Getting Started with Chatbots: Learn and create your own chatbot with deep understanding of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Getting Started with Chatbots

Learn and create your own chatbot with deep understanding of

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

By

Akhil Mittal

FIRST EDITION 2019

Copyright © BPB Publications, INDIA

ISBN: 978-93-88511-89-6

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication can be Stored in a retrieval system or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers

LIMITS OF LIABILITY AND DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

The Author and Publisher of this book have tried their beSt to ensure that the programmes, procedures and functions described in the book are correct. However, the author and the publishers make no warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, with regard to these programmes or the documentation contained in the book. The author and publisher shall not be liable in any event of any damages, incidental or consequential, in connection with, or arising out of the furnishing, performance or use of these programmes, procedures and functions. Product name mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.

All trademarks referred to in the book are acknowledged as properties of their respective owners.

Distributors:

BPB PUBLICATIONS

20, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj

New Delhi-110002

Ph: 23254990/23254991

MICRO MEDIA

Shop No. 5, Mahendra Chambers,

150 DN Rd. Next to Capital Cinema,

V.T. (C.S.T.) Station,

MUMBAI-400 001

Ph: 22078296/22078297

BPB BOOK CENTRE

376 Old Lajpat Rai Market,

Delhi-110006

Ph: 23861747

DECCAN AGENCIES

4-3-329, Bank Street,

Hyderabad-500195

Ph: 24756967/24756400

Published by Manish Jain for BPB Publications, 20, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002 and Printed by Repro India Pvt Ltd, Mumbai

Dedicated To

My father,

Mr. Ajeet Kumar Mittal

–Akhil Mittal

Preface

Not going far but a few years back it was almost impossible to think that a human can talk to the machine in a natural language. Machine Learning and AI are the two concepts go hand in hand today that has changed. The artificial intelligence applied over machine learning algorithms had picked up a rapid pace to overcome the limitations between the interaction between humans and machines. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) has proved to be picking up on a rapid scale and artificial intelligence behind it has made the chatbots livelier than ever. The electronic business picked up the market and started holding the grip day by day and so was the need for AI to be more start. A few years back, when a wrong product was bought from any online shopping e-commerce website, it was a hassle to speak to reach out to a customer care agent which was always an L1 support at the first place, next make him understand your problem and then wait for his investigations and as a buyer it was a frustrating and time-consuming process to wait and go through these steps. On the other hand, the other side of the story, it was equally frustrating for the companies to set up an infrastructure for customer service to handle these requests which involved both human resource cost and time. But this improved; the human resources were still there but were trained and have a certain set of permutations and combinations for the end user to return their wrongly purchased product. The online software’s help the agents to track the product, payment information, user information and process the request within minutes. Yes, the time effort is reduced, but the effort to reach out an agent after a wait, the human resource cost at companies end still exists. With AI, it has been made possible to get rid of these overheads as well. Off course the need for human intervention is not 100% eliminated but by the time it has reduced to 70%.

This book promises to be a very good starting point for complete novice learners and is quiet an asset to advanced readers too. The author has written the book so that the beginners will learn the concepts related to chatbots built as an outcome of AI and ML and for experienced developers who wish to get hands-on on making a realtime chatbot.

It is said "To err is human, to forgive is divine". In this light the author wishes that the shortcomings of the book will be forgiven. At the same time, the author is open to any kind of constructive criticisms, feedback, corrections, and suggestions for further improvement. All intelligent suggestions are welcome, and the author will try his best to incorporate such in valuable suggestions in the subsequent editions of this book.

Acknowledgement

No task is a single man’s effort. Cooperation and Coordination of various peoples at different levels go into successful implementation of this book.

There is always a sense of gratitude, which everyone expresses to the others for the help they render during difficult phases of life and to achieve the goal already set. It is impossible to thank individually but I am hereby making a humble effort to thank and acknowledge some of them.

I would like to thank Mr. Manish Jain for giving me an opportunity to write for BPB Publications.

I would also like to thank my family members, my readers for providing all the encouragement and motivation.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has directly or indirectly contributed to complete this authentic piece of work.

About the Author

Akhil Mittal is two times Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) firstly awarded in 2016 continued in 2017 in Visual Studio and Technologies category, C# Corner MVP since 2013, Code Project MVP since 2014, a blogger, author and likes to write/read technical articles, blogs and books.

He works as a Sr. Consultant with Magic Edtech (https://www.magicedtech.com/) which is recognized as a global leader in delivering end to end learning solutions. He has an experience of around 12 years in developing, designing, architecting enterprises level applications primarily in Microsoft Technologies. He has a diverse experience in working on cutting edge technologies that include Microsoft Stack, AI, Machine Learning and Cloud computing. Akhil is an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) in Web Applications and Dot Net Framework.

Table of Content

Preface

Acknowledgements

Section 1: The Concept