ParlAI: Facebook Dialogue Platform with Stephen Roller

Chatbots are useful for developing well-defined applications such as first-contact customer support, sales, and troubleshooting. But the potential for chatbots is so much greater. Over the last five years, there have been numerous platforms that have arisen to allow for better, more streamlined chatbot creation. Dialogue software enables the creation of sophisticated chatbots. ParlAI is a dialogue platform built inside of Facebook. It allows for the development of dialogue models within Facebook. These chatbots can “remember” information from session to session, and continually learn from user input. Stephen Roller is an engineer who helped build ParlAI, and he joins the show to discuss the history of chatbot applications and what the Facebook team is trying to accomplish with the development of ParlAI.