Chatbots.org Business News

During the AAAI conference I discovered scientists of the Socially Intelligent Machines research lab from the Georgia Institute of Technology working enthusiastically on Simon, the robot which we previously have covered at Chatbots.org.

Here’s a video of my personal experience:

Aetna announced the availability of an online assistant to help members who have questions about how to navigate Aetna’s secure member website. “Ann,” Aetna’s personalized, virtual assistant, offers 24-hour support for members who are new to the website or need help logging in. Members receive the same responsive service from Ann that they receive when calling customer service, but without leaving the website. Ann is interactive and easily interprets members’ questions, helping them with the registration process or with recovering forgotten user names or passwords.

VirtuOz  announced the deployment of a virtual agent solution on the PayPal Germany site. VirtuOz agents are now available on four PayPal country sites, including the United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, with plans to launch an agent in Australia in the near future.

“Because they’re dealing with financial transactions, PayPal wants to ensure its customers receive a superior confidence-building experience,” said Alexandre Lebrun, co-founder and CEO, VirtuOz. “The expanded use of the VirtuOz virtual agent at PayPal Germany reinforces the value our solution provides PayPal.”

The PayPal Germany virtual agent is named Eva, and she assists customers in German, marking the third language PayPal has rolled out with VirtuOz.

At the Computer Human Interaction conference in Atlanta (12/5/2010), Simon the Robot demonstrated he has more capabilities than before. Originally he was only able to move some blocks very slowly, now he is capable of learning household chores without commanding him all over again or having to pre program him with a set of tasks. For example, Simon identifies colourful items: a blue book, a green plastic case, a red flower and several others, and puts them into the corresponding colours bin.

The Chatbots 3.0 conference in Philadelphia was a huge success.  We had about 25 attendees and 11 high quality presentations. A number of people who were unable to attend have made requests to see the presentations.  We have asked the speakers to submit links to their talks so that you can view them.

Richard Wallace, Pandorabots - Pandorabots overview (ppt, windows, mac, PDF)

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We have released an upgrade to the AIML Superbot, a development kit that makes it easy for you to create a chat bot with its own unique and proprietary personality distinct from the ALICE bot.

Since 1956 researchers have studied AI and their various specializations. However, this research was based on a couple of assumptions which are due for a rigorous revision. Previously, many AI solutions have attempted to solve all the problems with one system or function rather than multiple systems working together as in the human mind. The mind, memory and body function work both together and separately to solve any number of problems, and the way they work together (and alone) varies from problem to problem. The human mind alone applies various systems and functions to any given problem. Also, researchers have developed models that work more like computers, where everything is either one or zero. Real memory is filled with gray areas, ambiguities and inconsistencies, but functions in spite of not always being congruent.

Therefore, MIT is revisiting their Mind Machine Project with an initial $5 million grant and a five-year timetable to rebuild the AI field from scratch.

VirtuOz expanded its enterprise relationship with eBay to provide intelligent customer support on eBay.com. The VirtuOz solution, which is already on eBay’s sites in France (named Louise), Germany, the United Kingdom and United States, will be rolled out to other eBay Web sites.

Cassandra is our “Figure of Speech”, a title that nicely represents who and what she is.  ejTalk’s mission from the very beginning has been to focus on the basic elements of conversation instead of developing products to accomplish a singular task.  Most conversational agents today serve a particular purpose.  They talk about specific topics but do not communicate in very conversational ways.

ejTalk takes the opposite approach with Cassandra by laying a foundation for the basic principles of day-to-day speech that will one day allow her to talk about anything.  Take the example of a greeting: There are many ways to introduce oneself to another person.  We may say “hello” to a person we have just met, but to a friend we will say “hey” or “hi.”  It may seem like a trivial distinction, but to the human ear, the effect is highly noticeable.

Cassandra’s entry in the SpeechTEK Europe Avatar Challenge.