ELIZA might seem like a name of a human, but according to wikipedia, it was one of the early chatbots developed by German scientist Joseph Weizenbaum. ElIza's ability to pass the test of intelligence (known today as turing test) made her so popular that it could mimick human conversations and fooled people into believing that she was human. Of course after Eliza, there has been other chatbots which are getting bolder in attitude.
Nowadays, bots are on the increase that they form an integral part in today's businesses and social media platforms. The core idea behind a bot is to work almost 99% of the time and make your work seem less complicated. Bots are programmed in such a way that they are supposed to offer solutions to users. From answering customer's queries, to posting on social medias, the duties of bots seem endless. Even though bots are quite appealing to thousands of businesses,many are prone to failing in their duties and the resultant effect could be disastrous.
This poises the question: How useful are bots to humans?
Are bots the best option in today's world?
Intelligent bots?
Bots are made to become what they are when its programmers walk them through a process to enable them carry out some basic functions. This is achieved through language processing, machine learning and all what not. In other words, intelligence are infused into bots in order to make them communicate and act like humans.
Even though bots are also deemed to get better with time, the intelligence of a bot can be determined by certain factors which includes how swift it responds to users and offers solutions. But regardless of these factors, bots are not always reliable and there have been reported cases of bots not meeting up to expectations and were subsequently pulled out of a project.
Facebook, the biggest social media platform encountered an embarrassing situation a while back when two supposedly smart bots failed in their experiment. Recently, a twitter bot which was supposed to post useful comments and relevant tweets suddenly went rogue by posting some not so pleasant comments. By the time the blunder was discovered, the damage had already been done.
Bots generally follow a pattern and are not usually smart enough to understand certain conversations in most situations. They have a way of responding to what they are privy to (more or less) and are not able to hold an intelligent conversation or try to understand your words.
A few days back, I visited a website and wanted to know the requirements for the site registration. The bot responded with a " Input not understood" response. I had to twist the question and in the end, I got a little frustrated and had to call a phone line.
Recently, I was piqued when during a conversation with a bot, after being made to repeat the same line over again, I was ordered to carry out a task with immediate effect or else..... I felt kind of slighted to be treated in that manner, but then I thought a bot is a bot right and one should expect anything from them since they are supposed to act like humans.
Are bots the best options in today's world?
Bots are known to perform multitude of tasks for businesses and are viewed as a welcome relief to business owners. But when a bot is faced with a lot of pressure to carry out multitude of task almost at the same time, the resultant effect cannot be overemphasized and it could lead to quantity and not quality delivery. This could have a catastrophic effect on such businesses and many of them could end up losing clients at the end of the day.
There have been cases of bots seeking for the same information in a roll and this can only be as a result of poor programming and lack of adequate training. Some bots even go as far as experiencing memory loss and offers solutions which are not in tune to the problem at hand.
Businesses strive on consumer satisfaction, but when a consumer loses that thrill to continue patronizing a brand, then a business may become jeopardized. Hence, it is important that if a business owner seek to use a bot, then it should invest in quality bots that is capable of delivering its best.
And the prospective employees?
Bots seem to have taken over the job functions that are supposed to be performed by humans. When your customer service representative is a bot, then invariably, there may be no vacancy for a human customer representative.
Nowadays, most businesses have completely replaced certain functions which were hitherto performed by humans for the services of bots. This is because, these bots work at a much faster rate than a normal human would and these businesses will have to first look out for themselves before they consider prospective employees.
Even though bots are a welcome development to business owners, there are people who are ready to fight tooth and nail to see the end of the emergence of these bots because these bots are a threat to their skills. In the end, the use of bots boils down to self interest and what may be good for the goose, may turn out to be bad for the gander.
Can bots fare better?
Before a new bot is launched, it is best to map out an analysis on what you want the bot to achieve and how you want it achieved. Try to analyze your goals, and program your bot to meet these goals.Investing time and money becomes a fundamental factor to making a bot attain a certain level of success. Bear in mind that a bot is as intelligent as what you shape it to be.
Furthermore, carving a character for these bots becomes very important as you would want a bot to develop a consistent behavioral style and stick to it. You should keep in mind that bots are meant to deal with humans and programming a conversational bot which is capable of attending to the needs of users more than 95% of the time is the way to go. After you must have test run your bot and find it usable, it is now time to launch it into the market and strive to make it the best that it can be.