The Future of AI in Customer Service

I took part in a roundtable discussion on the future of AI moderated by Peter Dorrington (XMplify). The topics covered were:

The current state of AI in Customer Service
– The importance of empathy in customer service and the role of AI
– What the future holds for AI, and
– What we should be thinking about today, ahead of an AI-enabled tomorrow.

Joining me were:
– Dr Fatmah Boathman – Founder & Board President, Artificial Intelligence Society of Saudi Arabia
– Amanda Halpin – Solution Lead for Digital AI in Genesys

Alan Bundy receives the 2020 EurAI Distinguished Service Award

AISB Fellow Prof Alan Bundy  will receive this year’s EurAI Distinguished Service Award. This award is presented every two years to a person having contributed significantly to the advancement of AI. Nominations have to be supported by a EurAI member society such as AISB. We are very happy that our nomination was supported by EurAI leading to this remarkable award being presented to Alan Bundy.

The award will be officially announced during the opening ceremony of ECAI 2020 on Sunday, 30 August 2020 and Alan will also be honoured at both the Fellows lunch and the EurAI General Assembly.

Alan.Bundy_.Photo_-768x768.jpg

Alan Bundy is Professor of Automated Reasoning in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include: the automation of mathematical reasoning, with applications to reasoning about the correctness of computer software and hardware; and the automatic construction, analysis and evolution of representations of knowledge. His research combines artificial intelligence with theoretical computer science and applies this to practical problems in the development and maintenance of computing systems. He is the author of over 300 publications and has held over 60 research grants.

He is a fellow of several academic societies, including the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB). His awards include the IJCAI Research Excellence Award (2007), the CADE Herbrand Award (2007) and a CBE (2012). He was: Edinburgh’s founding Head of Informatics (1998-2001); founding Convener of UKCRC (2000-05); and a Vice President and Trustee of the British Computer Society with special responsibility for the Academy of Computing (2010-12). He was also a member of: the Hewlett-Packard Research Board (1989-91); the ITEC Foresight Panel (1994-96); both the 2001 and 2008 Computer Science RAE panels (1999-2001, 2005-8); and the Scottish Science Advisory Council (2008-12).

Tracking Covid-19 effectively rests on transparency

With a pandemic like Covid-19 currently affecting people worldwide, the question arises of how technology might be able to help contain the virus, help people recover, and help the economy rebound after lockdown. Finding the technology is easy. How we use the tools at our disposal responsibly and ethically is thorny and complex.

 

Read the full article on the techerati blog.

Big Data & AI World

I will be chairing the Keynote Theatre on Day 1 of Big Data & AI World in March at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre in London. on Day 2 he will be part of a panel on Putting AI into Practice and also holding a keynote on responsible systems design.

Mitsuku wins 2019 Loebner Prize and Best Overall Chatbot at AISB X

For the fourth consecutive year, Steve Worswick’s Mitsuku has won the Loebner Prize for the most humanlike chatbot entry to the contest. This is the fifth time that Steve has won the Loebner Prize. The Loebner Prize is the world’s longest running Turing-Test competition and has been organised by AISB, the world’s oldest AI society, since 2014. For the first time this year, the chatbot contest was embedded in a public-outreach event AISBX: Creativity Meets Economy, that was held at the Computational Foundry on Swansea University’s Bay Campus from 12-15 September and attracted over 300 visitors.

loebner2019-e1569928991561-950x534.png

The event combined workshops on chatbots for over 200 school children from 6 schools in South Wales with a public art exhibition, a chatbot exhibition, and a work programme on conversational AI systems attended by an international audience from the USA, Jersey, and the UK. The chatbot exhibition showed 17 conversational AIs by developers from countries such as Switzerland, Vietnam, USA, The Netherlands, Poland, UK, Jersey, Italy, and Spain. The art exhibition showed fascinating pieces and installations from international artists John Gerrard, Gene Kogan, Daniel Berio, Simon Colton, Cuan McMurrough, and Disnovation.org. From digital graffiti, synthesised news headlines, and thought-provoking works on climate and embodiment, the exhibition achieved its aim of instigating discussions amongst the audience and the organisers of the event that was co-funded by CHERISH.DE and AISB.

The longest running Turing Test competition is on at Bletchley Park.

The Loebner Prize
Bletchley Park, Saturday 8 September, 1pm4pm
The Loebner Prize is the oldest Turing Test contest, started in 1991 by Hugh Loebner and the Cambridge Centre for Behavioural studies. Since then, a number of institutions across the globe have hosted the competition including recently, the Universities of Reading, Exeter and Ulster. From 2014, the contest has been run under the aegis of the AISB, the world’s first AI society (founded 1964) at Bletchley Park where Alan Turing worked as a code-breaker during World War 2.

This year the Loebner prize will take place on Saturday 8 September from 1pm until 4pm.The first 4 chatbots from the selection round will compete in the finals at Bletchley Park in Learning Rooms 3/4.

An entry ticket to Bletchley Park gives free access to the competition. All are welcome to join, and the competition is suitable for all ages.
More information about the contest and the day: https://www.aisb.org.uk/events/loebner-prize
Information about visiting Bletchley Park: https://bletchleypark.org.uk/visit-us