Leading Innovation in Conversational AI and Disrupting the Philippine FinTech…

Over the past few years, tech companies and researchers all over the world have been competing to advance the frontiers of artificial intelligence. With the broadening and fast-paced developments in the space of technology, it is clear that utilizing AI in the financial industry is key to economic development. Now, more than ever, it is evident that these theoretical revolutions in computer science bring novel applications of AI across global markets.In countries like the Philippines, where the service sector has been one of the “strongest and fast-growing sectors”¹ of the economy, innovations in AI have the potential to increase national participation in global value chains. Moreover, AI developments and multinational companies that engage with national talent could involve the country more deeply in the international services trade and accelerate the spread of AI-specific tacit knowledge.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

Jean Alfonso-Decena is making huge strides across the conversational AI space amidst this era of disruption. With her outlook of “exploration and experimentation”², Jean is creating value both within the Philippine technology landscape, and across AI in the global fin-tech space. As the Head of Operations & Partnerships at Starbutter AI, she sits at the intersection of business, data science, product, and engineering. Awarded by Google as one of the Best 3 AI Agents on the Google Assistant Platform, Starbutter AI was founded to help consumers select financial products³. Jean oversees the company’s business operations and manages partner relationships, and helps design and build artificially-intelligent virtual assistants to “help consumers pick financial products and discover [these products] through conversational advertising and performance marketing”⁴.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

Amber: Could you tell us a bit about your background?

Jean: I worked in the Startup — Customer Service space for over a decade starting with 7 years of IBM tenure when they invested in a BPO arm in Manila, Philippines. I was part of the pioneering team that helped train and ramp up the organization finding and building talents that supported a major US Telco. After an astonishing leadership growth journey with IBM I moved on to the Silicon Valley scene, shifting into copywriting work for a major e-Commerce company based in Redwood City. After just a few weeks I was pulled out of the Content Team to form the pioneer Customer Service team which I led and helped grow for the next 4 years. Took a break from the corporate scene to become an entrepreneur, only to find my way back into leading and growing another CS team for a media giant based in Boston.The customer service scene has been a huge blessing to me in that the space allowed me to grow in all levels, not just professionally. Took another break to get yoga/meditation teaching certification in Sri Lanka and Rishikesh in India. Then Starbutter AI came along. It’s been one long auspicious journey to finally be in this special place called Starbutter AI.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

A: Did you always know that working in the fin-tech space was what you wanted to do? What inspired you to pursue a career in the startup world and work with Starbutter AI? And what perspective did your experience in information and communication studies contribute to that decision?**J: **Working in fin-tech was never in my plans or wildest dreams, let alone in AI. I had a totally different trajectory — I was gearing up to spread love and light through conscious entrepreneurship while using all the years of leadership, e-Commerce and people/project management training I’ve received. While in the middle of my spiritual travels, I got connected with Starbutter AI. The company name intrigued me so I looked it up, and between yoga and meditation, I was researching the team, AI and fintech more and more. The company mission, values and the founders piqued my brain and captured my heart. The possibility of jumping into a deeply mysterious (AI) realm, learning about fintech and working with some of the brightest minds in the space were my main reasons for shifting gears.My self-talk at that time, in a nutshell: when you receive the opportunity of a lifetime to help build bots that augment the lives of humans,_ grab it_. The founders’ unique mission is what signed me up.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

A: In your DEVCON Lightning Talk, “Jobs of the Future”, you described the innovation and interdisciplinary cooperation needed to create products in the AI virtual assistant space. You also described how AI and machine learning applications are highly influenced by the environment they are built in, and the people they are built by. Why do you think it is important for technologists to take this collaborative approach when building chatbots and other products that are used by a diverse subset of customers?

J: I always use the “human baby” metaphor when I speak about building chatbots. Although they’re not entirely the same, they have commonalities. Raising a baby takes a village — I know as I’m a mom. But even before the baby is born, plenty of preparation is to be done to ensure the child grows beautifully in the womb, and comes out healthy. This journey is best taken with the mother’s support network to optimise growth and delivery of the baby which includes family, health specialists, parent communities and other experts in the field.

#women #philippines #machine-learning #data-science #artificial-intelligence #ios

What is GEEK

Buddha Community

Making Sales More Efficient: Lead Qualification Using AI

If you were to ask any organization today, you would learn that they are all becoming reliant on Artificial Intelligence Solutions and using AI to digitally transform in order to bring their organizations into the new age. AI is no longer a new concept, instead, with the technological advancements that are being made in the realm of AI, it has become a much-needed business facet.

AI has become easier to use and implement than ever before, and every business is applying AI solutions to their processes. Organizations have begun to base their digital transformation strategies around AI and the way in which they conduct their business. One of these business processes that AI has helped transform is lead qualifications.

#ai-solutions-development #artificial-intelligence #future-of-artificial-intellige #ai #ai-applications #ai-trends #future-of-ai #ai-revolution

Leading Innovation in Conversational AI and Disrupting the Philippine FinTech…

Over the past few years, tech companies and researchers all over the world have been competing to advance the frontiers of artificial intelligence. With the broadening and fast-paced developments in the space of technology, it is clear that utilizing AI in the financial industry is key to economic development. Now, more than ever, it is evident that these theoretical revolutions in computer science bring novel applications of AI across global markets.In countries like the Philippines, where the service sector has been one of the “strongest and fast-growing sectors”¹ of the economy, innovations in AI have the potential to increase national participation in global value chains. Moreover, AI developments and multinational companies that engage with national talent could involve the country more deeply in the international services trade and accelerate the spread of AI-specific tacit knowledge.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

Jean Alfonso-Decena is making huge strides across the conversational AI space amidst this era of disruption. With her outlook of “exploration and experimentation”², Jean is creating value both within the Philippine technology landscape, and across AI in the global fin-tech space. As the Head of Operations & Partnerships at Starbutter AI, she sits at the intersection of business, data science, product, and engineering. Awarded by Google as one of the Best 3 AI Agents on the Google Assistant Platform, Starbutter AI was founded to help consumers select financial products³. Jean oversees the company’s business operations and manages partner relationships, and helps design and build artificially-intelligent virtual assistants to “help consumers pick financial products and discover [these products] through conversational advertising and performance marketing”⁴.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

Amber: Could you tell us a bit about your background?

Jean: I worked in the Startup — Customer Service space for over a decade starting with 7 years of IBM tenure when they invested in a BPO arm in Manila, Philippines. I was part of the pioneering team that helped train and ramp up the organization finding and building talents that supported a major US Telco. After an astonishing leadership growth journey with IBM I moved on to the Silicon Valley scene, shifting into copywriting work for a major e-Commerce company based in Redwood City. After just a few weeks I was pulled out of the Content Team to form the pioneer Customer Service team which I led and helped grow for the next 4 years. Took a break from the corporate scene to become an entrepreneur, only to find my way back into leading and growing another CS team for a media giant based in Boston.The customer service scene has been a huge blessing to me in that the space allowed me to grow in all levels, not just professionally. Took another break to get yoga/meditation teaching certification in Sri Lanka and Rishikesh in India. Then Starbutter AI came along. It’s been one long auspicious journey to finally be in this special place called Starbutter AI.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

A: Did you always know that working in the fin-tech space was what you wanted to do? What inspired you to pursue a career in the startup world and work with Starbutter AI? And what perspective did your experience in information and communication studies contribute to that decision?**J: **Working in fin-tech was never in my plans or wildest dreams, let alone in AI. I had a totally different trajectory — I was gearing up to spread love and light through conscious entrepreneurship while using all the years of leadership, e-Commerce and people/project management training I’ve received. While in the middle of my spiritual travels, I got connected with Starbutter AI. The company name intrigued me so I looked it up, and between yoga and meditation, I was researching the team, AI and fintech more and more. The company mission, values and the founders piqued my brain and captured my heart. The possibility of jumping into a deeply mysterious (AI) realm, learning about fintech and working with some of the brightest minds in the space were my main reasons for shifting gears.My self-talk at that time, in a nutshell: when you receive the opportunity of a lifetime to help build bots that augment the lives of humans,_ grab it_. The founders’ unique mission is what signed me up.

Image courtesy of Jean Alfonso-Decena

A: In your DEVCON Lightning Talk, “Jobs of the Future”, you described the innovation and interdisciplinary cooperation needed to create products in the AI virtual assistant space. You also described how AI and machine learning applications are highly influenced by the environment they are built in, and the people they are built by. Why do you think it is important for technologists to take this collaborative approach when building chatbots and other products that are used by a diverse subset of customers?

J: I always use the “human baby” metaphor when I speak about building chatbots. Although they’re not entirely the same, they have commonalities. Raising a baby takes a village — I know as I’m a mom. But even before the baby is born, plenty of preparation is to be done to ensure the child grows beautifully in the womb, and comes out healthy. This journey is best taken with the mother’s support network to optimise growth and delivery of the baby which includes family, health specialists, parent communities and other experts in the field.

#women #philippines #machine-learning #data-science #artificial-intelligence #ios

This Week in AI | Rubik's Code

Every week we bring to you the best AI research papers, articles and videos that we have found interesting, cool or simply weird that week.

#ai #this week in ai #ai application #ai news #artificaial inteligance #artificial intelligence #artificial neural networks #deep learning #machine learning #this week in ai

This Week in AI - Issue #22 | Rubik's Code

Every week we bring to you the best AI research papers, articles and videos that we have found interesting, cool or simply weird that week.Have fun!

Research Papers

• Unsupervised Learning of Probably Symmetric Deformable 3D Objects from Images in the Wild
• Slowing Down the Weight Norm Increase in Momentum-based Optimizers
• The Collective Knowledge project: making ML models more portable and reproducible with open APIs, reusable best practices and MLOps
• AutoGAN-Distiller: Searching to Compress Generative Adversarial Networks
• Coherent Reconstruction of Multiple Humans from a Single Image
• Variational Bayesian Monte Carlo with Noisy Likelihoods
• GNN3DMOT: Graph Neural Network for 3D Multi-Object Tracking with Multi-Feature Learning
• Are we done with ImageNet?
• How to Avoid Being Eaten by a Grue: Structured Exploration Strategies for Textual Worlds
• Background Modeling via Uncertainty Estimation for Weakly-supervised Action Localization
• The Collective Knowledge project: making ML models more portable and reproducible with open APIs, reusable best practices and MLOps
• Image Deconvolution via Noise-Tolerant Self-Supervised Inversion
• Learning a Unified Sample Weighting Network for Object Detection

Articles

• Deepfake Detection Challenge Results: An open initiative to advance AI
• Slightly Unnerving AI Produces Human Faces Out of Totally Pixelated Photos
• NeoML Released as TensorFlow Alternative
• Google Meet takes on Zoom with AI-powered noise cancellation
• Open Compound Domain Adaptation
• Dense pose for animal classes with transfer learning
• 10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies
• An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in
• Why we switched from Flask to FastAPI for production machine learning
• Simple Transformers
• The key differences between rule-based AI and machine learning
• Deep learning-based surrogate models outperform simulators and could hasten scientific discoveries
• HANDS-ON GUIDE TO OBJECT DETECTION USING YOLO
• Artificial neural networks that mimic the flexibility and computing power of the brain
• MIT researchers train AI to predict how humans paint works of art
• What Do Machine Learning Engineers Do Anyway?
• AI Is Amazing But Complicated, And We Don’t Necessarily Need To Plunge In Headfirst
• Deep learning networks track up to 100 animals simultaneously
• Is artificial intelligence changing art?

#ai #this week in ai #ai application #ai news #artificaial inteligance #artificial intelligence #artificial neural networks #deep learning #machine learning #this week in ai

Selecting a Conversational AI Platform

Businesses are quickly acknowledging the importance of Conversational AI (CAI) to increase their customer engagement and revenues. The question is no longer whether to deploy CAI, but rather which platform to use and how to leverage its capabilities.

In this series, Daniel Eriksson, Chief Innovation and Customer Success Officer at Artificial Solutions, gives insight on important aspects of a conversational AI platform that buyers often overlook. For example: what does language support really mean? What is localization? How do different deployment models impact the TCO? And maybe most importantly, how can the CAI platform not only help me during the first development sprints, but across the entire bot lifecycle?

Making Bot Developers More Productive

During the last six months, I’ve had a lot of conversations with companies (clients) and system integrators (partners) who have been building conversational bots. I’ve spoken with conversational bot developers, data linguistics reps, integration engineers, conversational designers, project managers, senior stakeholders, product owners, and many more.

At the same time, I’ve talked to existing, new, prospective, and former clients. These talks included people who had ambitious plans and succeeded and others who have had plans where they have struggled to generate impact.

Four Perspectives to Consider When Selecting your Conversational AI Platform

Select a Tool Your Development Team Can Grow With

See past the buzz-words like “awareness”, “understanding”, and “self-learning”.

Conversational AI is a fascinating space and still holds a lot of potential that is yet to be explored. Yet most companies who have experience of CAI tooling will tell you it’s all about engineering, and actually has a lot of resemblance to regular software or process flow development instead of being something ground-breaking new.

Sure, there are some terminologies both useful and specific for the space, like “intent recognition”, “entities”, and “context”. These words are related to the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) part of a conversational bot.

Find a Balance Between Pure Coding and Drag-and-Drop

Have you ever heard about low-code or no-code? In short, those concepts describe a user interface where a developer can configure or graphically design a process instead of having to write programming code. It is a great way to visualize how a program is executed and can be a quick way to build some things rapidly. Here comes the tricky part — for an effective Conversational AI solution with some ambition, you will still need to code. Your team will need to write code in some scripting language. If not, you will not be able to do the things you expect a bot to do. Do not shy away from this fact, as scripting and coding are super important to make a bot great. So, when you look at a toolset, evaluate it from the standpoint “how will the coding part work?”

Consider Possible Future Limitations

There is a lot of CAI tooling in the market today available to developers. Your job is to make sure that you don’t select tooling that is quick to build only the first MVP but also is useful for every new generation of your bot. When your ambitions grow, and your insights on how you can deliver a better bot user experience start to develop, you might realize that the tool you chose is holding you back.

#ai #artificial intelligence #natural language processing #conversational ai #ai platform #platform