Conversational AI, building trust, & making conversations human w Clément Delangue & Drew Austin

Can conversational AI make human conversations better? Will humans and AI complement or compete with each other? How important is chatbot transparency? In this episode of IBM thinkLeaders podcast, we are joined by Clément Delangue (co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face) and Drew Austin (co-founder & CEO of Wade & Wendy). We talk to Clément and Drew the importance of building trust with conversational AI, building company values inside the conversational AI being developed, and how people prefer natural language as the first-choice interface. We also get into whether a chatbot should replace your therapist, the flaws in regular conversation, and why your chatbot might be more like your pet than your friend.

“It's super important to be able to trust. The trust from people in this new form of technology...So being transparent is the first step of building this trust.” -Clément Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face

“We're about to have a conversation about something very deeply intimate and personal, your career, your life, your interests, your goals to start that on the wrong foot and pretend that you're a human is just not the right way to build the foundations of trust and I think trust is essential to how we have interaction and conversation. I mean if you think about some of the necessities and conversation it, trust is at that foundational core.” -Drew Austin, co-founder & CEO of Wade & Wendy

Connect with thinkLeaders and our panelists:
@IBMthinkLeaders
@ClementDelangue
@DrewAustin

BIOS

Clément Delangue is the co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face. His first startup experience was with Moodstocks, building machine learning for computer vision, which got acquired by Google. He has a passion for building consumer AI products used by millions. Organizer for NYC European Tech. @ClementDelangue

Hugging Face is the social AI who learns to chit-chat, talks sassy and trades selfies with you. We’re on a journey to build the first truly social artificial intelligence. Along the way, we contribute to the development of technology for the better. https://huggingface.co/

Drew Austin is the Founder & CEO of Wade & Wendy, a platform powering artificially intelligent recruiters. Prior to Wade & Wendy, Drew was the co-founder of Augmate, venture-backed tech company managing and powering wearable devices in the industrial workplace. Earlier in his career, he led business development efforts at Connections of NY, an IT-focused executive recruitment firm. Drew is ingrained in the NYC startup ecosystem, a 2015 NYC Venture Fellow, advisor to SXSW Startup Village, and mentor at Starfast Accelerator & Talent Tech Labs. Drew graduated from Syracuse University, Whitman School of Management, with a Bachelors in Entrepreneurship & Emerging Enterprises. https://wadeandwendy.ai/