1 What makes conversational AI work?

 

This chapter covers

  • Identifying and minimizing conversational AI risks
  • Assessing where generative AI can help you in your conversational AI
  • Using generative AI safely
  • Continuously improving your AI and aiming for a defined target

We’ve all encountered computerized conversational agents that caused us pain, such as a chatbot that didn’t understand anything we said, a robotic voice initiating a confusing dialogue flow, or a phone assistant that made us immediately opt out to a human representative. When your conversational AI solutions cause these problems, how do you resolve them? How can you build them correctly in the first place? This book will show you how to create chatbots and other conversational AI solutions that your customers will be happy to use.

As conversational AI practitioners, we work with customers who are just starting to deploy automated agents for limited tasks as well as with large organizations that face high levels of business risk—situations where one generative AI hallucination might outweigh the benefits of dozens of correct and fluent interactions. Using a variety of examples pulled from our work, we’ll present options for implementing and improving conversational AI, with and without generative AI.

1.1 Introduction to conversational AI

1.1.1 Why use conversational AI?

1.1.2 How does conversational AI work?

1.1.3 How you build conversational AI

1.2 Introduction to generative AI in conversational AI

1.2.1 What is generative AI

1.2.2 Generative AI guardrails

1.2.3 Effectively using generative AI in conversational AI

1.3 Introducing continuous improvement in conversational AI

1.3.1 Why continuously improve

1.3.2 The continuous improvement cycle

1.3.3 Communicating continuous improvement to stakeholders

1.4 Follow along

Summary