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M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

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Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#111

Post by fizzbatter »

For those of you more familiar with NLP, are there some "dumb but effective" techniques to approach https://wit.ai/ like functionality? (Libraries would be great, but i doubt there are any, for Golang)

I know NLP is difficult, and frankly i hate doing it, but i want an expressive language to "speak" to an internal process i use (a bot), and NLP seems like the only solution. I imagine a rule based approach is best (for my simple needs), but i have yet to see any examples that come close to wit.ai.

Appreciate any replies :)

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#112

Post by viksit »

fizzbatter wrote: post #111

For those of you more familiar with NLP, are there some "dumb but effective" techniques to approach https://wit.ai/ like functionality? (Libraries would be great, but i doubt there are any, for Golang) I know NLP is difficult, and frankly i hate doing it, but i want an expressive language to "speak" to an internal process i use (a bot), and NLP seems like the only solution. I imagine a rule based approach is best (fo…

See how annyang [1] does it. Forget the voice part (which it uses WebkitSpeech for). It's how they interpret commands that's probably useful in your case.

It's pretty good for a basic set and you can train more. Ultimately, you need something that is learning online and that will require an understanding of ML techniques such as CRFs.

[1] https://talater.com/annyang/

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#114

Post by arihant »

tomg wrote: post #81
hk__2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the products match what you need or want, why would you refuse that?

The PA does not work for you, it works for FB. It has only FB's interest's in mind. You are not it's employer as you do not pay for it. It's not in FB's interest to make honest recommendations. If Bob's Burgers is paying $1000/mo in FB ads, but Karen's Burgers keeps being recommended as the "good burger joint", how long before Bob stops buying ads? And why would Karen start buying FB ads since she's getting exposure…

There was once a search engine called Excite. Then came Google. But the old village wise man asked, "And why would Karen start buying Google ads since she's getting exposure for free?"

But then the wise man, who had much to learn, discovered that ads pay per view and click, and just like nobody reeps in a barren land, just like nobody pees against the wind, nobody advertises where the users aren't.

The users, to much a surprise, were at the website which valued quality.

The old village wise man learnt that Internet is powerful only in consensus. That what worked at his tubewell, will never work with running water. What worked at his ice factory, will not work for refrigerator.

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#116

Post by Johnie »

shostack wrote: post #82

My issue with these services is they always tout these use cases like: > "Can you make me dinner reservations?" or > "Can you help me plan my next vacation?" I'd really love to better understand who is actually asking those types of questions in such a vague fashion, and what their use case is. When I'm picking something as simple as a restaurant, I typically want options, I want to read reviews, I want to consider d…

Have you ever used a concierge service either at a hotel or over the phone? It usually takes a form of a back and forth conversation to identify what you really want.

That's the difference between talking to a real person (or good NLP) and a search query.

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#117

Post by rebootthesystem »

User: "Hello M."

M: "How may I help you?"

User: "What are my options for deploying a Python/Django project and making sure it is setup for scalability from the start? Compare five hosting providers for me. No, I don't know what metrics I should look for. Please research these and let me know what they are when you deliver the report. I also need an objective evaluation of our project in order to determine the risks that might be involved in going with Python 3.x rather than 2.x in the context of the libraries we might need to use in the future. Analyze the nature of our application in order to determine what the applicable libraries might be. Also, go through PEP's and make me aware of anything that might be relevant to the above. You have one week."

M: "My responses are limited. Would you like me to find you a restaurant?"

User: "No. I've lived in this town all my life. I know where most restaurants are and I know the handful I frequent. I need help with real questions. I can get the latest weather report, I can find a restaurant, I can order pizzas, I can go to the drive-through if needed and I sure as hell am not going to plan a vacation for my family this way. What I could really use is having you run through seriously time-consuming research, summarize results and present them to me in an easy to consume form. What I could really use is having you save me from doing 40 hours of research across 100 websites. Food, the weather and vacations are not a problem."

M: "Ah, but there's a great new BBQ joint not too far from you"

User: "I'm vegetarian"

M: "My responses are limited. How would you like a thrilling and exciting hunting safari in Africa?"

User: ":-("

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#119

Post by pbreit »

viksit wrote: post #97
shostack wrote: post #82

My issue with these services is they always tout these use cases like: > "Can you make me dinner reservations?" or > "Can you help me plan my next vacation?" I'd really love to better understand who is actually asking those types of questions in such a vague fashion, and what their use case is. When I'm picking something as simple as a restaurant, I typically want options, I want to read reviews, I want to consider d…

Agree. Those are too broad. I'm thinking " get me a dinner reservation next sunday with patio seating for 5 in the east village at an upscale tapas place ". As I mentioned elsewhere on this page, my thesis around conversational interfaces isn't that they start off broad and use more Q/A to refine your query. That's slow, and people are visual. Rather, their power lies in the user being able to express a complex query…

"get me a dinner reservation next sunday with patio seating for 5 in the east village at an upscale tapas place"

Nope. I don't think anyone would ever leave it up to M (or whatever) to select the restaurant.

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