Technology

February 20, 2026

3 min

Barbara Grosz, a brilliant mathematician, was the creator of the first conversational interfaces. © Harvard; photo illustration: XD with ChatGPT

Arnaud Pagès

Journalist

Xavier Demeersman

Journalist

Specialist in natural language processing, Barbara Grosz played a key role in the development of computer dialogue systems, advancing human-machine interactions.

Born in 1948 in Philadelphia, this brilliant mathematician, educated at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, was behind the creation of the first conversational interfaces. By directing this technology toward dialogue, she laid the foundational work for creating agents capable of answering questions and conversing with their users.

The birth of conversational AI

In 1973, Barbara Grosz was recruited by the SRI International research institute to lead a program on natural language processing (NLP), giving her the opportunity to work on the earliest computer dialogue systems.

In 1977, she introduced the concept of “focus,” suggesting that machines must identify key elements in a conversation — such as pronouns, references, intentions, and sub-segments — to track and fully understand the flow of a dialogue. This computational model of discourse would later be used to develop chatbots and voice assistants that can handle a conversation smoothly from start to finish, instead of analyzing each sentence individually.

Enabling dialogue between humans and machines

Additionally, working alongside computer scientist Julia Hirschberg, Grosz studied how intonation, tone, and rhythm highlight the structure of spoken discourse just as much as words do. This work contributed to advancements in speech recognition technologies.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Barbara Grosz focused her research on multi-agent systems. She developed models that allowed different types of agents to coordinate their actions, plan tasks together, and work in concert to achieve shared goals. This conceptual foundation led to the development of collaborative systems and found applications in fields like education and healthcare.

In 1986, at Harvard, she co-founded the Center for the Study of Language and Information within the School of Engineering and Applied Science to foster connections between computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive sciences, with the aim of making machines smarter and more sociable.

Barbara Grosz’s work has helped bridge the gap between humans and machines. © The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, YouTube

The first female president of AAAI

By envisioning machines as teammates rather than mere executors, Barbara Grosz helped shift artificial intelligence toward dialogue. The smooth, coherent conversations we see with systems like ChatGPT, as well as the precision and effectiveness of collaborative robots (cobots) in factories, wouldn’t exist without her pioneering work.

In 1993, she became the first woman to head the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), one of the leading global organizations dedicated to the progress of AI. In 2008, she received the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for her fundamental contributions to AI, followed by the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence in 2015 and the ACL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

In 2018, at Harvard, she co-founded the Embedded EthiCS working group with philosopher Alison Simmons to promote the development and responsible use of computer technologies.