https://simalexan.com/tags/conversational-ai/Recent content in Conversational-Ai on simalexanHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usThu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://simalexan.com/presentations/journey-to-intelligent-conversational-agents/Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://simalexan.com/presentations/journey-to-intelligent-conversational-agents/Why AI has us working more rather than less, what a multimodal voice agent is made of, and how we built one: Ultron.<p>A talk Konstantinos Siaterlis and I gave at AWS Community Day Adria 2026 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on October 22, 2026: why AI has us working more rather than less, what a voice agent is made of, and how we built Ultron, a multimodal voice agent that listens to a design discussion and draws on a board.</p> <figure class="my-10"> <iframe src="https://simalexan.com/presentations/journey-to-intelligent-conversational-agents/deck/" title="Journey to Intelligent Conversational Agents, the slides" allow="fullscreen" allowfullscreen style="display: block; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 16 / 9; border: 0; border-radius: 0.5rem; background: #01010a" ></iframe> <figcaption class="mt-3 text-sm"> Click the slides, then use ← and → to move and F for full screen. <a href="https://simalexan.com/presentations/journey-to-intelligent-conversational-agents/deck/">Open the slides on their own page →</a> </figcaption> </figure> <h2 id="what-it-covers">What it covers</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Opening</strong>: why we now work more, not less, with AI (the Jevons paradox, and &ldquo;botsitting&rdquo; ten agents), and whether voice agents are a cure.</li> <li><strong>Strands</strong>: building voice agents with Strands and Amazon Nova Sonic, from ten lines of code to an agent that researches a topic and emails it to you.</li> <li><strong>Origins</strong>: from Turing to ChatGPT, by way of the re:Invent 2018 workshop &ldquo;Alexa, ask Jarvis to create a serverless app for me&rdquo;.</li> <li><strong>Anatomy</strong>: what a multimodal voice agent is made of, and why we chose each part of Ultron.</li> <li><strong>Close</strong>: Ultron drawing its own architecture, Wardley Maps, and three key points.</li> </ul> <h2 id="three-key-points">Three key points</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Voice in, pictures out</strong>: speak to tell it, see to understand it, both ways in one conversation.</li> <li><strong>Built from parts</strong>: diarization, interruptions, speech, a voice and memory, each chosen on evidence.</li> <li><strong>Fewer calls, more decisions</strong>: an agent that calls you only to decide cuts the waiting and the checking.</li> </ul>conversational-aivoice-agentsai-agentsstrandswardley-mapping