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The Conversational Age

Phil Hall from Elzware loves bots. Here he discusses what he believes bots hold for the future in terms of communication, data capturing, and why the Internet should catch up with TV in terms of talking heads.

I have a problem with digital media, and the problem is accessing information easily.  Increasingly there is access to entertainment, but when things go wrong there is little support for the common surfer.  Strange how the current state of the Internet ensures that the more common question you have to ask the more choice - or do I mean confusion - you are going to come across. 

The idea at the front end of the Internet was about communication, and then we got buried in information and are still buried, neck deep. What we could do with now is an understanding of the web literally: we need a human like structure to understand the Internet. 

No we aren’t talking about annoying/friendly (delete as appropriate) little things that leap up to help you, or cheer you up, or tell you that is raining in Bolivia … we are talking about Business strength Bots and there aren’t many of these around yet.

Can you talk to it?  No not really, the Voice Recognition software is nowhere near complex enough to differentiate to the level of detail that a Business Bot requires, so in the mean while you can talk monosyllabically to your phone and type like a human to any decent Bot that you come across.

You see, keeping a Bot alive costs pence per second.  Delivering conversations are a couple of £’s and this is a graded scale, for higher utilised interfaces the cost of a conversation can drop to tuppence and analysis of every word and every conversation in context is possible.  Just a little more cost and information effective than a call centre. 

So are we saying that we are replacing call centres with ranks of operatives keeping knowledge bases up to date?  Far from it, we are reducing the requirement for human intervention by a factor of five most probably, so that 20% of the people deal with the valuable discourse and the rest is dealt with by Bots.

 

But is you really want to push the envelope a little here you should talk about convergence and we have all heard lots on this topic over the last few years.  You see there is a element that is missing from the Internet that the TV has always had in abundance.  Talking heads. 

So take a step forwards in time, even the voice recognition boys can follow on with this, though you might need to wear a headset on your sofa.  I am watching the TV, in the kitchen like the Italians tend to and I want to take some information off of the Internet.  I talk to it and it understands… web pages come alive and not with Flash so deep you want to cry “Saviour of the Universe”.

You see email is old hat, for the exchange of business information it is slow, clumsy, wasteful and full of spam – no, really. Why the far more immediate instant communication exchange has not become a standard is due to two things:  ignorance of both the current state of the art, and the capabilities of a well-managed configuration.  I have tried live chat a few times too, and felt like I was talking to a half decent Bot that was drifting off to sleep.

We are past content management now, and this is information management.  We are looking at grasping the thoughts and feelings of customers, consumers in whatever part of whatever cycle.  Why are shopping carts being abandoned?  What aren’t you doing?  What is sexy?  What is fun?  With a Bot you have the chance of understanding.  Take a moment and raise the issue with your CIO or Marketing Director, you might just move the Internet into the 21st Century.

So where are the Luddites?  Waiting in the wings it seems. There was a book review that came across my screen recently – a pair of writers that were worrying about the ability for people to deal with the social implications of Bots knowing about them.  To be frank that sounds fine to me.  The ability for a conversational interface to the web, to help me with the plethora of information that is out there, would be a boon and a blessing.

Elzware is working with the first serious Business Bots right now, we have called ours Yhaken and we work with others as well. As with all good things the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so talk to the Bot directly on www.elzware.com/bot.php and imagine what a development of this core knowledge base could do for the Internet.

Right now the market is opening up across sectors and languages with the likes of Fiat, Cahoot and Ikea stepping forwards with sensible configurations.  You see the media really is the message and messages are communicated in the main by conversation.  If you don’t agree with this don’t blame me, I am only the messenger.

About the author: Phil Hall is the founder and Director of Elzware. Elzware is a specialist consultancy for the design, development and support of Bot interfaces.  Elzware is has been built from 4 years of experiences in the A.I. marketplace.  Our key developments is the Elzware Template,  this is a core knowledge base of answers to the many questions asked of Bot interfaces.  It has structures to facilitate easier developments of knowledge for specific applications. Note that the only way you will understand what Phil is talking about it to take him out to lunch, a long lunch.  This is not only a hang over from the time he spent working for a large systems integration company but also a really nice thing to do. www.elzware.com

Comments

nathan_barley said:

Yhaken <p>Not bad, but also a bit irritating. If it doesn't stop bouncing, someone should kick its bot.<br/></p>

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