New Skills for the Next Generation of Journalists

2017-1-HU01-KA203-036038

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI)

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) is a system that uses machine learning and natural language processing to get closer to human natural language. It is currently used by many companies that manage chatbots, because it is a system that has a high hit rate and is very easy for humans to access. This system allows the machine to understand written messages or audio more complex than just one sentence. The main difference between a traditional chatbot and a CAI chatbot is that, while with traditional chatbots the user needs to type a basic and precise command to get a response, and responses are always the same (for a certain question there is a certain answer), chatbots with conversational artificial intelligence are able to perceive nuances in messages, recognize the speech (text or audio), make the interpretation, decipher different languages and respond in a “humanized” way, and adapt the answers, allowing better communication between machine and human. The efficiency of such a system depends on training and a good database. The more information the program has, the better are the chances of understanding the user’s need. As with most AI systems, CAI depends on big data to be most effective. It is possible to integrate a chatbot with conversational artificial intelligence in various messaging programs, such as the social network WhatsApp. It is one more technology that frees human beings from repetitive work, but it is also another example of replacing humans with machines. And in the case of a highly sophisticated system, CAI can raise ethical questions since it can lead the user to think that he is talking to a person, when in fact he is talking to a machine.