focus on how to use a popular platform for building AI chatbots called DialogFlow (formerly called api.ai and acquired by Google in 2016). Ashish will demonstrate building a chatbot for a fictitious use case about an average person accessing the right information for improving their daily commute and transportation needs via a chatbot.

We will continue with a short talk by Adi Subbarao from Parlo, an AI company looking to build the AI workforce for the smart enterprise. According to recent Forrester survey, roughly “85% of customer interactions within an enterprise will be with software robots in five years’ time.” With the rise of AI, machine learning, and natural language understanding capabilities, “87% of CEOs are looking to expand their AI workforce” using AI-powered bots to drive higher labor efficiencies, reduce costs, and create better customer/employee experiences within an enterprise. As a result, companies are searching for the right AI vendors to meet their specific AI needs and drive digital transformation across the entire enterprise. In this talk, Adi Subbarao will go over the “5 Must-Haves for Selecting an Enterprise AI Chatbot Platform” and how to quickly get started building your AI workforce.

In the last part of the meetup we’ll hear a short talk by Cirrus Shakeri from Inventurist about how the recent progress in AI technologies, including chatbots, is enabling computers to activate the right knowledge for their human users in order to make better decisions. He will present a solution template for AI chatbots that can be adapted to different use cases in different industries.

About Speakers

Ashish Kumar - Ashish Kumar is a software consultant, a serial entrepreneur currently working on a Chatbot Platform for Businesses. He specializes in building Chatbots, Voice Assistants, develops web / mobile apps for startups and large corporates. He is also a trainer in various technologies such as NodeJS, ReactNative, MEAN stack, etc. You can know more about him on http://codementor.io/ashish1dev.
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashkmr1/
Twitter : http://twitter.com/@ashish_fagna
Blog : http://medium.com/@ashish_fagna
Contact him at : ashish.fagna@gmail.com

Adi Subbarao - Adi Subbarao is the Head of Marketing at Parlo, an AI company looking to build the AI workforce for the smart enterprise. Adi is a contributing author of Chatbots Magazine, the largest chatbots publication in the world with over 35,000 followers. He has published numerous articles about the future of AI and the enterprise applications of chatbots for IT helpdesk, HR, and customer support automation.
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/adisubbarao/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/GetParlo
Blog : https://medium.com/@Parlo/
Contact him at : adi@parlo.io

Cirrus Shakeri - Cirrus Shakeri has more than 20 years of experience in technology and product development, focused on the application of Artificial Intelligence in enterprise. He has extensive expertise in intelligent agent systems, knowledge-based systems, semantic technologies, natural language processing, knowledge graphs, machine learning, and Big Data. Cirrus has worked on solving real-world problems in a wide range of industries including manufacturing, telecom, retail, and government. Most recently, Cirrus worked as a Senior Director in the Office of the CTO at SAP Labs in Palo Alto for 7 years and was responsible for finding new areas of growth for SAP, based on emerging technologies in Big Data and AI. Cirrus has been advising technology startups in Silicon Valley since 2014. He is an Executive in Residence at the Plug and Play Tech Center, one of the largest startup incubators in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cirrus has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Engineering, and a Ph.D. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the applications of multi-agent systems.

Sponsors

GSV Labs (http://gsvlabs.com)

The Global Silicon Valley is powering this wave of ambition and advancement. It’s not a place, but rather an energy—a smart, purposeful, collaborative, and daring way of doing business.

igniteXL (http://ignitexl.com/)

igniteXL is a Silicon Valley based accelerator and seed fund focused on early stage startups coming from Asia to Silicon Valley.

Inventurist (https://www.inventurist.com)

Inventurist has built an AI platform that helps innovators design and validate new AI products.

Kodiak Data (http://www.kodiakdata.com)

Kodiak Data is an edge-cloud solution provider enabling customers to easily deploy and scale big data infrastructure in both private and hybrid clouds. Designed from the ground up to to meet the needs of Big Data, our data-optimized clouds deliver on the promise of the public cloud’s agility with even greater simplicity and flexibility, combined with much lower costs. The Kodiak Data platform is the only solution that can create, within minutes, virtual clusters for cloud, data and storage services that run at memory-speed, and scale to the needs of big data applications and processing. For more information about Kodiak Data, visit us at www.kodiakdata.com.

Parlo.io (http://parlo.io)