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2017 | Book

Getting Started with AI Basics Read chapter Read first chapter

Artificial Intelligence for .NET: Speech, Language, and Search

Building Smart Applications with Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs

Author: Nishith Pathak

Publisher: Apress

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

Get introduced to the world of artificial intelligence with this accessible and practical guide. Build applications that make intelligent use of language and user interaction to better compete in today’s marketplace. Discover how your application can deeply understand and interpret content on the web or a user’s machine, intelligently react to direct user interaction through speech or text, or make smart recommendations on products or services that are tailored to each individual user.

With Microsoft Cognitive Services, you can do all this and more utilizing a set of easy-to-use APIs that can be consumed on the desktop, web, or mobile devices. Developers normally think of AI implementation as a tough task involving writing complex algorithms. This book aims to remove the anxiety by creating a cognitive application with a few lines of code. There is a wide range of Cognitive Services APIs available. This book focuses on some of the most useful and powerful ways that your application can make intelligent use of language.

Artificial Intelligence for .NET: Speech, Language, and Search will show you how you can start building amazing capabilities into your applications today.

What You'll Learn

Understand the underpinnings of artificial intelligence through practical examples and scenariosGet started building an AI-based application in Visual StudioBuild a text-based conversational interface for direct user interactionUse the Cognitive Services Speech API to recognize and interpret speechLook at different models of language, including natural language processing, and how to apply them in your Visual Studio applicationReuse Bing search capabilities to better understand a user’s intention

Work with recommendation engines and integrate them into your apps

Who This Book Is For

Developers working on a range of platforms, from .NET and Windows to mobile devices. Examples are given in C#. No prior experience with AI techniques or theory is required.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Getting Started with AI Basics
Abstract
Imagine creating a software so smart that it will not only understand human languages but also slang and subtle variations of these languages, such that your software will know that “Hello, computer! How are you doing?” and “wassup dude?” mean the same thing.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 2. Creating an AI-Based Application in Visual Studio
Abstract
The entire suite of Microsoft Cognitive Services is available as a set of REST APIs. The good thing about a REST API is that it does not need a special SDK or library for use in a programming language. A REST API has an HTTP URL endpoint that can accept input in JSON or XML format and give output in the same formats. Because of this, REST APIs are directly consumable in all major programming languages, such as C#, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and so on. As this book targets .NET developers, we will restrict ourselves to using C# throughout the book. But, really, the fundamentals of using Cognitive Services remain the same for any language.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 3. Building a Conversational User Interface with Microsoft Technologies
Abstract
Flip the pages back to Chapter 1. In the first pages, you see what it would be like to have a conversation with an intelligent computer regarding a live football (soccer) match. Let’s take it a step further: it's pretty reasonable to order food while watching your favorite team in action.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 4. Using Natural Language Understanding
Abstract
Natural language understanding or NLU: you have been hearing this term since Chapter 1. You have seen with examples what it’s about and what it can do. By now you know that this is the thing that lends an application a human-like ability to understand a user’s natural language sentences. In this chapter, you will learn about NLU in detail and understand concepts related to LUIS, the NLU component in Cognitive Services.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 5. Exploring a Cognitive Language Model
Abstract
At this point, you should have a fair understanding of natural language processing. Until now, you have concentrated your efforts on learning language understanding and its associated concepts. NLP is much larger than that, as you have seen with our brief mentions of NLP tasks along the way. So, what else can we expect machines to do with natural languages? Let’s have a look.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 6. Consuming and Applying LUIS
Abstract
Welcome to the conclusion! This chapter is where you put the knowledge you gained in the previous chapters to work.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 7. Interacting with the Speech API
Abstract
The way we interact with devices these days has changed dramatically. There are lots of new methods coming each day and they are disruptive enough to affect our daily lives. Most of these interactions would have been a wonder a decade ago or earlier. Among these innovations, speech is becoming very popular. One of the interesting things that gives the edge to a voice as a communication medium over anything else is that it’s faster and of course more natural. Today, more and more devices have built-in speech recognition and speech synthesis capabilities. In fact, there are a lot of systems already available and in use that utilize these smart systems and interactions. Consider personal digital assistants like Cortana and Siri, which have entirely changed the way we interact with mobile applications. Take another example of smart cars. We have had voice controlled cars for a long time now but what’s innovative is the natural interaction. All of this integrated stuff is making systems intelligent and more interactive.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 8. Applying Search Offerings
Abstract
Imagine a life without search engines. Every time you need an answer, you automatically go to sites like Google and Bing. Over last decade or so, search has come a long way. Gone are the days when search results were restricted to picking data from a database. With the increasing amount of data getting generated every second and new algorithms getting invented, search has moved beyond the text box. Search has moved from the era of postback to partial postbacks to even now auto-suggest. Search has also moved from just giving textual results and links to images and now videos, news, and contextual search. Search has also moved from reactive to proactive. Search has also moved from generalized search to a personalized experience. Google has certainly provided a new dimension to the entire search engine. From knowing the weather for the coming weekend to a cricket score to the latest news, videos, or anything else you want to know, your first stop has been Google for the last decade or so.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 9. Working with Recommendations
Abstract
Machine learning is everywhere and so are its usages. Many of us are using machine learning a lot more than we know in our daily life. One of the classic uses and a great applicability of machine learning is a recommendation system. We see recommendations everywhere on the Internet. These recommendation systems have been heavily integrated into some of the top sites in the world. Let’s first see some of the examples where you have been using recommendation systems.
Nishith Pathak
Chapter 10. The Future of AI
Abstract
In previous chapters, we covered some of the most powerful ways to use and consume Cognitive APIs. In Chapter 1, you started your journey into the world of artificial intelligence. The later chapters helped you understand how your application can deeply understand and interpret content on the Web or a user’s machine, intelligently react to direct user interaction through speech or text, or make smart recommendations on products or services that are tailored to each individual user. You also got familiar with building applications that make intelligent use of language and user interaction to better compete in today’s marketplace. Developers normally think of AI as tough task involving writing algorithms. One of the goals of this book is to remove the anxiety among you and to show you how easy it is to create amazing applications with just a few lines of code. By now you should be convinced that bringing these Cognitive APIs into your application is easy. Microsoft certainly did a great job in abstracting all the nuances of the deep neural network and complex algorithms by exposing easy-to-use REST APIs. So what's next? Where should you go from here?
Nishith Pathak
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Artificial Intelligence for .NET: Speech, Language, and Search
Author
Nishith Pathak
Copyright Year
2017
Publisher
Apress
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4842-2949-1
Print ISBN
978-1-4842-2948-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2949-1

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