Artificial intelligence (AI) has been on technology’s sidelines for decades. The topic has been popular among researchers and in the sci-fi space since 1956, when the field of AI research was born at Dartmouth College. However, intelligent agents, the underpinnings of AI technology, did not fit the bill to complete any meaningful tasks until the early 1980s.
Today, artificial intelligence is an integral part of our lives. The natural convergence of AI and big data allows for actual simulations of human cognition. AI-based neural networks have made their way into many aspects of our lives — from booking a table at a restaurant to stuffing the fridge with necessary products — and have revolutionized entire industries.
Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, WeChat, Slack and many other companies rely on AI as well. They utilize the power of artificial intelligence to develop “smart” chatbots that answer questions, collect feedback, and guide users to purchase.
Opporty, the world’s first blockchain-powered service marketplace with smart contracts and decentralized Escrow, will not remain on the sidelines. We are going to add a little AI magic to our business operations. Specifically, we will implement AI-powered retrieval-based chatbots in a closed domain. These chatbots will be adjusted to improve the marketplace’s interface, to facilitate customer interactions and surpass typical UX issues.
In this article, I will explain why the Opporty team plans to implement AI chatbots, and how they will improve user experience at the marketplace.
The Idea Behind Opporty’s AI Interface
When we talk about interfaces, we envision Google with its minimalistic search bar. Google truly revolutionized the look and feel of interfaces in the early 2000s. Before then, users had to come to grips with Yahoo and MSN, with their overstuffed, flashy and fairly hard to use interfaces. Google’s new search interface took interaction with search engines to an entirely new level and set a defined standard for the industry in general. Now, Opporty moves even farther to provide an updated version of Google’s minimalistic interface, making customer-site interactions even simpler.
Though the search field is an effective tool of navigation on Google, it has many disadvantages. For instance, it displays multiple search results, and users have to scroll a bit to find the result they were searching for.
Meanwhile, Opporty enables an AI-powered search bar. Artificial intelligence acts as a search engine that looks through the database of search results — offers, requests, responses, answers to questions, and so on. AI algorithms analyze the base and return user-oriented results that meet user expectations.
How It Works?
Opporty relies on retrieval-based chatbots that reduce the amount of errors in displayed results and answers. Basically, the chatbot manipulates a base of predefined answers for every available service in every industry.
Here is how the Opporty model will function:
- User enters “Lawyer” in the search field
- Chatbot clarifies: “Are you a lawyer or you are looking for a lawyer?”
- User replies: “I am looking for a lawyer.”
- Chatbot specifies the search query: “What type of lawyer are you looking for?” Lists suggestions of lawyers who provide services at the Opporty marketplace.
- User selects one of the suggestions
- Chatbot learns the details and asks what the user needs: 1) submit a request; 2) post an offer; 3) list a question to Opporty’s Q&A platform
- User chooses one of the suggestions
- Chatbot asks for the user’s email address to create an account, and sends the created offer/request/question to the user’s email.
Let’s have a look at the process in detail.
If a user needs a lawyer, the chatbot will look through companies in the law industry. Unlike generative bots that can create answers to a user’s question on their own, Opporty’s chatbots will provide only pre-saved answers. On the one hand, this makes Opporty chatbots less functional. On the other hand, it reduces the amount of errors chatbots can potentially make, as AI cannot understand questions as humans would.
Opporty chatbots will utilize Opporty’s knowledge base, which greatly increases the number of pre-saved answers to user questions. The user just needs to answer chatbot questions and pick suggestions to let it collect the required details.
Once all information is collected, the chatbot will automatically create a request or offer. This is convenient, since users will interact with a bot as if they were discussing details of their cooperation with an industry expert. The bot will have access to the knowledge base created by Opporty’s community, and it will answer any question that lie within its domain.
Additionally, Opporty plans to implement a voice recognition engine. It will provide even more natural interactions, where users can vocally ask for the information they need. Opporty is always striving to improve the quality of services, and to provide new ways of interaction between services and users. Use of AI and chatbots will present important milestones in Opporty’s development.
The demand for AI technologies will continue to grow among users. Users prefer to ask someone about an issue they need to solve, rather than having to search for solutions using search engines. A chatbot with access to the knowledge base will provide assistance as though it were an industry expert who knows all the answers. Users appreciate communicating with a real person rather than using search engines. AI will provide better experiences for Opporty users, making it easier to create responses and offers. The day Opporty implements chatbots will mark the beginning of a true revolution in the use of the modern technologies to improve interfaces.