Artificial Intelligence for .NET: Speech, Language, and Search

Get introduced to the world of artificial intelligence with this accessible and practical guide. Build applications that make intelligent use of language and user interaction to better compete in today’s marketplace. Discover how your application can deeply understand and interpret content on the web or a user’s machine, intelligently react to direct user interaction through speech or text, or make smart recommendations on products or services that are tailored to each individual user.

With Microsoft Cognitive Services, you can do all this and more utilizing a set of easy-to-use APIs that can be consumed on the desktop, web, or mobile devices. Developers normally think of AI implementation as a tough task involving writing complex algorithms. This book aims to remove the anxiety by creating a cognitive application with a few lines of code. There is a wide range of Cognitive Services APIs available. This book focuses on some of the most useful and powerful ways that your application can make intelligent use of language. Artificial Intelligence for .NET: Speech, Language, and Search will show you how you can start building amazing capabilities into your applications today. What You’ll Learn

Understand the underpinnings of artificial intelligence through practical examples and scenarios
Get started building an AI-based application in Visual Studio
Build a text-based conversational interface for direct user interaction
Use the Cognitive Services Speech API to recognize and interpret speech
Look at different models of language, including natural language processing, and how to apply them in your Visual Studio application
Reuse Bing search capabilities to better understand a user’s intention

Work with recommendation engines and integrate them into your apps

Who This Book Is For

Developers working on a range of platforms, from .NET and Windows to mobile devices. Examples are given in C#. No prior experience with AI techniques or theory is required.

Author Biography

Nishith Pathak is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), architect, speaker, AI thinker, innovator, and strategist. He is a prolific writer and contributing author and has written many books, articles, reviews, and columns for multiple electronic and print publications. Having more than 20 years of experience in IT, Nishith’s expertise lies in innovation, research, architecting, designing, and developing applications for Fortune 100 companies using next-generation tools and technologies.  As an early adopter of Microsoft technology, he has kept pace in the certification challenges and succeeded in getting several of his certifications in beta stage.

Nishith is a gold member and sits on the advisory board of various national and international computer science societies and organizations. He has been awarded the elite Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) a couple of times for his exemplary work and his expertise in Microsoft technologies. He is a member of various advisory groups for Microsoft. Nishith is currently working as Vice President and R&D lead for Accenture Technology Labs. He is focused on key research areas, specifically AI, ML, cognitive, bot, blockchain cloud computing, and helping companies architect solutions based on these technologies. Nishith was born, raised, and educated in a town called Kotdwara in Uttarakhand, India.  Beyond that, as time permits, he spends time with his friends and amuses them with his interests in palmistry and astrology. Anurag Bhandari is a contributing author to this book and a researcher, programmer, and open source evangelist. His favorite research areas include NLP, IoT, and machine learning. He specializes in developing web as well as mobile apps and solutions. He has extensive experience working with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and NGOs in the capacity of research and software delivery. Anurag hails from Jalandhar, Punjab, where he also completed his degree in computer science from National Institute of Technology. Since his undergraduate days, he has been affiliated with or led several open source projects, such as Granular Linux and OpenMandriva. He is a proud polyglot of programming (C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python) and natural (English, Hindi, Punjabi, French) languages. Being a technology enthusiast, Anurag keeps meddling with trending technologies and trying out new frameworks and platforms. In his spare time, he reads books, follows sports, drools over gadgets, watches TV shows, plays games, and collects stamps.