90 AI MAGAZINE
Finally, we should note that the lab in which this
work was done focuses on research that leads to
research prototypes, components of which are then
spun off to the various product divisions at Nuance.
We evaluate early prototypes through controlled user
studies. The typical duration of these studies is several days, involving subject recruitment from the
demographic targeted by the eventual users. As the
prototypes (or specific components of the prototypes)
mature, we evaluate them through either A/B studies
or proof-of-concept (PoC) systems with actual customers. These tests typically take several months and
reach a much larger audience. In all cases, feedback,
whether from controlled user studies or PoC systems,
is incorporated to improve the overall system. The
work that we have described has far reaching impact
to all of the Nuance product divisions in a very broad
way (including mobility, enterprise, and health care).
For example, all of the 150 million Nuance voice-enabled vehicles shipped globally last year are targeted for such enhancements.
References
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Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press.
Charles Ortiz is the director of the Nuance Laboratory for
Research in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. Prior to joining Nuance Communications, he was
the director of the multiagent and multirobotics research
group in the AI Center at SRI International. His own past
and ongoing research has spanned the areas of causation,
commonsense reasoning, collaborative agents and systems,
dialogue systems, and distributed robotics. Most recently he
has also been involved in various proposals, including the
Nuance-sponsored Winograd Schema Challenge, to develop
more suitable alternatives to the Turing test. He received his
undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard
University and has been a visiting scholar at Stanford and an
adjunct faculty member at the University of California,
Berkeley.
ICWSM- 18 Registration Opens in March!
The Twelfth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social
Media will be held June 25 – 28 at Stanford University, Palo Alto,
California, USA.
ICWSM- 18 will include a lively program of technical talks and
posters, invited presentations, and keynote talks by Elena Grewal
(Airbnb), Miguel Luengo-Oroz (UN Global Pulse), and Sarita
Schoenebeck (University of Michigan).
Registration information is available at the ICWSM- 18 website
www.icwsm.org/2018/attending/registration. The early registration
deadline is April 27, and the late registration deadline is May 25.
For full details about the conference program, please visit the
ICWSM- 18 website ( icwsm.org) or write to icwsm18@aaai.org.
