Modern Conversational Agents

Abstract

Conversational agents are computer programs engaging with human users in a conversation to assist, educate, or entertain. Being subject to substantial research interest ever since the advent of artificial intelligence in the 1950s and 60s, recent advances in cloud computing and the availability of smart devices with wireless high-speed Internet connection have led to steep progress in the engineering of conversational technology. “Modern” conversational agents understand spoken language, are able to answer complicated questions, or interact with humans in a dialog of hundreds of user turns. The reader of this article will learn about strengths of modern conversational agents driven by synergy among highperforming speech recognition, smart devices, high-speed Internet, cloud computing, standardization, and crowdsourcing. Together, we will see how the field is primarily driven by commercial stakeholders, and how open-source alternatives are expected to play a major role in the future of modern conversational agents. ∗ Prof. Dr. David Suendermann-Oeft, Studiengangsleiter Informatik, Duale Hochschule BadenWurttemberg Stuttgart. Kontakt: suendermann@dhbw-stuttgart.de 1 The work described in this chapter was carried out primarily at the Spoken Dialog System Research Center at DHBW Stuttgart. It was made possible only thanks to the continued support of my assistants and students: Abdelrahman Abdelkawy, Christian Burkard, Hadeer Nabil, Heidi Heweidy, Jonathan Grupp, Patrick Lange, Paul Neumann, Ramin Safarpour, Tarek Mehrez, Tim von Oldenburg, Werner Sinz, Yasmine Maximos, and Youmna Heikal. J. Jahnert, C. Forster (Hrsg.), Technologien fur digitale Innovationen, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-04745-0_4, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2014 64 David Suendermann-Oeft 1. Where Do We Come from? Karl May, according to Wiedenroth and Wollschlager the “most read writer of the German tongue”, created the fictional character Halef Omar Ben who accompanied May’s alter ego, the hero and adventurer Kara Ben Nemsi, in his travels throughout the Ottoman Empire. The loyal companion Halef assumed a multitude of roles to serve Kara Ben Nemsi including those of a