Conversation AI with Priyanka Vergadia

The podcast today is all about conversational AI and Dialogflow with our Google guest, Priyanka Vergadia. Priyanka explains to Mark Mirchandani and Brian Dorsey that conversational AI includes anything with a conversational component, such as chatbots, in anything from apps, to websites, to messenger programs. If it uses natural language understanding and processing to help humans and machines communicate, it can be classified as conversational AI. These programs work as translators so humans and computers can chat seamlessly.

We discuss how people interact with conversational AI, maybe without even realizing it. From asking Google Home to set your alarm to getting customer service support at your favorite online store, AI is probably working behind the scenes to help. Priyanka also tells us all about Google's natural language understanding and processing program, Dialogflow. Designed to simplify the process, Dialogflow allows you to input a simple idea like asking for coffee, and watch as the program automatically includes many of the different ways people would naturally ask for coffee. Coffee would be great right now!

Listen in to find out the best (and worst) use cases and practices for this powerful tool!

Priyanka Vergadia

Priyanka Vergadia is a Developer Advocate at Google. She worked directly with customers for 1.5 years prior to recently joining Google Cloud Developer Relations team. She loves architecting cloud solutions and enjoys building conversational experiences. Her interest in Conversational AI led to the Deconstructing Chatbots YouTube series. Priyanka is currently starring in a new show called "Get Cooking in Cloud" where she will be sharing recipes to cook various business solutions on Google Cloud.

Cool things of the week

• Least privilege for Cloud Functions using Cloud IAM blog
• Containerizing in the real world … of Minecraft blog
• Introducing the What-If Tool for Cloud AI Platform models blog

Interview

• Chatbot Fail site
• Dialogflow site and docs
• Deconstructing Chatbots videos
• Codelab: Build your first Chatbot with Dialogflow site

Question of the week

How do you run a recurring python script?

Where can you find us next?

Priyanka will be at Codemotion Milan in October and GOTO Copenhagen in November.

Brian will be at the office in Seattle, thinking about Compute Engine.

Mark will be in Austin and the Bay Area working on new training content!

Sound Effect Attribution

• "Small Group Laugh Set.wav" by Tim Kahn of Freesound.org
• "Whip Crack 01.wav" by CGEffex of Freesound.org