| > 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?). |