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I think there's a lot of hate in this thread for the bot concept. Yeah, most of these text-based bots are bad and useless. Expecting to chat with a computer ove

I think there's a lot of hate in this thread for the bot concept. Yeah, most of these text-based bots are bad and useless. Expecting to chat with a computer over text and get meaningful results is a big request, and without the best of the best NLP researchers, you're not going to get anywhere. However, I do think there's some truth to this article - the rise of digital assistants in Google Home, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, is, in a sense, the rise of the chat bot. You can text them and they'll do things. You can talk to them and they'll do things. You can even get them to schedule a haircut for you[0], as Google recently demonstrated. I think these bots are semantically identical to what we think of chat bots as doing. If you would've told me 3 or 4 years ago, that people would willingly let a "bot" into their home that listens to everything they say and talks back, I would've been skeptical, to say the least. Now, even my hippie roommate has one of these things. I still don't get it, but to claim that "bots are dead, long live humans" misses the mark about how fast speech to computer/computer to speech tech is evolving. Watch the video and be... amazed: [0]https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google-assistant-makes-phone-call-demo-duplex-io-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google-assistant-... So yeah, the idiot VCs missed the mark - this isn't going to be a consumer revolution, led by a few scrappy start ups, one-man teams, and dreamers. It's a revolution in data collection, human-computer interaction, and AI that's already been taking place behind the scenes at Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon for years, and will continue to as long as they hold the tech world's best AI talent.

ttul 8y ago
Indeed. The bot interface is being produced by the giants because they are the only ones with the budget for it. Just like google was the only firm with the budget to make self driving cars actually work, and will likely dominate that field for years to come as a result. There will be room for startups to put the glue between the bots be everything else, but the core tech for the conversational interface is not going to come from startups.
baldfat 8y ago
It reminds me in the early days of "smart phones" people would say where is the Linux phone OS we keep hearing about. They just didn't understand that Android was Linux based. The Voice Assistance is a vocal chatbot. People were thinking it was going to be text. No one missed anything except the actual product everyone was talking about. I feel like this happens all the time. We get caught into one strict interpenetration and miss the HUGE thing staring at our face, or ears in this instance.
- dozzie 8y ago
  > It reminds me in the early days of "smart phones" people would say where is the Linux phone OS we keep hearing about. They just didn't understand that Android was Linux based. It's actually the people who believe that Android is Linux-based that are mistaken. If you write for Android, you write for Android and nothing more. You can't just run the application on a regular Linux (i.e. the one with libc and X11), and if Google ever rips Linux kernel out of it and replaces with, say, DOS, most of the applications won't even need to be recompiled, because they were using Android's API/ABI.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    That changes nothing about Android being Linux based, though. The word "based" has a definition, and you're trying to change it.
    - dozzie 8y ago
      Then what does it mean "to be based on"? What's its definition, and a one that's well-established and commonly agreed upon, since you're trying to invoke it?
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        "a fundamental principle or groundwork; foundation; basis"[1] [1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/based http://www.dictionary.com/browse/based
        dozzie 8y ago
        And in what way is the Linux kernel the "fundamental principle" or "foundation" of Android? How is it so important that you can rip it out and replace with something totally different without much change to the applications running on top?
        TomMarius 8y ago
nitwit005 8y ago
Articles on the features that get real use seem to suggest that people tend not to use these home assistants much, and if they do, it tends to be for music or turning on the lights: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-most-used-features-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-most-used-feature... Which is to say, they're not getting a whole lot of usage of features you might consider to be chatbot functionality.
- inthewoods 8y ago
  I think there is a huge discoverability problem created by the limitations of these devices. Because we don't believe it can understand anything we say, we instead limit our vocabulary and interactions to what we are confident they will understand. It's the opposite of AI in that this is the machine training us how to communicate with it. So we sit there barking out commands because we are unsure of what it can handle, creating a giant hunt-and-peck problem. This, to me, is likely why Amazon sends me emails saying "What can Alexa do now?"
  - darkmighty 8y ago
    Perhaps the assistants could have more initiative then. Ex: "Hi (...), since you always turn off the heater when you leave, would you like me to schedule to always do it for you?"
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      But there's a big problem in finding the right moment. At many times I'd probably be annoyed.
      - daveguy 8y ago
        This. I had to disable google's "assistant" notifications because it kept pestering me about things I had no interest in. They always seem to have an "I see you're trying to write a letter. Do want some help?" clippyesque feel to them. When I activate a system is probably the only time it's ok to add a guiding interaction (like do you want me to make this default?). I really wish I could tell the voice activated things, "Ok, from now on when I say to play 'rockin beats' I'm talking about my Pandora channel, don't make me say 'play rockin beats on pandora' every time." I do almost the same things every day with Alexa, but it still messes up simple context. For instance: I will never ask for alexa for news while THE ALARM IS GOING OFF. If it "hears" news while the alarm is going off then it heard wrong. I said SNOOZE.
madeofpalk 8y ago
> the rise of digital assistants in Google Home, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, is, in a sense, the rise of the chat bot Actually, I'm still quite bullish on this. Advocates always talk about how 'VUI' (Voice User Interfaces) will be the next big thing but from what I've observed most people - actual users, not financially invested in their success - still remain quite bullish on them, or they only use them to set timers. I don't believe Amazon, Google, or Apple have ever actually released sales figures for their assistants. I believe its because the numbers would look so insignificant compared to everything else.
- Kiro 8y ago
  Do you mean bearish? If not, your comment confuses me.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    Huh, apparently I do. It looks like I've been using that word incorrectly for quite a while. I mean that I'm, put lightly, skeptical of the whole digital voice assistant thing.
    - daveguy 8y ago
      When I first heard the terms bearish and bullish I thought they were confusing and un-intuitive... Until I heard the following explanation: Bulls thrust their horns up. Bears swipe their claws down. Bulls horn up, Bears claw down. After that it was easy to remember and now it's second nature. You're one of today's lucky 10,000! :D https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
      - egypturnash 8y ago
        I can never remember which is which. Thanks for that mnemonic!
      - arkades 8y ago
        Huh. I always just thought of it as bears hibernating / being lethargic. And the other ones the other one.

ttul 8y ago

Indeed. The bot interface is being produced by the giants because they are the only ones with the budget for it. Just like google was the only firm with the budget to make self driving cars actually work, and will likely dominate that field for years to come as a result. There will be room for startups to put the glue between the bots be everything else, but the core tech for the conversational interface is not going to come from startups.

baldfat 8y ago

It reminds me in the early days of "smart phones" people would say where is the Linux phone OS we keep hearing about. They just didn't understand that Android was Linux based. The Voice Assistance is a vocal chatbot. People were thinking it was going to be text. No one missed anything except the actual product everyone was talking about. I feel like this happens all the time. We get caught into one strict interpenetration and miss the HUGE thing staring at our face, or ears in this instance.

dozzie 8y ago
> It reminds me in the early days of "smart phones" people would say where is the Linux phone OS we keep hearing about. They just didn't understand that Android was Linux based. It's actually the people who believe that Android is Linux-based that are mistaken. If you write for Android, you write for Android and nothing more. You can't just run the application on a regular Linux (i.e. the one with libc and X11), and if Google ever rips Linux kernel out of it and replaces with, say, DOS, most of the applications won't even need to be recompiled, because they were using Android's API/ABI.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  That changes nothing about Android being Linux based, though. The word "based" has a definition, and you're trying to change it.
  - dozzie 8y ago
    Then what does it mean "to be based on"? What's its definition, and a one that's well-established and commonly agreed upon, since you're trying to invoke it?
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      "a fundamental principle or groundwork; foundation; basis"[1] [1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/based http://www.dictionary.com/browse/based
      - dozzie 8y ago
        And in what way is the Linux kernel the "fundamental principle" or "foundation" of Android? How is it so important that you can rip it out and replace with something totally different without much change to the applications running on top?
        TomMarius 8y ago

nitwit005 8y ago

Articles on the features that get real use seem to suggest that people tend not to use these home assistants much, and if they do, it tends to be for music or turning on the lights: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-most-used-features-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-most-used-feature... Which is to say, they're not getting a whole lot of usage of features you might consider to be chatbot functionality.

inthewoods 8y ago
I think there is a huge discoverability problem created by the limitations of these devices. Because we don't believe it can understand anything we say, we instead limit our vocabulary and interactions to what we are confident they will understand. It's the opposite of AI in that this is the machine training us how to communicate with it. So we sit there barking out commands because we are unsure of what it can handle, creating a giant hunt-and-peck problem. This, to me, is likely why Amazon sends me emails saying "What can Alexa do now?"
- darkmighty 8y ago
  Perhaps the assistants could have more initiative then. Ex: "Hi (...), since you always turn off the heater when you leave, would you like me to schedule to always do it for you?"
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    But there's a big problem in finding the right moment. At many times I'd probably be annoyed.
    - daveguy 8y ago
      This. I had to disable google's "assistant" notifications because it kept pestering me about things I had no interest in. They always seem to have an "I see you're trying to write a letter. Do want some help?" clippyesque feel to them. When I activate a system is probably the only time it's ok to add a guiding interaction (like do you want me to make this default?). I really wish I could tell the voice activated things, "Ok, from now on when I say to play 'rockin beats' I'm talking about my Pandora channel, don't make me say 'play rockin beats on pandora' every time." I do almost the same things every day with Alexa, but it still messes up simple context. For instance: I will never ask for alexa for news while THE ALARM IS GOING OFF. If it "hears" news while the alarm is going off then it heard wrong. I said SNOOZE.

madeofpalk 8y ago

> the rise of digital assistants in Google Home, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, is, in a sense, the rise of the chat bot Actually, I'm still quite bullish on this. Advocates always talk about how 'VUI' (Voice User Interfaces) will be the next big thing but from what I've observed most people - actual users, not financially invested in their success - still remain quite bullish on them, or they only use them to set timers. I don't believe Amazon, Google, or Apple have ever actually released sales figures for their assistants. I believe its because the numbers would look so insignificant compared to everything else.

Kiro 8y ago
Do you mean bearish? If not, your comment confuses me.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Huh, apparently I do. It looks like I've been using that word incorrectly for quite a while. I mean that I'm, put lightly, skeptical of the whole digital voice assistant thing.
  - daveguy 8y ago
    When I first heard the terms bearish and bullish I thought they were confusing and un-intuitive... Until I heard the following explanation: Bulls thrust their horns up. Bears swipe their claws down. Bulls horn up, Bears claw down. After that it was easy to remember and now it's second nature. You're one of today's lucky 10,000! :D https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    - egypturnash 8y ago
      I can never remember which is which. Thanks for that mnemonic!
    - arkades 8y ago
      Huh. I always just thought of it as bears hibernating / being lethargic. And the other ones the other one.