AI Chatbots: Reality vs. Hype

Welcome to the world of intelligent chatbots: your companion and conversation agents who should make your life smarter. A leading research paper even said that by 2020, the average person would have more conversations with bots than with their spouse. So, be ready to embrace this new life in a year from now.

Ok… Hold on. Have you ever tried telling Siri or Google to “find restaurants that don’t serve pizza?” At least they are both consistent in that they gave the same answer — suggesting restaurants that do serve pizza.

The first citizen humanoid robot, Sofia, is making her way to every media event, conducting interviews using human-like conversations. How does she compare to these competitors? Well, the truth is far from reality. Chatbots provide an illusion of understanding conversation, but as you start asking intelligent questions, you begin to realize that they can only answer a fixed set of queries.

Well, by now, you should be able to block out the noise from reality.

Should you invest in chatbots with all these limitations? Every technology has its flaws, but you need to be aware of what you can build now, what to avoid, and how to work around the limitations.

I have seen many companies trying to build sophisticated chatbots using products from leading chatbot vendors and cloud offerings, spending millions of dollars, and hitting roadblocks. If you begin this venture based on what is being projected and start building it out, you will soon realize…