Graduates of NSTU NETI received $2 million for artificial intelligence Dasha

According to the developers, the voice robot Dasha automates the call centers work and offers customers to save a half of work and money by abandoning human labor. Artificial intelligence adapts to any function: checking the relevance of applications or surveys, calling clients or job applicants. Depending on the customer's wishes, the authors of the development write the necessary script (name, voice selection, the purpose of the call and other parameters). The artificial intelligence is based on the neural networks which set commands for the bot. At the beginning of a dialogue, Dasha detects the speech, fixes the words which the interlocutor uses, and translates them into a text. After that, at the moment when the interlocutor is still talking, the program determines the context and selects the appropriate script to give the desired answer. Unlike the well-known voice robots, the AI is able to respond to unexpected questions. At one of the audio recordings of Dasha's test performance the robot processed a doctor's appointment booking, with an interlocutor suddenly asking an off-topic question, then fixing an appointment, changing the time and immediately canceling the previous arrangement. The robot reacted quickly to the messages: it answered all the questions and was able to respond to the client's requests. "People don't like talking to robots on the phone. One of the main tasks was to teach the robot to follow the customer's words, to respond to them. Our robot has a human voice, so that the interlocutor would not have a feeling of a useless conversation. That was our main advantage over our competitors. This is the first robot that sounds like a real person, and it has impressively affected the conversion and the interlocutor's attitude. Almost all the people who communicated with the voice robot did not understand they were talking to the program," said Ilya Stupakov, the Senior Researcher of the scientific and educational center "Electromagnetic Technologies Modeling" of Novosibirsk State Technical University and the Chief Software Architect of Dasha.AI. According to Dasha.AI research results, about 96 % of people who interacted with the voice robot thought they were communicating with a live person. The authors of the development expect to be the first in the world to pass the Turing test using a voice robot in the near future. Dasha.AI was established in October 2018. By January 2019, Dasha had made a progress: one million calls (both incoming and outgoing) were performed exclusively by the artificial intelligence without any human intervention. Dasha has more than 20 corporate clients in industries such as the banking, health care service and insurance. According to Yakov Novikov, the co-owner of Modulbank, thanks to the robot the bank was able to interview four times more customers in the first month of its work and reduce the call center load. The robot is the participant in the program NVIDIA Inception for the elite AI startups. Dasha's mission is to speed up the process of introducing robots into people's lives. The headquarters of the Dasha.AI is located in New York and has a research office in Novosibirsk. "Voice is the way how we will interact with computers in the future. Though voice communication is part of what makes us human and what we learn in the first years of our lives, computers have not yet learned to speak like humans. Here's what Dasha does: making voice communication with the robot similar to talking to ordinary people. And it's not just for incoming phone calls. At RTP, we strongly believe in voice interfaces and have started investing in next-generation enterprises that will enable companies to create interactive systems to meet the needs of their businesses," said Kirill Sheynkman, co-founder of RTP Ventures. Dasha.AI Company plans to partly spend RTP Global investments to expand the team. Today the team consists of 37 people, including 15 graduates and students of NSTU NETI. Dasha.AI developers plan to invest the received funds in the development of the platform where customers will be able to simulate conversations. In addition, investors' money will be used for development in the US, where the company has already launched several pilot projects. Reference: Founder of Dasha.AI Vladislav Chernyshov graduated from Novosibirsk State Technical University in 2008 and now he is the Chief Executive Officer of the company. Co-founder of Dasha.AI Ilya Stupakov graduated from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science of NSTU NETI in 2009, he is currently working at the University as a Senior Researcher and is Chief Software Architect of Dasha.AI. RTP Global (founded as ru-Net) was founded in 2000. It invests internationally in early-stage technology companies. Since its foundation, RTP Global has invested in more than 40 technology companies around the world. The firm was one of the first to provide financial and expert support to the largest European technology companies Yandex and Delivery Hero. RTP Ventures is an early stage venture capital Fund based in New York. RTP invests in companies that create solutions to specific problems in financial services and health care. RTP is usually the first institutional investor for a start-up.