Tools to build Bespoke Conversational User Interfaces: A development platform with integrated crowdsourcing.

这项研究和开发项目的成果将是一套新的软件开发工具，使企业能够创建自己定制的人工智能会话用户界面（CUIs）。用户界面在亚马逊Alexa或Facebook Messenger等渠道上运行，允许用户通过语音或文本使用自然语言执行一系列任务。该项目计划开展的工作遵循了105036项目的工作，该项目表明，目前，商业实力的gui只能在CUI设计、计算语言学和机器学习方面拥有深厚的专业知识。现有的开发工具不够成熟，导致gui过于简化，不够强大，无法用于商业用途。所提出的CUI开发环境解决了进入CUI市场的这个核心障碍。它将通过CUI设计的所有开发生命周期阶段支持业务，并且，在需要时，在此生命周期内无缝地支持众包援助。该工具的众包元素无缝地完成任务：(i)远程工作的外部人员，他们可以集体执行低技能、重复的微任务，例如创建和标记大量培训数据；（ii）可以远程工作以执行CUI开发生命周期中的专业宏任务的外部专家；这种专业知识在希望创建gui的组织中通常是不可用的。新工具将由action.ai开发。工作基于先前的研究和对如何为特定的业务垂直领域创建可重用的、商业强度的gui的理解。

The result of this research and development project will be a set of new software development tools that enable businesses to create their own bespoke, artificially intelligent Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs).CUIs operate on channels such as Amazon Alexa or Facebook Messenger and allow users to perform a range of tasks using natural language via voice or text.The planned work in this project follows work from project 105036 which demonstrated that, currently, commercial strength CUIs can only be developed with deep expertise in CUI design, computational linguistics, and machine learning. Existing development tools are not sufficiently sophisticated and result in CUIs that are oversimplified and not strong enough for commercial use.The CUI development environment that is proposed addresses this core barrier to entry in the CUI market. It will support businesses through all development lifecycle stages of CUI design, and, where beneficial, seamlessly enable crowdsourced assistance directly within this lifecycle when required.The crowdsourcing element of the tool seamlessly tasks:(i) external people working remotely who can collectively carry out low skilled, repetitive microtasks, such as creating and labelling large amounts of training data;(ii) external experts who can work remotely to carry out specialist macrotasks in the CUI development lifecycle; such expertise is typically unavailable within organisations wishing to create CUIs.The new tool will be developed by action.ai. Work is grounded on prior research and understanding of how reusable, commercial-strength CUIs can be created for specific business verticals.