With technology prevailing in nearly every single area of life, we often end up making conversations with artificially intelligent algorithms through our day. Think of when you asked Siri to identify a song for you, or Alexa to translate a particularly difficult Hindi word, or even the Google Assistant to read out a message you just received. While all of these features mostly work fine as standalone queries, these voice based conversations do not quite sound natural, or have a flow to them the way they would if you were to ask them to a fellow human being. It is exactly this that Google Meena, the company’s research division’s newest AI chatbot, wants to achieve.

In essence, the way Google Meena differs from other chatbots in the market is by the complexity of conversations that it is capable of. As a human being, our brains are contextually aware of topics, and can intelligently gauge aspects such as a conversation’s tone, to take a dialogue forward. For AI digital assistants, this is still a distant dream. For instance, ask Amazon’s Alexa for how many runs Virat Kohli scored in the previous cricket match, and it is likely to give you the correct response. However, if you follow this up with a second query of “did he play well?”, you’re likely to hit a dead end, with Alexa stating, “I don’t know what that is, but I could look it up for you.” Occasionally, Alexa might also end up playing a song called ‘Well’ from one of the linked streaming services, or in the worst case scenario, lead you to an Amazon listing of a book titled ‘Play Well’.

Such conversations are evidently not very natural. Giving a rather detailed, technical explanation of Meena in Google’s AI Research blog, Daniel Adiwardana and Thang Luong, senior research engineer and scientist (respectively), write, “Meena (is) a 2.6 billion parameter end-to-end trained neural conversational model. We show that Meena can conduct conversations that are more sensible and specific than existing state-of-the-art chatbots. Such improvements are reflected through a new human evaluation metric that we propose for open-domain chatbots, called Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA), which captures basic, but important attributes for human conversation. Remarkably, we demonstrate that perplexity, an automatic metric that is readily available to any neural conversational models, highly correlates with SSA.”

In simpler language, Meena has been built on a larger pool of data, computed through more complex networks and ways of structuring sentences. While the full technical explanation, figures and parameters can be found in Google’s blog here, what’s more interesting to note is the scope of usage of such AI algorithms. As a result of its ability to resolve complications, Meena is the first draft of an AI engine that can host a full conversation with you — even what we humans call “small talk”. With this, you can ask the assistant “What do you think of Richard Ashcroft?” Instead of giving a “It’s not my thoughts that matter, it’s yours”, an engine like Meena will probably be able to add context, and offer an opinion of its own.

This is also what adds aspects such as personality and depth to an AI engine — abstract concepts that have so far stayed away from the robots. Barring episodes of Black Mirror, AI development is progressing towards more advanced implementation of natural language processing, and more intricate neural networks that strive to emulate the human brain. Samsung’s Neon, the artificial humans, is one such early straw in a haystack that is sparse now, but bound to grow going forward. This, however, raises many questions about the use of such technologies, and raises the need to discuss the massive mental health and security implications that technology of such stature bring to the table. Multiple research papers have noted the impact of natural voice digital assistants can have on people, and while there have been plenty of positive anecdotes as well, careful safeguarding is required before such tools become mainstream.

Adiwardana and Luong have stated that Meena’s achievements were solely aimed at showcasing specificity and sensibleness, and the future research projects would be looking at aspects such as personality and factuality of information. For now, though, Meena looks to be somewhat adept for a first attempt at small talk, although that’s nowhere near your next door neighbour’s levels of intrusion.

The post Google Meena, a New AI Chatbot, Wants to be a Natural at Making Small Talk appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

We are standing at the cusp of a massive shift, all set to take place with artificial intelligence (AI), as this is rapidly and emphatically coming to the forefront and becoming a decisive force in the future of humanity. At this point in time, nobody is in a position to affirmatively predict or profess whether or not this shift will pan out positively. However, one thing is for sure: this is going to be really BIG. A series of incidents in which AI-bots earned a bad reputation lately, are a strong testimony to claim that AI will determine the course of humanity in the years to come. AI-powered chatbots have powerfully manifested what they can do, if let loose, without human intervention. This also portends a bad time ahead. Warnings must be immediately perceived and acted upon, particularly given the fact that like any other technology, AI is no less than a double-edged sword, which – if given in naïve hands – might unleash terror, destruction, devastation and, worst, end of human race.

Researchers and their promoters must take into cognizance the outcomes of popular incidents – that occurred at Facebook, Microsoft and in China, among others. Misbehavior of bots forced researchers to bring them down and offline. Facebook had to shut down chatbots after they discovered a language of their own – full of slangs. In China too, chatbots had to be taken offline after they refused love for the Communist Party. In an another incident last year, Microsoft had to take down the AI-bot – Tay, which responded to tweets in a racist language, even though the bot was not originally designed to speak ill or do bad-mouthing. As per the company, the bot learnt it gradually from the Twitter users whom it interacted with.

The curiosity around AI is no longer limited to organizations and businesses. AI has also grabbed diplomatic and political eyeballs. One big example is Vladimir Putin’s admission to the endless power which AI has in store. The Russian president warned that the nation which leads in AI would ‘be the ruler of the world’. He also said that AI brings ‘colossal opportunities’ as well as dangers. The rhetoric was immediately followed by others with comments and opinions. In addition to Putin, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors too predicted the World War III which might be triggered by AI-powered solutions. In India, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly acknowledged the power of AI. The opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was too seen showing interest in AI on a recent trip to the US where he had to speak on AI. The increased interest of the people from political and social circles shows that AI has begun to engulf its wings around everybody. In other words, it is a good sign that everyone is waking up to the fact that AI is ready to ink a new chapter in the history of the world.

Yet, these are early days for AI. A long way has to be undertaken to realize the actual potential of this technology. Many would agree that incidents at Facebook and Microsoft are the result of early experiments. AI has to gradually mature. But wouldn’t you agree that AI is capable of reshaping the whole world on its own? Researchers should increase their focus on reining in and exploiting the best of it. Even governments and business entities should restrain themselves from exploiting the darker aspects of AI to fend off their enemies. Such acts are bound to backfire scathingly.

On the brighter side, the use of AI can prevent diseases, conduct critical surgeries, save humans from natural disasters (cyclones/earthquakes), help rebuild and help manage natural resources efficiently. Many organizations have also begun to promote research for developing AI-based solutions in order to solve today’s business and social problems. These efforts should multiply so that AI could be partner in human evolution.

All said and done, only time will reveal the true aspects of AI. Right now, we can only guess, opine, imagine and speculate. And all of us are best at it.

The post Artificial Intelligence: The Race into the Future appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.