This monograph is the first survey of neural approaches to conversational AI that targets Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval audiences. It provides a comprehensive survey of the neural approaches to conversational AI that have been developed in the last few years, covering QA, task-oriented and social bots with a unified view of optimal decision making. The authors draw connections between modern neural approaches and traditional approaches, allowing readers to better understand why and how the research has evolved and to shed light on how they can move forward. They...