/* ---- Google Analytics Code Below */

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Conversational AI and Healthcare Chatbots

Used Eliza.  Still need to see better studies of chatbots in complete and varying contexts.  And comparison to having a professional available.  And also compared to professional in the room where they can watch reactions to that they say. 

Conversational AI Making Headway in Powerful Healthcare Chatbots   By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor  

Conversational AI has come a long way since ELIZA, which was intended by its creator in 1964 to be a parody of the responses of a psychotherapist to his patient, as a demonstration that communication between a human and a machine could only be superficial.  

What surprised Joseph Weizenbaum of the MIT AI lab was that many people, including his secretary, assigned human-like feelings to the computer program. It is acknowledged as the original chatbot.   

Pranay Jain, cofounder and CEO, Enterprise Bot

In the 50 years since then, chatbots have evolved first to engage users in dialogues for customer service in many fields, and now to dialogues on personal medication information. “With the advent of cognitive intelligence, chatbots were given a facelift. They were able to analyze context, process intent, and formulate adequate responses,” stated Pranay Jain, cofounder and CEO of Enterprise Bot, in a contribution to AI Trends. The Switzerland-based company was founded five years ago.   

Still, chatbots incorporating AI today are challenged to successfully process technical commands, to understand human intent, to exhibit conversational intelligence and understand different languages, accents and dialects.   

Today, “The ability to understand the subtle nuances of human tonalities, speech patterns, and mimic human empathy in the form of texts and voices is what makes a chatbot truly successful across industries and verticals,” Jain stated.   

Chatbots in healthcare had been perceived as high risk, with healthcare professionals skeptical that patients would provide confidential medical information to a virtual assistant. “Today, chatbots are being designed and deployed to perform preliminary pathology and aid healthcare professionals,” Jain stated, noting that chatbots now gather initial personal information and then ask about symptoms.   .... ' 

No comments: