In this episode of The Dialogue Architects, host Lauren Goerz welcomes Alan Nichol, co-founder and CTO of Rasa, to unpack his journey from physics PhD to becoming a pioneer in conversational AI.

Alan reflects on the early chatbot experiments that seeded Rasa’s creation, the lessons learned from the first wave of conversational interfaces, and why today’s AI assistants demand a more thoughtful approach—one grounded in user trust, governance, and real-world problem solving.

Their conversation explores:

• Rasa’s origin story—from side projects to powering global enterprise assistants
• Why early chatbots failed and how modern systems must evolve
• How enterprises can design scalable, maintainable conversational architectures
• The shift from scripted flows to adaptive, AI-driven dialogues
• Why observability, governance, and user-centric design matter more than model size
• How companies can avoid the AI hype cycle and focus on what users actually need
• Actionable advice for teams who want to get started with Rasa

Alan provides guidance for enterprises navigating rapid AI innovation—and a grounded vision of what it takes to build human-machine conversations that truly work. Clarity, responsibility, and building AI that solves real problems.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction to Dialogue Architects
(00:07) Meet Alan Nichol: From Physicist to CTO of Rasa
(00:42) The Origin Story of Rasa
(01:13) Early Challenges and Innovations in Conversational AI
(03:03) Building Bots and the Evolution of NLP
(07:40) The Rise of Rasa and Open Source Contributions
(12:36) Company Culture and Hiring Philosophy at Rasa
(15:42) Maintaining Integrity and Trust in AI Development
(19:18) Early Bets and the Evolution of NLP Classifiers
(20:02) Challenges with Classification Paradigms
(24:14) The Shift to LLMs and Honest AI
(25:20) The Overuse of Conversational Interfaces
(28:06) AI Assisted Coding and Abstractions
(31:19) The Future of Conversational AI
(37:58) Advice for Enterprises and Final Thoughts

Links & Resources:

• Rasa Official Site
• Alan Nichol on LinkedIn
• Lauren Goerz on LinkedIn

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In a world powered by AI and automation, conversational AI is now a critical business function. On The Dialogue Architects, host Lauren Goerz brings together industry leaders and practitioners to explore how to design scalable, trustworthy conversations that enterprises can rely on—today and into the future. Presented by Rasa.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.