Ask DB

Ask DB is a platform for integrating natural language features into business applications, and developing conversational interfaces to improve how we work.

The progress in recent AI algorithms for processing written and spoken language is impressive to say the least. Language Model based algorithms in particular show great potential, we are really only beginning to understand their potential and how they work.

Today AskDB can provide the ability to answer questions based on a collection of technical documents. This generates the most appropriate response to a question using the most relevant documents as context even if the documents don't address the exact question or use different terms from the one used in the query. In future it is envisaged that the platform will support code generation and automated report generation and more general and powerful conversational interfaces.

The most familiar conversational interface for many people are mobile personal assistants, such as Apple's Siri, or Google Now. These interact through voice or text and can understand some natural language commands, for example booking a restaurant. Most of these are targeted primarily at the consumer market, but within IT the idea of "ChatOps" has developed to describe technologies for managing complex software development processes by interacting with a bot in a chatroom, where other affected people can interact too. Similar approaches could support many business functions which are currently paper based or require someone to sit down at a computer.

Ask DB is being worked on as an open source project because the benefit of being able to collaborate with similar projects outweighs the commercial advantage of the IP from closed development, and because we believe the potentially disruptive impact of these technologies can be better managed if they are developed in the open. If you are interested in working on this, whether as a contributor or an early adopter, please contact us.

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