A long-term fallout of the Covid crisis has been the rise of the contactless enterprise, in which customers, and likely employees, interact with systems to get what they need or request. This means a pronounced role for artificial intelligence and machine learning, or conversational AI, which add the intelligence needed to deliver superior customer or employee experience. Deloitte recently analyzed patents in the area of conversational AI to assess the direction of the market -- and the technology has been developing quickly. "Rapid adoption of conversational AI will likely be underpinned by innovations in the various steps of chatbot development that have the potential to hasten the creation and training of chatbots and enable them to efficiently handle complex requests -- with a personal touch," the analyst team, led by Deloitte's Sherry Comes, writes. Conversational AI is a ground-breaking application for AI, agrees Chris Hausler, director of data science for Zendesk.

OXFORD, England, April 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Nepal suffered devastating twin earthquakes in 2015 that killed nearly 9,000 people, the government provided help for families whose homes had collapsed to rebuild. But tens of thousands of others with damaged homes that were still standing faced a tougher decision: Was it safe to make repairs? Or were they better off building a new, often smaller home at their own cost? Artificial intelligence (AI), it turned out, could help, said Elizabeth Hausler, a U.S.-based engineer and builder who works on creating affordable, disaster-resilient housing. In Nepal, many homes are variations on a standard design - rectangular, multi-storey and with similar windows, she said.

While artificial intelligence may replace truck dricers and beat us at chess, it also has much to offer: it can free up our minds and responsibilities for the tasks and social interactions we humans are best suited for. In this TEDx video featuring Felix Hausler, CEO of messaging interface Chatgrape, Hausler discusses how AI is becoming more a part of our daily lives, and how we can overcome the challenges this could pose. AI can be used for good as much as it can be a threat: it beats us in every technical game, exercises tireless intelligence, and yet it also helps us with research, or drives us home when we're too drunk to drive, Hausler pointed out during his talk. Because of AI, 47 percent of jobs are at risk, he said, and humans will lose their jobs to automation in the next decades. Truck driving, other transportation, production, and administrative jobs are particularly susceptible to AI.