According to recent reports from overseas media, chatbots are becoming increasingly common in Silicon Valley. With advancements in artificial intelligence, these conversational assistants are now a tangible reality. They come in various forms and are flourishing across different platforms. Social media giants like Facebook have significantly enhanced their chatbots within messaging apps like Messenger. In a way, it was the advent of voice-activated chatbots that paved the way for personal assistants like Siri, which eventually led to devices like Amazon Echo finding their way into our homes. All of this suggests that chatbots are slowly seeping into our everyday lives.
However, despite these developments, chatbots have yet to achieve widespread adoption. The underlying technologies driving chatbots, along with those tied to machine learning and artificial intelligence, still need significant improvements before they can become a standard user interface. Google, for instance, has recognized this and recently launched the Human+Artificial Intelligence Research Project. The goal? To foster the growth of a more "human-centered" AI system. Computers need to become better at comprehending human language, emotions, and intentions. Major companies are already dipping their toes into chatbot experimentation to ensure they don't fall behind. But for AI to reach its full potential, it must evolve in several key areas—some of which are quite apparent, like enhancing speech recognition, while others are more subtle, like enabling chatbots to clearly communicate the services they offer.
For chatbots to gain real traction among users, they'll need to make substantial progress in these five critical areas.
1. Enhanced Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing
Think back to the early days of the internet when webpages were filled with flashy neon lights and clickable blue links. Today's chatbots are somewhat akin to those early internet pages. For chatbots to catch on, people need to be able to ask questions and place orders in natural language. Whether it’s via voice or text, users shouldn’t be expected to memorize a special vocabulary just to interact with a bot. If you tell Alexa to play a song, she might not get it at first, which is understandable since frequent users tend to develop a rapport with her. But if a user tries a new chatbot for buying movie tickets and fails, they’ll likely move on to another platform.
Natural language processing is crucial, but it's challenging to handle dialects, idioms, and slang effectively. Over time, speech recognition technology can improve by learning how people naturally speak. Yet, if you call a business once a year, it’s tough for chatbots to pick up on your unique manner of speaking. We're still in the early stages of human-computer interaction.
All of this impacts the perception of a brand. Chatbots can't just mimic existing automated voice systems. Given that social media amplifies negative feedback, companies need to get this right. Ideally, everything we do online and through mobile apps should be replicable in natural language, but we’re not there yet.
2. Understanding Your Audience
One of the most pressing challenges for AI is understanding context. Just as marketers and sales teams take a holistic view of customers, chatbots need to gather and share more information about the people they interact with: who they are, how they got where they are, what they're looking for, and what they've done. This background data allows chatbots to consistently meet users' needs.
Take AdmitHub, for example. Last year, the company partnered with Georgia State University to deploy a chatbot for handling new student enrollments and placements. Initially, the chatbot addressed issues like admissions, scholarships, and student housing, dramatically boosting enrollment efficiency. The university hopes the chatbot will continue to deepen its understanding of each student’s academic and financial circumstances over time. By graduation, these robots could know everything about the students they’ve served.
3. Inter-Bot Communication
The internet is a magical interconnected space. Search for a product on Google, and you'll soon be contacted by merchants selling it. Chatbots need similar capabilities. They should be able to seamlessly connect users with relevant services. If I type "I want a burger" in Facebook Messenger, the bot should be able to pass this information to other chatbots so they can fulfill my order accordingly. On the web, this happens through REST APIs. In the chatbot world, there are numerous APIs vying for attention. Sophisticated chat APIs are essential for enabling interoperability between bots.
4. Highlighting Services Offered
When interacting with an app or webpage, it’s easy to see what services are available through links and visual cues. Chatbots lack this visual language. When you speak to a chatbot, it's like having a conversation with your eyes closed—you have to guess what it can do. Microsoft and Amazon have been working hard to educate users about features like Cortana and Echo, but many still struggle to understand what a chatbot can do. During initial interactions, people should know whether a bot can help them book seats or only sell tickets, reschedule appointments, or order food according to their preferences. Since chatbots lack visual prompts, they need innovative ways to communicate their capabilities.
5. Reading Human Emotions
If chatbots could interpret human facial expressions or tone changes to detect emotional shifts, they would undoubtedly deliver superior service. Currently, chatbots handle basic customer service tasks, but if a user is frustrated or annoyed, the bot might need to hand off the conversation to a human agent. There are already services, such as counseling or therapy, that rely entirely on user interaction. Advances in AI and computer vision will make this possible, but we’re still years away from achieving this level of sophistication.
Chatbots hold immense potential, both professionally and personally. To become mainstream, we need to address these challenges. Once resolved, they’ll offer unparalleled convenience and an exceptional user experience.
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