chapter one

1 Introduction to improving conversational AI

 

This chapter covers

  • How to identify and improve the top failure modes of conversational AI
  • How to assess where generative AI can help you in your conversational AI
  • How to safely use generative AI
  • How to continuously improve your AI (from those top failure modes) towards a defined target

Perhaps you have a conversational AI solution in production. Maybe you built it yourself, maybe you inherited it, or maybe it's now just a part of your daily life. Or maybe you use a chatbot and want to learn more about it. That AI solution was deployed with some primary goal in mind: to deflect users from a call-center, to provide speedier resolution to issues, or to provide more self-service capabilities to users. We’ve seen various kinds of conversational AI:

  • Question-answering: Also known as FAQ bots, these AI solutions deliver a response directly to a user’s question, usually without any follow-up.
  • Process-oriented or transactional solutions: The user is guided by an AI to achieve some goal through a series of questions from the bot. For instance: checking an account balance, booking an appointment, or checking the status of an insurance claim.
  • Routing agents: The bot’s only job is to figure out where to redirect the user next. The redirection may be to a different specialist bot or a human agent.

1.1 Introduction to Conversational AI

1.1.1 Solve problems and remove pain points

1.1.2 How does it work

1.1.3 How do you build it

1.1.4 Exercises

1.2 Intro 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

1.2.4 Exercises

1.3 Intro to 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

1.3.4 Exercises

1.4 Follow along

1.5 Summary