Benjamin Kolz is a Conversational AI Specialist and the Community Lead for Teneo.ai.
As part of our commitment outreach, Benjamin recently visited University Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona to present the latest innovations in Conversational AI while providing insights and advice on the developing opportunities in the field.
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“I had the pleasure to visit the University Pompeu Fabra (UPF), a special place to me having spent several years studying at the institution before working as a lecturer as part of my PhD scholarship. During this time, I had the chance to work with Professor Núria Bel a lecturer focusing on Language Technologies.
During my visit to the university, I was provided with the opportunity to give an introduction to Conversational AI as well as examples of real-life applications of the technology. I was also eager to provide students with information on the career opportunities that could be found in the sector and what kind of skills employers look for.”
Conversational IVR in the Contact Center
“OpenQuestion is the product that we offer to enterprise organizations and it’s proving to have a huge impact on customer experiences for our clients around the world.
I engaged the students in a discussion, outlining the process of a typical IVR implementation and our strategies to meet user expectations.
Working with large businesses brings immense satisfaction. At Teneo.ai, we relish the chance to make a real-world impact through technology. I was keen to share how this field offers immense career satisfaction and learning opportunities.
While call center support can be a tedious process, our technology aims to transform that experience. Given Spain’s upcoming legislation limiting hold times to three minutes, the end of IVR frustration could be on the horizon.”
GPT and LLM’s
“I was excited to talk about the impact of ChatGPT with the students as the technology seems to be developing an an unprecedented rate and a worldwide many people are referring to the tech as enjoying ‘an iPhone moment’ in the sense of disrupting an entire industry overnight.
It was no surprise to find that most of the students had experience of using GPT, however, they had not considered how the technology could be applied in an IVR environment or for other industrial uses, instead of just helping out with some assignments!
As a partner of Microsoft, and having Azure Open AI GPT models directly connected to Teneo solutions, we have direct insight on the development of generative AI on its impact on boosting conversational AI for enterprise-grade organizations.
It was also a real highlight to hear what students thought about the future of the technology and how it would impact different vertical markets.”
Careers in Conversational AI
“One of the most common misconceptions we hear from young people and others from outside of the tech industry, is that you need to be a programmer or technology specialist in order to be successful. It’s simply not true.
The conversational AI sector is full of people from a variety of backgrounds and a number of the leaders working for Teneo.ai have backgrounds in humanities and linguistics. It’s our job to encourage young people to explore opportunities in this industry because we all need the next generation to push technology further!
And, considering the development of generative AI and the creation of roles such as ‘Prompt Engineer’, it’s likely that even more opportunities will develop in the coming years.
We recently published an article that lists the different roles that you would typically find in a conversational AI team, which you can read here.
I also had the pleasure of talking to Astrid Alleman recently, who is part of the Swisscom CAI team and comes from a linguistics background.
You can see the full discussion, here.”
It was a pleasure to connect with the students from University Pompeu Fabra that were in attendance of the session and I would like to thank Professor Núria Bel for the invitation– hopefully I’ll be back next year.”