Indian researchers are working to develop a chatbot based on an artificial neural network that can perform natural language processing (NLP). The team explains how the chatbot may be trained to answer COVID-19 pandemic-related queries. Details are to be found in the International Journal of Intelligent Engineering Informatics.
According to Vishal Tiwari, Lokesh Kumar Verma, Pulkit Sharma, Rachna Jain, and Preeti Nagrath of Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering in New Delhi, the emergence of a new coronavirus—SARS-CoV-2—and the following pandemic it triggered has prompted widespread alarm throughout the world. The team wants to alleviate some of the public’s concerns about the unknown parts of the pandemic by providing a chatbot-based platform for individuals to learn more about the disease and the epidemic.
The team says, artificial intelligence (AI) is already playing an essential role in the fight against the virus, but it may also be used to refute disinformation and replace knowledge gaps when problems occur. Current AI technology and one of its abilities, natural language processing (NLP), have evolved substantially in recent years, not only in terms of the precision with which a piece of text can be analysed and its meaning retrieved, but also in terms of speed. It hasn’t been more than a decade since an NLP search engine tool took several minutes to analyse a natural inquiry from a user, but today’s technology can extract semantics from a piece of text in less than a second, if not faster.
There has been evolution in the area where NLP and neural networks intersect, . This convergence of AI technologies has led the research down a different path to the advantage of the systems being created, overcoming many of the issues that the initial methods had experienced.
The use of this new and fast-growing technology in the present pandemic might help reduce the spread of disinformation among common people who are confused by conflicting messages from the media, activist organisations, and social media. Furthermore, by providing clear and precise answers to a person’s queries, it may reduce the toll on mental health and stress.
