Irati Hurtado

Linguist in Conversational AI | Language Data Analyst | Conversation Designer

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I'm a linguist currently working as a Conversational AI Designer at Replicant.

I started my career in academia as a Researcher in Applied Linguistics, where I did extensive research on the psycholinguistic mechanisms which are at play when people have conversations with each other.

I now work in the Conversational AI industry, where I use my linguistic knowledge to design bots that can communicate with people naturally. I have experience designing text-based and voice-based bots for a variety of sectors, such as finance, healthcare, retail, and hospitality, among others. I have also worked for different types of companies, from small start-ups to big tech companies.

As a speaker of Spanish and English and as a certified translator, I have had a chance to work on bilingual conversational AI projects, especially for the LATAM and the US Spanish markets.

I'm a very creative person and I often write blog posts and create content. In my free time, you can find me cooking, working out, or traveling the world in search of new adventures.

I'm always happy to connect and collaborate with like-minded language professionals, so feel free to shoot me a message!


Projects


Latest Posts

Feb 6, 2025

Can LLMs understand emojis?

Emojis are graphic symbols or ideograms that represent not only facial expressions, but also ideas and concepts. Emojis are extremely popular worldwide, primarily in chat and social media. They can appear as an additional element in the sentence, as in "I liked the cake 😊", or replacing a word, as in "I liked the 🍰". From the perspective of large language models (LLMs), emojis are interesting because they convey a semantic as well as a pragmatic meaning. Read more

Nov 15, 2024

Talking to machines: A brief history of chatbots

Chatbots, although a trendy product now, have existed for decades. Advances in AI have transformed chatbots from simple and rule-based systems to more complex and sophisticated conversational agents. Let’s dive into the history of chatbots, from their beginnings to the modern AI-driven companions we see today. ELIZA: The first chatbot (1966) ELIZA was the first chatbot, developed by professor Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. ELIZA was designed to mimic a psychotherapist, responding to users' messages with pre-defined responses using pattern matching. Read more

Jul 2, 2024

Do LLMs have a personality?

Personality is the enduring set of characteristics or qualities that form a person’s distinctive character. The science of personality has been long studied by psychologists, and multiple tests have been designed to assess personality constructs. Interestingly, many of these tests follow a linguistic approach, since they are based on a factor analysis of the language used to describe behavior. For example, if someone says they like to “have everything organized and planned”, that would correlate with a conscientious personality trait. Read more

Contact

iratihurtado@gmail.com