Modern Conversational Agents

Conversational agents are computer programs engaging with human users in a conversation to assist, educate, or entertain. Being subject to substantial research interest ever since the advent of artificial intelligence in the 1950s and 60s, recent advances in cloud computing and the availability of smart devices with wireless high-speed Internet connection have led to steep progress in the engineering of conversational technology. “Modern” conversational agents understand spoken language, are able to answer complicated questions, or interact with humans in a dialog of hundreds of user turns. The reader of this article will learn about strengths of modern conversational agents driven by synergy among highperforming speech recognition, smart devices, high-speed Internet, cloud computing, standardization, and crowdsourcing. Together, we will see how the field is primarily driven by commercial stakeholders, and how open-source alternatives are expected to play a major role in the future of modern conversational agents.