A.I. And human language. A chat with Mark Curtis

How can Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning change the way we talk? An attempt at an answer will be provided by Mark Curtis, co-founder and director of Fjord, an Accenture Interactive company specialising in service design, during the Meet the Media Guru event scheduled for Thursday 22 June (7.30 pm) at Auditorium G. Testori di Palazzo Lombardia (piazza Città di Lombardia 1)

Human language will not be untouched by the use of AI and machine learning of computers and software. “Human society is naturally built on conversation, but never before in our history have the form and nature of our conversations changed so rapidly” explains Curtis. This is not necessarily for worse. On the contrary, we have a new opportunity before us to transform the human experience. “The way we’ll manage these changes will go straight at the heart of what it means to be human”.

Almost without realising it we are already going through this transformation: we started with Siri and Cortana, vocal interfaces that easily found their way in our lives, not it’s time for chatbots, programmes able to simulate a conversation among human beings, increasingly in use by companies.

Curtis will help us understand how the interaction with a programme simulating natural language changes the so-called human interaction-based services and, most importantly, what will happen to the “old” way to communicate. What will happen to empathy, context, language that any conversation must keep into account? How can software replicate these human abilities? Many creative minds and as many companies look at chatbots (and anything that will come after them) as a resource for several services, first and foremost customer relationship management.