The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots • Hacker News Board

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#51

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 11:55 AM UTC

burtmacklin wrote: post #50

dunkelheit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it ironic that chatbots are touted as a more natural, conversational interface when they are basically CLIs? Back in the day GUI adoption over CLI was driven by conviction that desktop, drag and drop and point and click are more natural metaphors.

As usual, what's old is new again. Makes sense given that user interfaces and "styles" of software are just like styles in anything else (ie: fashion) -- they come and go and come back again. Fast forward another 3 - 7 years and users will be wondering at the marvels of a chatbot where one can simply click on the picture of the action they'd like it to perform! Perhaps entire menus of actions will be presented, in ho…

Fast forward another 3 - 7 years and users will be wondering at the marvels of a chatbot where one can simply click on the picture of the action they'd like it to perform!

You mean like the current functionality of WeChat, Telegram, Kik and FacebookM?

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#52

Post by throwawayxai » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

One of the reasons I left x.ai was that I believed the leadership was deliberately misleading users, investors, and employees with false advertising and extremely inflated and skewed metrics. I am sure that the company is making great progress, because it is full of very intelligent people tackling an interesting problem. But the way they treated employees, customers and investors was unacceptable to me.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#53

Post by lowglow » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #45

lowglow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely disingenuous and is riding on the AI hype train. I've never once ran into a chat "bot" that wasn't human. It's ridiculous, completely misleading, and frankly waters down any real startups working towards that future.

> I've never once ran into a chat "bot" that wasn't human. Well that's absurd. Siri? Eliza? There are multitudes of actual chat bots out there. They usually good to fool a good lot of the general population. But the tapestry unravels with just a little bit of effort if you know what to ask.

I was specifically thinking of X.ai and FB's M when I wrote that. I've met plenty of dumb bots.

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#54

Post by tdaltonc » Wed, Apr 20, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

exolymph wrote: post #38

yummyfajitas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've correctly identified the problem x.ai really solves: I want a secretary but I'm not that important. The ridiculous thing is that doodle.com already solved this problem in a much less sexy way - just click the time you want. Problem solved in 10 seconds (vs minutes with this dumb bot).

This is my beef with chatbots in general -- it is the rare conversational interface that has any advantage over a GUI beyond its novelty.

I agree completely, but I can't wrap my head around why chat is so big in China despite this. Any ideas?

Re: The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

#55

Post by exolymph » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 6:18 AM UTC

tdaltonc wrote: post #54

exolymph wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my beef with chatbots in general -- it is the rare conversational interface that has any advantage over a GUI beyond its novelty.

I agree completely, but I can't wrap my head around why chat is so big in China despite this. Any ideas?

This blog post by a developer at WeChat gets into how they're not really chatbots per se: http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/04/20/bots-wont-replace-apps....