Haptik's contribution towards NLU research recognized alongside Google Brain, OpenAI and IBM Research at EMNLP 2020

MUMBAI, India , Nov. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jio Haptik Technologies Limited, one of the world's largest conversational AI companies and a subsidiary of Reliance Jio Platforms, was recently recognised at EMNLP 2020 for its exceptional contribution. EMNLP is a Tier-1 venue for researchers around the world to publish results which push the boundaries of Natural Language Processing. The company introduced three new datasets for the NLP community that has the potential to emerge as a major benchmark for Intent Detection globally. The paper also benchmarks Intent detection accuracy of Haptik which is at par and in some cases better than the likes of Google's DialogFlow, Microsft LUIS and Rasa.

The paper authors presented was HINT3: Raising the bar for Intent Detection in the Wild alongside other companies like Google Brain, IBM, Open AI at the Insights Workshop EMNLP 2020.

The publication also draws attention towards existing gaps in the performance of chatbots in the real world. Unlike current datasets that contain crowdsourced user queries, HINT3 contains samples of real user queries and the likelihood of this performance translating proportionally to Customer Experience (CSAT) is very high.

While analysing the best-case performance of all the platforms on queries which are in the scope of bots present in training data, Haptik performs exceptionally well. At the same time, Haptik's capability to fallback to humans on the queries which are out of the scope of bot is also at par or better than other platforms as visible from the peak MCC score averaged across all datasets. This can be ascertained from the table 1 below -

Conversational AI Platform	Haptik	Dialogflow	Rasa	LUIS
Average In-scope Accuracy	73	69.2	67.4	59.9
Average MCC score	0.538	0.522	0.492	0.458

Echoing Swapan Rajdev , CTO at Haptik thoughts, "I am extremely proud of the hard work, testing and performance standards that have gone into building our NLU technology. With the HINT-3 dataset we are trying to give back to our developer community by ensuring better benchmarking standards for everyone. Benchmarking Haptik's performance alongside Dialogflow, LUIS, RASA and other players is just another step towards ensuring best-in-class technology for our customer's advantage."

Even though chatbots and virtual assistants get trained and learn over time as interactions increase, it's equally important to provide the best customer experience during the initial days of implementation. Upon analyzing the performance of leading vendors with even lesser data containing sufficient signal to learn, Haptik stands out. This also means that for companies where getting sufficient data is a challenge, Haptik can be cost-effective and efficient. The dataset is open-source, results shown are duly accepted at Insights Workshop co-located with EMNLP 2020 and are fully reproducible with the steps available on GitHub.

Conversational AI Platform	Haptik	Dialogflow	LUIS	Rasa
Average In-scope Accuracy	67.7	64.0	55.0	58.4
Average MCC score	0.484	0.482	0.457	0.411

Echoing Swapan Rajdev, CTO at Haptik thoughts, "I am extremely proud of the hard work, testing and performance standards that have gone into building our NLU technology. With the HINT-3 dataset we are trying to give back to our developer community by ensuring better benchmarking standards for everyone. Benchmarking Haptik's performance alongside Dialogflow, LUIS, RASA and other players is just another step towards ensuring best-in-class technology for our customer's advantage."

As NLP is the backbone of any Conversational AI engine, it is the most frequently used decision-making factor in choosing a Digital Transformation partner. Apart from the recognition at EMNLP, Haptik NLP has also received multiple other accolades like the Raise Award from Government of India for Industry expertise.

About Haptik

Haptik is one of the world's largest Conversational AI companies, having reached over 100 million devices, and processed over 3 billion conversations to date. The company's intelligent virtual assistant solutions enable Fortune 500 brands globally to enhance customer experience while saving costs and increasing sales. 

Haptik has been the recipient of several industry accolades, including the Frost & Sullivan Award for Conversational AI Company of the Year 2018, AI Start-up of the year 2020 by Entrepreneur India and recognition as one of the Top 25 AI Companies in the World 2018 by AI Time Journal. Haptik's leading clients and partners include Oyo Rooms, KFC, Tata Group, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance among others. Haptik is a part of Reliance Jio Platforms, who acquired a majority stake in the company in a $100 million deal in April 2019 .

Contact enterprise@haptik.ai to know more.

IIT Kanpur Undergrad Bags Fellowship of 'Google Brain' - An AI Research Team of Google

Archit Sharma, a senior undergraduate from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, has made India proud by bagging the fellowship of Google Brain, an artificial intelligence research team of Google. The Google Brain fellowship is offered only to 50 students from across the globe. 

We recently reported about 'Google Brain', where we mentioned that, with this Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven tool, Google can forecast a host of patient outcomes, including how long people may stay in hospitals, their odds of re-admission and chances they will soon die.

Archit, who hails from Amritsar, Punjab, is pursuing Electrical Engineering and a minor in Artificial Intelligence and Linguistic Theory from IIT-Kanpur.

Archit on his selection for Google fellowship, said to The Tribune, "Now, I am feeling relaxed. It could not have been possible without the support of my parents and faculty at the IIT-Kanpur. I am looking forward to work with Google. I am excited as well as happy."

“I liked mathematicians which drew me towards engineering. I am very happy with the Google Brain fellowship. I have a deep interest in artificial intelligence. It is a step closer to explore the world of artificial intelligence. I have multiple options but I believe Google Brain is the best place for me,” says Archit, who scored 9.9 of the CGPA 10 in his B.Tech.

Archit has proved his mettle by winning various medals for his academic performance at the 51st annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. This year, he even got departmental rank of 1, out of 140 undergraduates, in Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur.

On top of this, in 2012, even NASA has awarded Archit a first position in IX-X category amongst participants from over 10 countries for designing a space settlement capable of hosting nearly 10,000 humans independently.

Speaking about Google Brain, it is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team at Google formed in early 2010. It combines open-ended machine learning research with system engineering and Google-scale computing resources.

One unique thing about Google Brain team is that its members set their own research agenda, with the team as a whole maintaining a portfolio of projects across different time horizons and levels of risk.

Google Brain also has a Residency Program based in Mountain View, California, which is targeted at people (specifically students) who are eager to devote own passion to machine learning and artificial intelligence. This is an opportunity to get hands-on experience in Google team and have chance to keep in touch with professional researchers with Google Brain team. The program lasted 12 months.

Within the program were groups of new graduates from top universities with degree of BAs or Ph.Ds in computer science, physics, mathematics, and neuroscience, or others who come from years of industry experience. They were picked to work with researchers in Google Brain Team at the forefront of machine learning.

The residency program is similar to spending a year in a Master's or PhD program in machine learning. Residents are expected to read papers, work on research projects, and encouraged to publish in top-tier venues. By the end of the program, residents are expected to gain significant research experience in machine learning.