Cost-Effective Crowdsourcing Strategies for Dialogue Systems

In a recent paper entitled Optimizing the Design and Cost for Crowdsourced Conversational Utterances, Appen data scientist Phoebe Liu and her team worked to identify cost-effective crowdsourcing strategies for training dialogue systems such as chatbots. Because more industries are adopting chatbot technology for customer service and other key functions, a need has emerged for training these systems as quickly and …
Conversational design

How to Solve Common Data Challenges in Conversational Design

When planning the development of a chatbot or virtual assistant, it’s important to begin the conversational design process with a clear data strategy in place. Conversational design requires more than just an understanding of the fundamentals of voice user interface design — you also need to understand how to solve some of the key challenges in data preparation. Working with the …

Insights from the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing

Appen recently sponsored the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (iCASSP) in Brighton. Our VP of Business Development in Europe, Dorota Iskra, shares some insights from her experience there. With an extensive background in speech and language technology, Dorota holds a PhD in Computer Science and Speech Recognition from the University of Birmingham. After focusing on the …
Illustration of the interior of a concept car

How a Tier 1 Automotive Software Provider Creates Smarter, More Natural In-Car Infotainment Systems

For an in-car infotainment system — or any ASR system — to recognize and correctly process voice commands, it must be trained on speech data that accounts for a broad range of inputs and all possible variation in how people speak.
Bluetooth call controls on a car steering wheel

How a Top Automotive OEM Localizes Its In-Car Experience with Appen

The Situation With the proliferation of mobile devices, consumers expect to stay connected, no matter where they are — especially in their car. Voice recognition in cars, however, continues to be the leading complaint among new vehicle owners. Global automotive manufacturers recognize the demand for better connectivity but face added complexities associated with localizing in-car systems for multiple languages. Data …
Insights from Conversational Interaction 2018: NLP, Chatbots & Comedians

Insights from Conversational Interaction 2018: NLP, Chatbots, and Comedians

Prithivi Pradeep, Appen VP of Business Development, and I recently attended Conversational Interaction in San Jose, CA. The conference provides companies and individuals a great opportunity to share and learn about the resources and knowledge that allow them to embrace AI. The importance of Artificial Intelligence technology has been emphasized by influential corporate executives and thoughtful analysts alike. Conversational interfaces are a major …
Pashto Language & Intonation Patterns | Appen Blog

New Discoveries: Pashto Language and Intonation Patterns

Last month, I presented cutting-edge research on the Pashto language, which is a language from Afghanistan and Pakistan, at Interspeech in Stockholm. The paper, titled Pashto Intonation Patterns, was co-written with Appen’s Director of Linguistic Services, Judith Bishop, and Senior Linguistic Project Manager, Mim Corris. It was based on data used in a project that began in Autumn 2014 and …