Hey! Keith from Abe AI here.
As a provider of AI solutions to the banking industry
I wanted to quickly explain in a very jargon-free way
the top three buzzwords I hear
tossed around in emails and in board rooms.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning,
and my favorite chatbot.
So, let's start with artificial intelligence.
Or otherwise known as AI.
Now to be clear, we have not reached
what's called artificial general intelligence.
This is where the behavior of a machine is completely
indistinguishable from the behavior of thinking
of a human.
Having said that, AI is simply the underlying
technologies we use to stimulate a human being
or any agent capable of acting on it's own
and demonstrating intelligent behavior.
Some of these intelligent behaviors are systems that
are able to think like humans
and systems which are able to act like humans.
Now, one example of a system that can act like a human
is called a chatbot.
And a chatbot is simply a piece of software
usually embedded inside of messaging platforms
like Facebook's messenger, which are capable of
mimicking conversation just like a human.
It does this through a variety of what are called
natural language processing techniques.
These are basically how we as humans use science
to make machines interpret and understand
a speech or text file.
A key component of mimicking human conversation
is what we call non-linear dialogue
and non-linear dialogue is basically a contextualized
state of conversation that allows the person talking
with the chatbot to change their mind
at any point, about anything within the current
state of conversation.
For example, say I want to send a friend $20 bucks
or so for dinner we had last weekend.
As a chatbot, there's a lot of information
I need to gather in order to help you complete this task.
How much do you want to send?
To who?
From what account?
When do you want to send it?
And as a user speaking or typing to this chatbot
I should be able to change my mind
on any of these parameters at any point
within the current state of that conversation.
Lastly, let's talk about machine learning or ML,
which is not AI.
It's simply another underlying technology used to
stimulate intelligent behavior.
Now, at it's core machine learning is
a prediction technology.
It allows for a machine to detect patterns and data
and make predictions at a lower cost than ever before.
In my opinion, this is the most important thing to understand.
Machine learning is lowering the costs of making
predictions possible.
So, hopefully by now you have a better understanding of
what artificial intelligence, chatbot,
machine learning really mean.
If you're curious to learn more, you can always
reach me directly at keith@abe.ai
And be sure to visit our blog at abe.ai/blog.
Thanks for watching!
