AURI’s Virtual Assistant

Think of artificial intelligence (AI) as a really smart computer program that can do tasks usually requiring human intelligence. Here are some simple examples:

1. Voice Assistants:  Siri from Apple or Alexa from Amazon use artificial intelligence to answer questions or help you complete tasks, like “what is the weather for today” or “put eggs on my grocery list,” or “play me that new song from my favorite artist.”
2. Chatbots:  ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot are examples of chatbots that use AI to understand your questions, provide relevant answers, and improve their performance over time, making them a useful tool for customer service, information retrieval, and more.
3. Recommendation Systems: When Netflix suggests movies you might like based on what you’ve watched before, that’s AI at work.
4. Navigation Apps: Google Maps uses AI to find the fastest routes and avoid traffic.

AI learns from data it “ingests” and improves over time, just like how we learn from experience.

Unlike other AI tools, AVA does not LEARN from previous questions asked to help protect user identity and information.  AVA only gets smarter when users take the time to provide feedback on its responses, using the thumbs up and thumbs down functions available after each answer.  Using this feedback, AURI can fine-tune AVA’s algorithms or add to AVA’s knowledge library to make it smarter for the future.

AVA does not LEARN from previous questions, like ChatGPT might.  Instead, AVA gets smarter when AURI food science and food business experts add new content to its knowledge, or content, library.  In this way, AVA is powered by artificial intelligence, but its knowledge library, from which it draws its answers, is curated by AURI’s human expertise.

AVA is targeted to agricultural producers – farmers, ranchers – and food entrepreneurs that have food science, safety, and business questions related to starting or running a food business.  However, because AVA is an “always available” virtual assistant, it is accessible to anyone with an internet connection and questions about food science, food safety, or starting/running a food business.

AVA is a common language Q&A chatbot, powered by artificial intelligence and backed by AURI’s food science and business experts.  AVA uses natural language processing to allow users to ask questions in their own words, then runs those questions through a series of AI algorithms to return a response (with relevant references) to your question based on the audio, video, and text documentation in AVA’s knowledge library. 

Simply ask AVA your food science, safety, or business question and hit the paper plane button – or choose a question from the list of suggestions.  Continue your conversation with AVA to dig deeper into your question.  To start a new topic, it’s best to hit the New Topic button to avoid confusing AVA by changing subjects.  Each answer is supplied with a list of up to the top 5 references used to generate the answer, so you can dig more deeply into AVA’s response and verify it for yourself.  AVA also has buttons to let you copy selected answers (or the whole chat) to the clipboard, from which you can paste it into an email if you so desire.  You can also provide feedback on AVA’s performance using the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons.  When you’re done, just click on Exit Chat at the top of your screen!

AVA recognizes the language in which you asked your original question, and returns a response in that language.  However, the underlying references that you can access will be in their original language.  This feature is native to AVA’s AI processing engine, but has not been fine-tuned for optimal performance.

AVA’s knowledge library has been and continues to be populated with food science, food safety, and food business audio, video, and text content created or curated by AURI’s experts.  Thus, AVA is best equipped to answer questions focused on food safety, food science, and food business.  Examples include:

• How do I get a UPC code?
• What information is needed to create a nutrition label?
• Can I sell food products made out of home kitchen in Minnesota?
• How do I measure the shelf life of my hot sauce?

The content upon which AVA bases its answers comes from a knowledge library curated by AURI’s food science and food business experts.  This content includes AURI or trusted partner-created text documents, webinars, podcasts, and trusted websites such as the MN Department of Agriculture or Naturally MN.  For simple, factual questions, chatbots like AVA are usually quite reliable. However, for more complex or nuanced topics, it’s a good idea to cross-check the information with the references provided by AVA and/or other trusted sources.  Additionally, AVA might not always understand the context of your question perfectly or handle ambiguous questions well, so it’s important ask specific questions with context and cross-reference AVA’s response with the references it provides.  For critical decisions, it’s always best to consult AURI directly.

AVA’s ability to answer a food science, food safety, or food business question is limited to its knowledge library.  When AVA returns a nonsensical answer, it’s likely that the knowledge base does not contain relevant content that can be used to formulate an answer.  In this case, it’s important for users to provide feedback on AVA’s response, using the thumbs up and thumbs down functions available after each answer.  Using this feedback, AURI can fine-tune AVA’s algorithms or add to AVA’s knowledge library to make it smarter for the future.

If AVA returns no response, it’s likely that your internet connection is weak or unstable.  Try asking your question again when you have a stronger internet connection.

Unlocking AVA’s knowledge library can sometimes be a challenge.  If AVA contains the information you’re looking for, oftentimes rephrasing your question can deliver a better answer.  Here are some ways to improve the questions you ask AVA, to get better answers:

• Give AVA clear and specific instructions to see what it generates.
• Keep your language conversational.
• Use action words/prompts, such as “explain,” “generate,” “tell me,” translate,” etc.
• Start with simple requests, and build up to more complex interactions as you get more comfortable.

If your first response from AVA is different from different from what you had in mind, editing your questions (prompts) may deliver better results.  Try the following tips:

• Rephrase your question, to see if it generates a more relevant result.
• Add more detail / context to your question. More specific questions / prompts can result in more relevant answers.
• Treat your interactions like a dialogue and ask follow-up questions to dive into a topic. For example:
  • “Can you tell me more about that?
  • “What is the opposing argument to this?”

When you are ready to move on to a new topic, be sure to hit the “New Topic” button to clear the chat from AVA’s immediate memory to avoid topical confusion.

• Sometimes, when AVA’s initial response misses the mark, you can try regenerating the response from the same question. You can hit the “Edit Question” button next to your original question (the “pen” button) to re-ask the same question or refine the original question without having to retype it.

AURI’s mission is to accelerate the expansion of the agricultural economy by empowering expanded uses and markets of agriculturally derived products.  AURI accomplishes this mission by providing technical and business expertise to help businesses commercialize their value-added agricultural innovations.  The rising number of MN food businesses severely strains AURI’s capacity to provide traditional 1:1 support at times when the founder is available.  As a virtual assistant, AVA is available 24/7 to provide answers to many of the common questions AURI has received over the years, thus improving AURI’s capacity to provide on-demand support in service to our mission.

The first question you ask AVA results in a longer-than-typical response time (perhaps 20-40 seconds).  This is AVA’s “warm-up period.”  After the first question, you should get answers to your questions more rapidly – though if you let 15+ minutes elapse between questions, you may see that AVA needs to “warm up” again!

Yes.  AVA is a web-based chatbot configured to be mobile-friendly.  At this time, there is no standalone “app” that you can download from your device’s app store.  Instead, you can simply navigate to https://auri.org/ava and launch directly from your browser.  If you use AVA frequently, you may find it useful to bookmark AVA directly on your device.

Of course!  You can contact AURI at https://auri.org/contact/, click Exit Chat at the top of your screen when you are using AVA to be redirected to a number of AURI resources (including the Contact form), or click the Contact Us button above the Ask Question bar.  If you’re interested in working with AURI on a Food project, you can get started by visiting https://auri.org/videos/how-to-become-an-auri-food-client/.

AVA does not store any personal identifying information to protect the user’s identity and business information.  At the same time, users should not share any personal identifying information, or any confidential business information, with AVA. 

AVA only stores your profession, as required on the startup page, user feedback, and questions asked, for optimization and troubleshooting purposes.

AURI was awarded funding from USDA Rural Development – Cooperative Service to create an Agriculture Innovation Center (AIC), intended to provide technical and business development assistance to value-added ag producers to aid in the development and marketing of value-added ag products.  In other words, the AIC helps farmers or ranchers add value to what they’re producing.  AURI used a portion of this funding to build AVA, with this purpose in mind – but in reality, anyone with a food science, safety, or business question whether a farmer, rancher, entrepreneur, food company employee, or simply the “food business curious,” can benefit from AVA.