6 ms·

The new breed of chatbot talks more like a human, but that is not always good

60 points by IntronExon 9y ago

oculusthrift 9y ago
Someone needs to tell the author that Microsoft isn’t headquartered in Silicon Valley.
- dang 9y ago
  "Silicon Valley" has unfortunately become clickbait. We replaced the title with a representative sentence from the article.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Microsoft is still in grunge-town?
- cooper12 9y ago
  It's case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy. Silicon Valley is no longer just a physical place, but also represents the tech industry itself in popular imagination. Also, while the article is centered on Microsoft, I think the title is meant to be general, as shown by this passage: > The project represents a much wider effort to build a new breed of computing system that is truly conversational. At companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Salesforce as well as Microsoft...
  - kurthr 9y ago
    I was going to just brush this off as silly, but then thought of all the NewYork things that you see around (NY Bagels, NY Fashion, etc) and realize they suffer at least as much... so I can almost forgive the NYT.
Harrisonbans 9y ago
Well, I think chatbots are good for marketers and online sales companies.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  I think it is junk technology for consumers/anyone that has to interact with them
  - bitL 9y ago
    Paradoxically it's the future of customer support and what we are observing is an early stage. A few tweaks and semantic advances in deep learning here and there, and a regular person would be happy to interact with them for stuff like getting more info about their order, specs and availability of the product etc.
    - AznHisoka 9y ago
      Why can’t these things be shown through the UI?
      - dec0dedab0de 9y ago
        if done correctly it could just be a much faster way to get to something, versus digging through layers of menus, or trying to guess the right search terms.
        nradov 9y ago
        A chatbot couldn't possibly be faster unless the website design is really horrible. Checking order status is a common use case for most online retailers and usually just 2 clicks away from the home page.
    - cimmanom 9y ago
      The problem is when you have a question slightly more complex than that and no access to a real human being. I recently enjoyed that situation with a medical benefit provider's phone menus, and it was infuriating. (Still haven't figured out how to get a human being on the phone and am waiting, 2 weeks later, for an answer to an email.)
truculation 9y ago
Heh. We're developing code that can impersonate the average human better than the average human. Well that about wraps it up for the Turing Test.
userbinator 9y ago
"Let's stupidify a machine that can easily give you exact answers with all the impreciseness and ambiguity of human language." That basically sums up what I think of these things. They're a horrible substitute for existing UI, and even worse for things that really require a real human.
- gm-conspiracy 9y ago
  I also think that current gen. of UI (touchscreens flat-design) has become such a degraded experience that these alternatives become more appealing.
  - vladbarash 9y ago
    Could you please elaborate on the degraded experience?
    - leetcrew 9y ago
      idk OP's position, but the lack of tactile feedback is probably the biggest flaw of touchscreen UIs. it's really nice to be able to give input to a device without actually looking at it. it's a mild to moderate inconvenience on a phone, since you are looking at the screen most of the time you are using it and swype style keyboards remove most of the pain of typing on a virtual keyboard. it does make for a compromised music player, though, unless you can remap the hardware buttons to control media playback. on the other hand, i find the touch UI trend in cars absolutely horrible. it's bad enough that you have to take your eyes off the road to read the center screen, but actually pressing a virtual button requires even more concentration to track where your finger is wrt the button and stabilize it against the motion of the vehicle.
- abakker 9y ago
  I think in practice, these are meant to replace training for people. I.e. it works along side the chat representative in a big call center/customer service role and provides a first line of defense and just says RTFM. It is basically a boring re-implementation of search, except that for many big companies it has the side effect of causing them to work harder to make their search actually work well. Even if the UI ends up being poor or temporary, the investments in better knowledge management and search ranking internally ends up being a net benefit. Source: have seen behind the scenes at some larger outsourcers supporting these kinds of chatbots for customer service bots.

60 points by IntronExon 9y ago

oculusthrift 9y ago

Someone needs to tell the author that Microsoft isn’t headquartered in Silicon Valley.

dang 9y ago
"Silicon Valley" has unfortunately become clickbait. We replaced the title with a representative sentence from the article.
Pica_soO 9y ago
Microsoft is still in grunge-town?
cooper12 9y ago
It's case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy. Silicon Valley is no longer just a physical place, but also represents the tech industry itself in popular imagination. Also, while the article is centered on Microsoft, I think the title is meant to be general, as shown by this passage: > The project represents a much wider effort to build a new breed of computing system that is truly conversational. At companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Salesforce as well as Microsoft...
- kurthr 9y ago
  I was going to just brush this off as silly, but then thought of all the NewYork things that you see around (NY Bagels, NY Fashion, etc) and realize they suffer at least as much... so I can almost forgive the NYT.

Harrisonbans 9y ago

Well, I think chatbots are good for marketers and online sales companies.

paulie_a 9y ago
I think it is junk technology for consumers/anyone that has to interact with them
- bitL 9y ago
  Paradoxically it's the future of customer support and what we are observing is an early stage. A few tweaks and semantic advances in deep learning here and there, and a regular person would be happy to interact with them for stuff like getting more info about their order, specs and availability of the product etc.
  - AznHisoka 9y ago
    Why can’t these things be shown through the UI?
    - dec0dedab0de 9y ago
      if done correctly it could just be a much faster way to get to something, versus digging through layers of menus, or trying to guess the right search terms.
      - nradov 9y ago
        A chatbot couldn't possibly be faster unless the website design is really horrible. Checking order status is a common use case for most online retailers and usually just 2 clicks away from the home page.
  - cimmanom 9y ago
    The problem is when you have a question slightly more complex than that and no access to a real human being. I recently enjoyed that situation with a medical benefit provider's phone menus, and it was infuriating. (Still haven't figured out how to get a human being on the phone and am waiting, 2 weeks later, for an answer to an email.)

truculation 9y ago

Heh. We're developing code that can impersonate the average human better than the average human. Well that about wraps it up for the Turing Test.

userbinator 9y ago

"Let's stupidify a machine that can easily give you exact answers with all the impreciseness and ambiguity of human language." That basically sums up what I think of these things. They're a horrible substitute for existing UI, and even worse for things that really require a real human.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago
I also think that current gen. of UI (touchscreens flat-design) has become such a degraded experience that these alternatives become more appealing.
- vladbarash 9y ago
  Could you please elaborate on the degraded experience?
  - leetcrew 9y ago
    idk OP's position, but the lack of tactile feedback is probably the biggest flaw of touchscreen UIs. it's really nice to be able to give input to a device without actually looking at it. it's a mild to moderate inconvenience on a phone, since you are looking at the screen most of the time you are using it and swype style keyboards remove most of the pain of typing on a virtual keyboard. it does make for a compromised music player, though, unless you can remap the hardware buttons to control media playback. on the other hand, i find the touch UI trend in cars absolutely horrible. it's bad enough that you have to take your eyes off the road to read the center screen, but actually pressing a virtual button requires even more concentration to track where your finger is wrt the button and stabilize it against the motion of the vehicle.
abakker 9y ago
I think in practice, these are meant to replace training for people. I.e. it works along side the chat representative in a big call center/customer service role and provides a first line of defense and just says RTFM. It is basically a boring re-implementation of search, except that for many big companies it has the side effect of causing them to work harder to make their search actually work well. Even if the UI ends up being poor or temporary, the investments in better knowledge management and search ranking internally ends up being a net benefit. Source: have seen behind the scenes at some larger outsourcers supporting these kinds of chatbots for customer service bots.