8 ms·

Ask HN: What kind of chatbot do you need?

45 points by alexander-g 10y ago

What chatbot would you like to have? This could be a chatbot for Messenger, Telegram or Slack. Tiny and specific bots are okay.

Eridrus 10y ago
A JIRA bot so that I never have to use it's web UI.
- jclulow 10y ago
  Not a bot, per se, but perhaps you would like: https://github.com/trentm/jirash https://github.com/trentm/jirash
  - kevinschumacher 10y ago
    this looks amazing but doesn't support recent versions of JIRA unfortunately
daveloyall 10y ago
An expert system IRC bot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Feature: When prompted, it should be able to describe (in machine readable format: JSON, S-expressions, whatever) its knowledge base (or some specified subset of it) via message. This will enable other bots like it to learn from it.
  - amirouche 10y ago
    why a bot that can talk and speak would use another format to communicate even with other bots?
    - daveloyall 10y ago
      Speaking English is not a requirement. I mean, it should use some english words, sure... The words will come from the KB though.
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Feature: it should be open source and it should be strong copyleft.
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Feature: it should be able to verify that a given message is digitally signed (PKI).
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Feature: It should be possible to tag some facts as private, that is, tied to some public key. It should not transmit such facts in the clear; it should encrypt them for that public key. (Basically, I'd like to be able to trust it with facts that I do not want to share publicly.)
MrMid 10y ago
I'd use one that replied facebook messages for me, kind of autoreply.
- pseudointellect 10y ago
  I feel bad for your "friends."
- teddyh 10y ago
  That could have unforseen consequences: http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=612 http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=612 http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=613 http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=613
myroon5 10y ago
I would love a messenger bot that messaged me when it was going to rain.
- felipesabino 10y ago
  You can use IFTTT for that https://ifttt.com/recipes/188-get-an-email-if-there-will-be-rain-in-your-area-tomorrow https://ifttt.com/recipes/188-get-an-email-if-there-will-be-...
- alexander-g 10y ago
  As far as I remember Poncho for Messenger reminds about that https://chatbottle.co/bots/poncho-the-weathercat https://chatbottle.co/bots/poncho-the-weathercat
mirekrusin 10y ago
I'd like one which tells me which stock to buy/sell to make money.
0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
The kind that would make a good president.
- xori 10y ago
  The bar is low.
serg_chernata 10y ago
Hmm, something to send me one article according to my preset interests once a day. From sources I suggest but also let it search the web and places I don't frequent. Let me ask for more. Let me save.
317070 10y ago
A bot warning me when the boss has logged out from Slack (and is therefore likely to leave the office soon). Bonus points if it could warn me x minutes after he left, so I can start packing immediately, rather than having to pretend I'm working hard those x minutes.
- thebrettd 10y ago
  Sounds like what you really need is engaging work in a nice environment. ;)
  - lj3 10y ago
    Correction: he needs engaging work in a nice environment for a company that's currently hiring. I like to call those companies 'the real tech unicorns'.
- jaredsohn 10y ago
  I don't think this would work since you need to make public the fact that you have such a bot. (I had a different idea for a bot but decided not to implement it for this reason; if this isn't a legit reason, I'd love to hear suggestions.)
- alexander-g 10y ago
  Haha, already heard such idea a couple of times
gelisam 10y ago
Not sure what the context of the question is, are you offering services to build custom chatbots? The startup I work for, keatext.ai, happens to need one. We analyse free-form comments and uses NLP to extract commonly-mentioned problems. Currently users need to log into the app and explore their data in order to discover problems, but it would be much more convenient if we could send the problem descriptions to a slack channel as our AI discovers them. It would be even more convenient if the users could then ask our bot for more details about a problem, such as giving example comments illustrating the problem or listing the customers who are affected. We have the data required to answer those questions, but even though our AI extracts information from free-form text, it's not the kind of AI who can answer free-form questions, so we might need help with that.
- patrickgordon 10y ago
  Cool startup and cool idea on the bot. Sent the link to your startup to a few people I know.
sobinator 10y ago
A bot to keep me engaged outside of work. I need to be kept on task with small stuff around the home, chores, maintenance, finances, etc. Also when I've completed those tasks, I need stuff to do/read when I'm bored. What should I do with my weekend? What should I read on my ride home from work? Lists are fine but what I'm really looking for is a bot.
- bl4ckcontact 10y ago
  I like this idea. As a father with little kids, I find myself regularly sidetracked. A bot that reminds me of pending tasks would be great. Bonus points if that bot can also let me know of relevant, local community events that are coming up.
shekkizh 10y ago
A bot that gives me gist of unread messages so that I don't have to browse through all the messages and read selectively the messages I want.
- amirouche 10y ago
  a summarizer. This is a field of NLP/NLU. Do you prefer to extract key phrases or a realy summary that extract important notions and rephrase it. Take a look a sumy for an overview.
  - shekkizh 10y ago
    I believe "extract notions and summarizing" is what will be more useful. Also I believe achieving this would give us much better search inside chats. This should be totally possible with the current state of NLP we have. Just lazy to do it myself ;)
- arrmn 10y ago
  I'm actually working on something simmiliar with a friend of mine, you send us a link of an article you don't want to read because it's to long and we summarize it for you in 3 sentences.
kzisme 10y ago
> Messenger, Telegram or Slack Failed to mention IRC? :( what gives hah
- caub 10y ago
  msn messenger
clishem 10y ago
One for lifelogging.
arthpalme 10y ago
I'd like one that gives relationship advice ;)
- meeper16 10y ago
  They're getting closer to doing this but not quite like a human http://sumve.com/ai-chatbots/relationships/ai.html http://sumve.com/ai-chatbots/relationships/ai.html
c3RlcGhlbnI_ 10y ago
Mostly just one for every app on my phone that is just wasting space. However here are the first few ideas that come to mind. Because it is a chatbot for most of these things you can offer an app for just the local business, it doesn't matter if I have to use different chatbot in a different city. - Pay parking (payment, expiry notification) - event tickets (purchase, rsvp, ticket image) - catching pokemon (just catch whatever and message me a snazzy report full of pokemon names every once in a while) - ordering food - managing bills (let me know when phone/electrical/heat bill comes in, check usage so far, coordinate payment between all the people in the conversation)
houssr 10y ago
One that allows voting with in the team/channel. Bonus points if it can be Quick and Easy Voting for Normal People (shout out to CPG Grey!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orybDrUj4vA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orybDrUj4vA
sushaantmujoo 10y ago
It should be a utility driven approach. For tasks & information which are required for a short duration & that’s it and value for which is only for that moment should be implemented as bots. Parking, ordering are all short, instantaneous tasks which are only of value there & then. Anything that meets this criteria can fit the bill of being a chatbot https://medium.com/@sushaantmujoo/messages-messages-everywhere-but-not-always-of-use-to-me-7796fd93c270#.pzk3ati3q https://medium.com/@sushaantmujoo/messages-messages-everywhe...
swozey 10y ago
I'd like a daily aggregate of; Git changelogs/releases News with #keyword Messages where my name was tagged @swozey and a few lines before/after Maybe my calendar events for the day
viach 10y ago
I believe you've seen "Her" movie. Bots are 30 or so years old. There is no useful bot, except it has General AI, imo.
swagv 10y ago
One that knows when to STFU
ruler88 10y ago
Keep track of my mental wellness and remind me to chill out
Raed667 10y ago
I'd get a bot to replace the Android application of local bus times. It is basically a SOAP api so it shouldn't be that hard
- alain34 10y ago
  @cc_bot on telegram provides bus times. Only for London, UK.
nico_d 10y ago
Any interest for a bot helping devops with building and managing cloud infra ? I'm tired about reading aws website to know all offers and prices, and check tiens of dashboard to know status of my infra I'm thinking about building that bot and i would like to know if there's any interest for others
piceas 10y ago
I want a chatbot that can allow me to practice second language dialogues for a small set of short daily life interactions. I want to practice short simple A2/B1 level dialogue describing my family, dwelling, local attractions, what I did on the weekend etc. Duolingo (en->de at least) is a great start but I find that it doesn’t help me with on demand dialogue style generation which I need for interacting with natives speakers. Ideally it would also correct my grammar or help with sentence construction.
calgoo 10y ago
We need personal bots that deal with all other future bots for us. I dont want to talk to the bot in dominos pizza, and the bot for facebook, and the bot for google etc. I want my own personal bot, running on a server at home or at least in a location where I have a certain amount of control and access to it. It can be a framework of small bots with supervisors or similar, i dont care. I just dont want to sit and learn how to speak with each AI engine for everything I do. I also want to keep all my information private, not in the hands of 1 of the big corporations. Instead my bot or my family's bot should adapt and learn to speak to us, not the general public. It can answer requests from authorized extended family members such as photos or videos, as well as connecting video and audio feeds to the device I'm closest to at the moment. I can go on for a while, but it boils down to moving away from centralized companies and social networks and incorporating those systems as feeds into my own system that manages all my information flows.

45 points by alexander-g 10y ago

What chatbot would you like to have? This could be a chatbot for Messenger, Telegram or Slack. Tiny and specific bots are okay.

Eridrus 10y ago

A JIRA bot so that I never have to use it's web UI.

jclulow 10y ago
Not a bot, per se, but perhaps you would like: https://github.com/trentm/jirash https://github.com/trentm/jirash
- kevinschumacher 10y ago
  this looks amazing but doesn't support recent versions of JIRA unfortunately

daveloyall 10y ago

An expert system IRC bot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

daveloyall 10y ago
Feature: When prompted, it should be able to describe (in machine readable format: JSON, S-expressions, whatever) its knowledge base (or some specified subset of it) via message. This will enable other bots like it to learn from it.
- amirouche 10y ago
  why a bot that can talk and speak would use another format to communicate even with other bots?
  - daveloyall 10y ago
    Speaking English is not a requirement. I mean, it should use some english words, sure... The words will come from the KB though.
daveloyall 10y ago
Feature: it should be open source and it should be strong copyleft.
daveloyall 10y ago
Feature: it should be able to verify that a given message is digitally signed (PKI).
daveloyall 10y ago
Feature: It should be possible to tag some facts as private, that is, tied to some public key. It should not transmit such facts in the clear; it should encrypt them for that public key. (Basically, I'd like to be able to trust it with facts that I do not want to share publicly.)

MrMid 10y ago

I'd use one that replied facebook messages for me, kind of autoreply.

pseudointellect 10y ago
I feel bad for your "friends."
teddyh 10y ago
That could have unforseen consequences: http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=612 http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=612 http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=613 http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=613

myroon5 10y ago

I would love a messenger bot that messaged me when it was going to rain.

felipesabino 10y ago
You can use IFTTT for that https://ifttt.com/recipes/188-get-an-email-if-there-will-be-rain-in-your-area-tomorrow https://ifttt.com/recipes/188-get-an-email-if-there-will-be-...
alexander-g 10y ago
As far as I remember Poncho for Messenger reminds about that https://chatbottle.co/bots/poncho-the-weathercat https://chatbottle.co/bots/poncho-the-weathercat

mirekrusin 10y ago

I'd like one which tells me which stock to buy/sell to make money.

0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago

The kind that would make a good president.

xori 10y ago
The bar is low.

serg_chernata 10y ago

Hmm, something to send me one article according to my preset interests once a day. From sources I suggest but also let it search the web and places I don't frequent. Let me ask for more. Let me save.

317070 10y ago

A bot warning me when the boss has logged out from Slack (and is therefore likely to leave the office soon). Bonus points if it could warn me x minutes after he left, so I can start packing immediately, rather than having to pretend I'm working hard those x minutes.

thebrettd 10y ago
Sounds like what you really need is engaging work in a nice environment. ;)
- lj3 10y ago
  Correction: he needs engaging work in a nice environment for a company that's currently hiring. I like to call those companies 'the real tech unicorns'.
jaredsohn 10y ago
I don't think this would work since you need to make public the fact that you have such a bot. (I had a different idea for a bot but decided not to implement it for this reason; if this isn't a legit reason, I'd love to hear suggestions.)
alexander-g 10y ago
Haha, already heard such idea a couple of times

gelisam 10y ago

Not sure what the context of the question is, are you offering services to build custom chatbots? The startup I work for, keatext.ai, happens to need one. We analyse free-form comments and uses NLP to extract commonly-mentioned problems. Currently users need to log into the app and explore their data in order to discover problems, but it would be much more convenient if we could send the problem descriptions to a slack channel as our AI discovers them. It would be even more convenient if the users could then ask our bot for more details about a problem, such as giving example comments illustrating the problem or listing the customers who are affected. We have the data required to answer those questions, but even though our AI extracts information from free-form text, it's not the kind of AI who can answer free-form questions, so we might need help with that.

patrickgordon 10y ago
Cool startup and cool idea on the bot. Sent the link to your startup to a few people I know.

sobinator 10y ago

A bot to keep me engaged outside of work. I need to be kept on task with small stuff around the home, chores, maintenance, finances, etc. Also when I've completed those tasks, I need stuff to do/read when I'm bored. What should I do with my weekend? What should I read on my ride home from work? Lists are fine but what I'm really looking for is a bot.

bl4ckcontact 10y ago
I like this idea. As a father with little kids, I find myself regularly sidetracked. A bot that reminds me of pending tasks would be great. Bonus points if that bot can also let me know of relevant, local community events that are coming up.

shekkizh 10y ago

A bot that gives me gist of unread messages so that I don't have to browse through all the messages and read selectively the messages I want.

amirouche 10y ago
a summarizer. This is a field of NLP/NLU. Do you prefer to extract key phrases or a realy summary that extract important notions and rephrase it. Take a look a sumy for an overview.
- shekkizh 10y ago
  I believe "extract notions and summarizing" is what will be more useful. Also I believe achieving this would give us much better search inside chats. This should be totally possible with the current state of NLP we have. Just lazy to do it myself ;)
arrmn 10y ago
I'm actually working on something simmiliar with a friend of mine, you send us a link of an article you don't want to read because it's to long and we summarize it for you in 3 sentences.

kzisme 10y ago

> Messenger, Telegram or Slack Failed to mention IRC? :( what gives hah

caub 10y ago
msn messenger

clishem 10y ago

One for lifelogging.

arthpalme 10y ago

I'd like one that gives relationship advice ;)

meeper16 10y ago
They're getting closer to doing this but not quite like a human http://sumve.com/ai-chatbots/relationships/ai.html http://sumve.com/ai-chatbots/relationships/ai.html

c3RlcGhlbnI_ 10y ago

Mostly just one for every app on my phone that is just wasting space. However here are the first few ideas that come to mind. Because it is a chatbot for most of these things you can offer an app for just the local business, it doesn't matter if I have to use different chatbot in a different city. - Pay parking (payment, expiry notification) - event tickets (purchase, rsvp, ticket image) - catching pokemon (just catch whatever and message me a snazzy report full of pokemon names every once in a while) - ordering food - managing bills (let me know when phone/electrical/heat bill comes in, check usage so far, coordinate payment between all the people in the conversation)

houssr 10y ago

One that allows voting with in the team/channel. Bonus points if it can be Quick and Easy Voting for Normal People (shout out to CPG Grey!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orybDrUj4vA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orybDrUj4vA

sushaantmujoo 10y ago

It should be a utility driven approach. For tasks & information which are required for a short duration & that’s it and value for which is only for that moment should be implemented as bots. Parking, ordering are all short, instantaneous tasks which are only of value there & then. Anything that meets this criteria can fit the bill of being a chatbot https://medium.com/@sushaantmujoo/messages-messages-everywhere-but-not-always-of-use-to-me-7796fd93c270#.pzk3ati3q https://medium.com/@sushaantmujoo/messages-messages-everywhe...

swozey 10y ago

I'd like a daily aggregate of; Git changelogs/releases News with #keyword Messages where my name was tagged @swozey and a few lines before/after Maybe my calendar events for the day

viach 10y ago

I believe you've seen "Her" movie. Bots are 30 or so years old. There is no useful bot, except it has General AI, imo.

swagv 10y ago

One that knows when to STFU

ruler88 10y ago

Keep track of my mental wellness and remind me to chill out

Raed667 10y ago

I'd get a bot to replace the Android application of local bus times. It is basically a SOAP api so it shouldn't be that hard

alain34 10y ago
@cc_bot on telegram provides bus times. Only for London, UK.

nico_d 10y ago

Any interest for a bot helping devops with building and managing cloud infra ? I'm tired about reading aws website to know all offers and prices, and check tiens of dashboard to know status of my infra I'm thinking about building that bot and i would like to know if there's any interest for others

piceas 10y ago

I want a chatbot that can allow me to practice second language dialogues for a small set of short daily life interactions. I want to practice short simple A2/B1 level dialogue describing my family, dwelling, local attractions, what I did on the weekend etc. Duolingo (en->de at least) is a great start but I find that it doesn’t help me with on demand dialogue style generation which I need for interacting with natives speakers. Ideally it would also correct my grammar or help with sentence construction.

calgoo 10y ago

We need personal bots that deal with all other future bots for us. I dont want to talk to the bot in dominos pizza, and the bot for facebook, and the bot for google etc. I want my own personal bot, running on a server at home or at least in a location where I have a certain amount of control and access to it. It can be a framework of small bots with supervisors or similar, i dont care. I just dont want to sit and learn how to speak with each AI engine for everything I do. I also want to keep all my information private, not in the hands of 1 of the big corporations. Instead my bot or my family's bot should adapt and learn to speak to us, not the general public. It can answer requests from authorized extended family members such as photos or videos, as well as connecting video and audio feeds to the device I'm closest to at the moment. I can go on for a while, but it boils down to moving away from centralized companies and social networks and incorporating those systems as feeds into my own system that manages all my information flows.