Cooperative conversational AI

The development of machines that effectively converse with humans is a challenging problem that requires combining complex technologies, such as speech recognition, dialogue systems, and speech synthesis. Current solutions mainly rely on independent modules combined in plain unidirectional pipelines. To reach higher levels of human-computer interactions, we have to radically rethink current conversational AI architectures with a novel cooperative framework. We need to replace standard pipelines with "cooperative networks of deep networks" where all the modules automatically learn how to cooperate, communicate, and interact. This keynote will discuss some novel ideas toward this ambitious goal and will introduce a novel toolkit called SpeechBrain designed to easily implement this holistic approach to Conversational AI.