Prof. William Wang discusses challenges on dialogue research with Wired
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Apple's iPhone. It was the introduction of iPhone's Siri that for the first time in history, spoken dialogue systems were made widely available to the general public. Over the years, Siri has improved over time, and new intelligent assistants, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Cortana were also introduced to the market. But how are they now?
In a recent interview with Wired, UCSB Computer Science assistant professor William Wang discusses some challenges on future research focuses in natural language processing and dialogue. Creating software capable of keeping track of conversations with back-and-forth responses is still a major research challenge, says Prof. William Wang in the interview. Another is giving the systems a broader understanding of things in the world and how they relate to one another, in the form of databases dubbed “knowledge graphs.” Wang and other researchers are trying to figure out how to create those resources automatically, for example from data found online.
Read the full story from Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/siri-why-have-you-fallen-behind-other-digital-assistants/