I was an undercover bot for 2 months
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I was an undercover bot for 2 months
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#2I guess something that wechat does is more appropriate for the time being to use in business products... If at all.
http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/04/20/bots-wont-replace-apps....
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#3I can't help feeling there's a "walking before you run" thing here. Unsurprisingly, no, you couldn't make something to do this yet. Because we haven't yet built anything that passes the Turing test.
But the fact that we can't yet do that doesn't mean that bots are going to be useless. That'd be like looking at the first ocean-going freight vessels and saying "well, it can't move 300,000 tonnes of freight, so it's useless), or the Wright Flyer and saying that because it can't cross the Atlantic, it's a bit rubbish. (I'm aware this is close to straw manning, but bare with me...)
Sure, early proofs of concept are often both limited in scope and fairly dire. But that doesn't mean there's no potential utility in them and what they do. I suspect bots are similar. Initial, narrow use-case versions will be very useful at providing value in specific circumstances, and eventually they'll become more general in nature. But decrying them at this stage seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#4Would have loved to see some data on what requests were easily handled by the bot and/or what questions could truly be answered by a fully automated bot.
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#5I guess something that wechat does is more appropriate for the time being to use in business products... If at all. http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/04/20/bots-wont-replace-apps....
Previous discussion about this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11557166
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#6Seems like we haven't progressed much beyond Clippy, the old MS Office "bot" from 1997. So perhaps we shouldn't be holding our breath. (Though AlphaGo just came out of nowhere so....)
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#7I realize this is not related to the actual article, but having looked at their website (http://www.workgroup.im/) this really struck me.
Does anyone else find it a little bit gross when companies take stock photographs, give them a name and write stories about how they use the product? It's clearly meant to work as a social proof and to look almost like an endorsement from a peer.
It's just another warmer, fuzzier dark pattern in my opinion.
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#8I realize this is not related to the actual article, but having looked at their website ( http://www.workgroup.im/ ) this really struck me. Does anyone else find it a little bit gross when companies take stock photographs, give them a name and write stories about how they use the product? It's clearly meant to work as a social proof and to look almost like an endorsement from a peer. It's just another warmer, fuzzier…
Yeah, the way they are doing it with stock photos and made up personalities is a bit off-putting. I definitely prefer when they make it obvious they are describing use case scenarios by using names like "Freelancer Fred" and "Associate Annie".
It kind of makes you wonder if this whole article is just PR/advertising to say "look at us! no bots! personal touch!"
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#9Can a bot be made which understands emotions, sarcasm, etc.? Can something be made which does more than just parse commands and gives out predefined replies? If so, how far away are we from this?
Re: I was an undercover bot for 2 months
#10I realize this is not related to the actual article, but having looked at their website ( http://www.workgroup.im/ ) this really struck me. Does anyone else find it a little bit gross when companies take stock photographs, give them a name and write stories about how they use the product? It's clearly meant to work as a social proof and to look almost like an endorsement from a peer. It's just another warmer, fuzzier…
Totally agree - if I didn't look specifically for what you're mentioning, I would have certainly taken it as real people giving endorsements and scrolled on.