This is an excellent point! We should also keep in mind that chatbots are clearly a thing that people want; we're just using capitalism to test whether society

This is an excellent point! We should also keep in mind that chatbots are clearly a thing that people want; we're just using capitalism to test whether society, technology, etc. are "there" yet, so it's not entirely irrational for investment to flow into this area. (We might debate the scale of the investments, or we can just let the market determine that for us.)