Alan Nichol
Dr. Alan Nichol is co-founder & CTO of Rasa, a widely-used open source platform for conversational AI, and has authored research papers, technical blog posts, and online courses on the subject of conversational AI. He is credited with popularizing the idea of building chat and voice bots that do not rely on 'intents', and is one of the creators of the Rasa framework. Alan holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Cambridge, and in 2024 was named one of Europe's 100 most influential people in AI.
Sessions
LLMs offer powerful capabilities, but deploying them effectively in production remains a challenge for conversational AI and Chatbot applications, especially when it comes to minimizing hallucinations and ensuring accurate responses. In this 90-minute hands-on tutorial, we’ll explore building conversational AI systems using CALM and Rasa. CALM (Conversational AI Language Model) combines traditional conversational AI techniques with LLMs, separating conversational ability from business logic execution to deliver reliable, cost efficient, and scalable solutions. Unlike LLMs that handle both sides of the conversation, CALM focuses on user understanding with predefined business logic. This approach not only accelerates development but also enhances cost efficiency, scalability and reliability. By focusing on predefined business logic with CALM, you’ll gain the ability to build sophisticated, scalable systems faster. You’ll also learn how to use fine-tuned, open-weight models, such as llama 8b to power your AI assistant.
Participants will learn how to use CALM for business logic and Rasa for dialogue management, with practical insights, code examples, and best practices. Materials will be provided via a GitHub repository with a GitHub Codespace for easy access and execution.