Hey Cyba
The Inner Workings of a Virtual Personal Assistant

Reveals how AI works and provides insight into what we can expect of it now and in the future.

Steve Young (Author)

9781108838818, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 April 2021

254 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.49 kg

'This enjoyable text deftly illuminates the technology behind a common experience … Highly recommended.' M. Mounts, Choice Connect

Recent developments in artificial intelligence, especially neural network and deep learning technology, have led to rapidly improving performance in voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa. Over the next few years, capability will continue to improve and become increasingly personalised. Today's voice assistants will evolve into virtual personal assistants firmly embedded within our everyday lives. Told through the view of a fictitious personal assistant called Cyba, this book provides an accessible but detailed overview of how a conversational voice assistant works, especially how it understands spoken language, manages conversations, answers questions and generates responses. Cyba explains through examples and diagrams the neural network technology underlying speech recognition and synthesis, natural language understanding, knowledge representation, conversation management, language translation and chatbot technology. Cyba also explores the implications of this rapidly evolving technology for security, privacy and bias, and gives a glimpse of future developments. Cyba's website can be found at HeyCyba.com.

1. May I introduce myself?
2. My inner workings
3. How my brain works
4. Knowing what I know
5. What did you say?
6. What does that mean?
7. What should I say next?
8. Listen to me
9. How do you say that in…?
10. Let's chat
11. Can you trust me?
12. When all is quiet
13. Future upgrades and beyond
Glossary
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Natural language & machine translation [UYQL], Artificial intelligence [UYQ], Computer networking & communications [UT], Engineering: general [TBC], Popular science [PDZ], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Communication studies [GTC], Computational linguistics [CFX]