How should a smart, college-educated person with a fascination about AI but no technical background get up to speed on it? Below are the resources that I would suggest. I offer five strategies to jump in: Read some introductory articles; Pick a few books and delve deeper; Learn about AI/ML…

Part of the Bot Master Builders Series — Leena AI is an AI-powered HR Assistant providing instant responses to employee queries and improving the employee experience. Leena builds HR chatbots for enterprise employees, basically automating the HR helpdesk. Leena has 8 modules across the HR lifecycle: Onboarding, FAQ, health and wellness, travel and expense, HR services and transactions…

Part of the Bot Master Builders Series — Ivy is a 24-hour virtual concierge service that smooths the stay of guests at hotels. Ivy is available in more than 6,000 rooms within Caesars Entertainment Las Vegas Resorts, including Caesars Palace and Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino. Ivy can check guests in and check them out, and also check…

Part of the Bot Master Builders Series — The Edwin chatbot is the first step in building a cost-effective service for learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Edwin’s co-founders, Dmitry Alekseev and Dmitry Stavisky, aim for Edwin “to become a comprehensive EFL service delivered by both bots and humans that gets students to proficiency in one-third the…

Part of the Bot Master Builders Series, Alison Darcy was a clinical psychologist at Stanford before founding Woebot. — Woebot is your 24/7 cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) chatbot. Woebot is genderless but the company refers to it with the pronouns “he”/”him”. While the field of mental health is classically more feminine and social-relational, Woebot’s users’ gender distribution is equally split between men and women. Currently Woebot sends 2 million…

Part of the Bot Master Builders Series — The seasoned team at X.AI have spent years doing one thing really well. They have built one of the best AI experiences. Their assistant agents, Amy and Andrew Ingram, help you schedule meetings so you don’t get stuck in email ping-pong. The original agents were designed by the X.AI founders…

The greatest jump in the history of search is happening under our eyes and Google is keeping pretty quiet about it. — Last year, Google announced and Hitwise estimated that around 58% of all Google searches were mobile, and more than 20% of mobile searches were via voice. Sources inside Google have hinted that voice search is approaching 25% of mobile now and some expect it to go above 50% in the…

(Part of the Bot Master Builders Series) — Bruce Wilcox is a legend in the chatbot community. For the last 7 years, his bots have come in 1st or 2nd place more than any other competitor in the Loebner Competition. This is an annual contest to test whether an AI chatbot can pass a version of the infamous…

(Part of the Bot Master Builders Series) — Many people believe Earplay is the best voice-first experience available on chat and voice platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Earplay is a company that has launched a series of voice-driven games like Code Name Cygnus and the Orpheus Device for conversational platforms. I recently interviewed Jon Myers, CEO…