The Data Exchange Podcast: Alan Nichol on applying software engineering rigor to building contextual assistants.
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In this episode of the Data Exchange I speak with Alan Nichol, co-founder and CTO of Rasa, the startup behind the popular open source framework for building conversational AI applications. I had Alan on as a guest in my old podcast, and that conversation was focused on components of Rasa and of chatbot applications. This time around we talked about the state of developer tools, as well as software engineering best practices for building conversational AI applications.
We discussed a range of topics in programing, data science, and NLP including:
- A quick overview of Rasa.
- Alan’s recent update to his 5 Levels of Conversational AI.
- Components of a platform for building conversational AI applications.
- Best practices for building conversational AI applications, including analogs of MLOps and of CI/CD.
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You can view a video version of this conversation on our YouTube channel.
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[Image: ABSA Bank Call center. Auckland Park Johannesburg from Media Club]