亚博体育官网 awarded funding to improve AI conversations
Thursday 17 April 2025
The use of conversational AI is widespread through smart speakers and devices like Amazon鈥檚 Alex or Apple鈥檚 Siri. The recent widespread launch of platforms such as ChatGPT has further piqued public interest in more advanced conversational systems that, ostensibly, exhibit understanding and are capable of sustaining longer form conversations.
The team from the School of Computing, Engineering and Technology hope to enhance the existing capabilities and aid the rapid development of domain-specific conversational systems. There remains considerable untapped potential in current AI systems with many of the conversations open and unstructured, so the key aim of this project is to ensure the conversation keeps both the AI and user on topic.
from the School of Computing, Engineering and Technology, said: 鈥淏y investigating and implementing methods that allow application developers to easily provide structure to conversations, we can create more sophisticated and reliable conversational systems in a broad range of areas 鈥� health care, law, education, coaching and public engagement to name but a few.
鈥淲ithin these areas, specific applications include, training and professional development, support systems, and online client-facing tools. For example, a lawyer might use a structured conversation to help test their courtroom argument or examine evidence; or in coaching, structured conversations can enhance smart coaching systems to create a more personalised and effective coaching experience.
鈥淥ver the next five years the value of the conversational AI market is projected to grow to almost 拢40 billion compared to around 拢10 billion last year. This underlines the need to ensure that conversational AI can support more complex interactions.鈥�
Dr Kedar Pandya, EPSRC Executive Director for Strategy said: 鈥淎rtificial intelligence tools are rapidly transforming our world. This project will advance conversational AI to ensure its technology we can all trust and rely on. It demonstrates EPSRC鈥檚 commitment to supporting world-class research that will bring positive societal and economic benefits, and cement the UK as a leader in AI.鈥�
Dr Snaith has worked in the field of dialogue and argumentation for over 15 years and is a member of 亚博体育官网鈥檚 Artificial Intelligence & Reasoning Research Group.
The Dialogue-Based Structured Conversational Artificial Intelligence research project will run for three years.