#122 Optimising Conversational AI Dialogue Systems with Dr. Maria Aretoulaki - CEO

DialogCONNECTION was founded in 2008 by our Director and Lead Consultant, Dr. Maria Aretoulaki. Maria has been designing Speech IVRs and Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) since 1996, long before Voice Assistants, but also before telephone self-service was mainstream. She got into Voice through a Post-Doc in Spoken Dialogue Management for Speech recognition applications, after having got a PhD and an MSc in NLP and Machine Learning and a BA (Hons) in Linguistics & English.

In this episode, Dr. Maria explains how she started in the data space. When looking through the list of available master's degrees, she found one in machine translation and was utterly fascinated. Dr. Maria learned how to translate Spanish sentences into English sentences using machine translation. There are all sorts of rules and contexts that the machine needs to learn. For instance, because language is complex, it's difficult for a machine to pick out which sentences belong in the summary of an article. Humans can't even all agree on which sentences belong in a summary!

Then, Dr. Maria reveals the lessons she learned from startups that eventually helped her build DialogCONNECTION. First, you are never prepared to start your own business. Also, there is no such thing as nine to five. At a startup, you aren't supposed to leave before seven, and generally, you should be out of the office by ten. When you get off work, then it's time for drinking with your coworkers. Social life and work-life start to mix greatly in a startup setting. During quiet times, you learn to relax because there will be a storm right around the corner. It's essential to reserve your energy. Plus, Dr. Maria says that every connection is valuable, even if that person is in a different industry. Any relationship can provide a new idea. Other things that Dr. Maria learned at her time with startups:

Resiliency
Multitasking
You need to wear many hats
Technical skills
Business development
Selling yourself
Copywriting
Flexibility

Plus, Dr. Maria dives deep into resiliency. She has put so much energy into other people's companies; then, she thought, why not put that energy into her own company? Dr. Maria has the energy to make her company work because she has put so much energy into other businesses. Never give up on your own company and effort when you're more than willing to give your energy to others. People can appreciate your unique value when you have your own company because people know that you are committed to your work.

Later, Dr. Maria reveals what a typical project looks like for her and why consistency is essential for success. Also, Dr. Maria explains why businesspeople typically have more wisdom than the coders and marketing guys when it comes to solving problems. Stay tuned as Dr. Maria speaks about the exciting things she has found in speech analytics and the future of voice design.

Quotes:

“[To start your own company] You're never that prepared.”
“Usually we were approaching people to do a project, but rarely would "go live" materialise.”
“Flexibility, multitasking and resilience are the main lessons.”
“How you formulate a question is really important.”
“But also you get an insight into things you haven't even thought about.”
“Every single connection is valuable”

Read the full episode summary here: Episode #122

Enjoy the show!

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