Nanosemantics
 | |
| Industry | Artificial intelligence |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Founders | Igor Ashmanov, Natalya Kaspersky |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Stanislav Ashmanov |
Nanosemantics Lab is a Russian IT company specializing in the creation of interactive dialog interfaces, particularly chatbots, based on artificial intelligence (AI) for use in communications related to businesses and industry. The company was founded in 2005 by Ashmanov & Partners and Natalya Kaspersky.
Profile
Nanosemantics Lab maintains its own linguistic programming language for AI development called Dialogue Language (DL). Different types of businesses are supported, banks and financial services, telecommunications, retail, travel and automobile industry, home appliances production, etc. Popular social networks and instant messaging services may be used as base platforms. Among its solutions, Nanosemantics lists projects for various companies and institutions, among them Beeline, MTS, Sberbank, Higher School of Economics, Webmoney, Gazpromneft, Rostelecom, Ford Motors and others.[1]
The company uses the term "inf" for naming its numerous types of chat bots. A 2014 scholarly research at Higher School of Economics[2] states that such "infs", when used at business, may lower load on employees, collect statistics useful for understanding market demand and also may increase customer loyalty by providing fast and informative answers due to usage of large databases.
The same research describes Nanosemantics' project for Russian branch of Ford Motors company, when AI capabilities were used for promoting the car model Ford Kuga. The research pointed out that within 2 months since beginning, the promo-website conducted 47774 talks of visitors with the specialized "inf", which indicated several hundred thousand of questions and the longest chat lasted for 3 hours 10 minutes. One-year promo campaign showed that 28.6% of people who made pre-orders talked to the "inf".
Joint projects
Nanosemantics also participates in other Ashmanov & Partners' projects related to AI. Since 2014, it helps in development of hardware "personal assistant" called Lexy, a solution similar to Amazon Alexa and the analogues.[3]
The company regularly organizes All-Russian Turing Test competitions for IT developers.[4] Some of these events are co-organized with Microsoft. During the competitions, creators of chat bots try to convince judges that they talk to a human. Also, volunteer humans "play roles of chat bots" and judges aim to distinguish them. The results are measured in per cent of judges that were successfully convinced.[5]
In August 2019 it was announced that Nanosemantics is going to participate in creation of open operating system for creating automated voice assistants. The project is called SOVA (Smart Open Virtual Assistant) and is about to receive investment of 300 million roubles (~$4,6 million) from Russian state.[6]
The company maintains long-term partnerships with Skolkovo Innovation Center branch association "Neuronet" and Yandex.
Recognition
Since its foundation, Nanosemantics Lab has received a number of recognitions and awards. Among them are several professional ROTOR awards[7] for the website iii.ru (created in 2009). The website gives the general public the means to create and train virtual assistants, which can then be used on a website or integrated into social networks.
In 2015, the RBTH international media service included Nanosemantics in its list of "Top 50 Startups" in Russia.[8] In 2016, the company received Russian state-maintained award called Runet Prize in two nominations: "State and Society" and "Technology and Innovation".[9]
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References
- ^ Nanosemantics Lab English corporate website: Project list; Blog
- ^ (in Russian) Зараменских Е. П. «Основы бизнес-информатики», ВШЭ, 2014, ISBN 978-5-00068-152-7
- ^ Introducing Lexy, the robot with mood swings — Skolkovo Innovation Center, 29.09.2014
- ^ Third Turing Test in Russian — Weekly Geekly / Habr, 2018
- ^ (in Russian) https://vc.ru/flood/59052-chem-zavershilsya-tretiy-test-tyuringa
- ^ (in Russian) К «Алисе» прилетит SOVA — Kommersant, 23.08.2019
- ^ (in Russian) http://ezhe.ru/POTOP/results.html?do=res;2009
- ^ (in Russian) https://www.sostav.ru/publication/top-50-rossijskikh-startapov-20870.html
- ^ (in Russian) http://premiaruneta.ru/press/52/