[ronack]

These are pretty well-worn arguments against chatbots. There's an overuse of bots for tasks that do not benefit from a conversational interface (checking the weather, surveys, promotions, etc.). But if you stop thinking of bots as sentient beings and instead treat them as domain-specific command line interfaces, you may get more utility out of them. For instance, it's possible just typing/saying "Send me a pizza with sausage and black olives" is the most efficient way to order a pizza.

[jkaptur]

I think that the pizza analogy is really useful. We've had intelligent voice-capable agents for pizza ordering for ages: calling the store. People hate it! They want a specialized UI for ordering pizza.

[mercer]

Chat API's usually offer inline keyboards and regular custom keyboards. At least in Telegram you can even replace inline keyboards based on interactions, meaning you could trivially construct a pretty elaborate UI specifically for stuff like ordering pizza's.

And even better, the pizza joint can update the conversation with status updates, special deals if you so desire, and you automatically have a history of previous orders that you could simply repeat at a later time.

A chat bot strikes me as the perfect UI for these types of things, and at this point, with Messenger, Messages, and Telegram supporting all this, a large number of your users already have 'your' app installed!

[jkaptur]

Right, I think that WeChat basically exemplifies this too. But at that point, is the user really interacting with a "bot", or is the chat platform just an app delivery mechanism like an OS or a web browser?

I'm honestly asking, and I think the pizza example is really illuminating - how DO people order somewhat-customizable food via these platforms?

[mercer]

> Right, I think that WeChat basically exemplifies this too. But at that point, is the user really interacting with a "bot", or is the chat platform just an app delivery mechanism like an OS or a web browser?

I'm assuming the latter. I mostly avoided WeChat as an example because i haven't used it myself. But from what I understand WeChat goes much further than just chat interfaces, which kind of is out of the scope of what I'm really interested in for now (but still curious about).

EDIT: I'd add that many of the advantages that come with using chat-apps as a platform are still there even in apps that don't offer all of what WeChat does.

[marcosdumay]

It's not like the voice channel was ever a good fit for the task...

- I'd like to order a pizza.

- Great! What kind would you want?

- I have no idea, what kinds are available?

(Silence while somebody asks themselves if they really want to dictate 100 different kinds of pizza for you)

- Do you have $POPULAR-KIND-THAT-IM-ALREADY-TIRED-OF-EATING?

- Yes! (Relief by not having to dictate all of them)

- How much is it?

- Oh, it's $$$.

- What?! $$$ for a single pizza?

- Yes, that's a MOST-EXPENSIVE-CATEGORY-OF-PIZZA, it's totally not the simple pizza you were expecting from the name.

And so it goes.

[Piskvorrr]

[citation-needed]

[mercer]

> But if you stop thinking of bots as sentient beings and instead treat them as domain-specific command line interfaces, you may get more utility out of them.

That's my thinking exactly, and while I agree with the article, I feel it would've been much more interesting if it explored what kinds of ways chat interfaces and bots can be used.

The first example mentioned is illustrative:

> Press 1 to report missing credit card... Press 2 to report a fraud... (...) Press 8 to activate a credit card... > It's far from an enjoyable experience. When you call them and hear a recorded voice, you can tell that your call is going to take a while. You also know that there's a high chance you'll end up talking to a real person anyway. > Chatbots are no better than these robots.

I strongly disagree with this. The problem with this interface is not the 'robot' part, the problem is that you have to patiently listen to a robot describe the options before you get to choose.

If I could have a chat with a bot that immediately provides me with an inline keyboard or a list of options so I could choose an option right away, or type it out, or perhaps even type out a command-line style multi-argument command, I'd prefer that over pretty much any other interface, including clicking around their clunky website. And most chat API support inline keyboards that can even 'replace' themselves, allowing for a pretty powerful mini-ui.

The problem, as I see it, is trying to make it natural and adding all sorts of NLP and 'human' elements. Let bots be bots and at most augment them with these things.

I truly believe that chat bots can end up being a 'CLI for non-geeks'. They're not appropriate for everything, but what with custom keyboards, inline keyboards, and other inline doodads, I wouldn't be surprised if they'll end up being successful even for the non-CLI or non-chat type use cases. Everyone has Telegram or Messenger or Messages, and 'everyone' seems to be moving to their phone or phablet as a primary interface these days. They don't want you shitty custom app, they hate your clunky barely-mobile website. But their favorite chat app has authentication, essential UI stuff, 'native' services (location, etc.), and push notification and sync built in, so why not use that?

For a growing number of people around me, the 'de-facto' chat interface is the one they have open much of the time (plus snapchat's weirdness, perhaps). While I feel the current interfaces are still lacking for these non-person-chat use cases, already now I find that they can be much more useful than people realize. It wouldn't be too difficult, I suppose, to optimize these chat apps to handle various bots better (and perhaps WeChat already figured this out well enough?).