about the authors

Hobson Lane began building text interfaces (TUIs) in elementary school, when he first programmed text adventure games and dreamed of a virtual friend to help him learn and grow. Now at Tangible AI, Hobson is on the cusp of fulfilling this dream. Over the past 25 years, Hobson has built dozens of successful machine learning NLP systems for big tech and small tech alike. From visual interpreters for the blind to state-of-the-art virtual tutors, Hobson has helped build AI to solve some of the most challenging real-world problems. Throughout his career, Hobson has defaulted to open and fought for ethical, transparent algorithms. This trove of unencumbered software and data has given him a wealth of insights and algorithms to share with you.

Maria Dyshel is a social entrepreneur and artificial intelligence expert, focusing on using machine intelligence and chatbots for social impact. She has held a variety of AI research, engineering, and management roles in diverse industries, from designing and improving algorithms for autonomous vehicles to implementing a company-wide conversational AI program in one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. An avid conversational AI enthusiast, Maria has led and supported the creation of more than 25 conversational assistants (chatbots). Maria is currently the CEO and cofounder of Tangible AI.