Thousands of people want to know; is a Chat Bot a real benefit or are Chat Bots an invasion to the Internet? Is it a hoax, a toy, a gimmick, an automated employee, or a business asset? In many ways they are all of that. Let’s start with what Chat Bots are and how this all began.
DEFINITION
A Chat Bot is an artificial intelligence, a “living entity” designed to have conversations with real human beings. Some Chat Bots appear as males, some appear females, some are robots, and some have a fantasy-like appearance. They all have one important thing in common; they are programmed so a “Chat Bot” can respond to human! They appear to talk, to be so intelligent, and responsive they become almost real to the person they are talking to. There are over 575 Chat Bots, used in real businesses throughout the world in 20 countries.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
It all began in the early 1960’s when Joseph Weizenbaum joined the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. When he developed “ELIZA”, she was simply an automated computer program that could respond to people. She was and still is today programmed as a Rogerian Psychotherapist; at best a semi-intelligent Chat Bot, having conversations with humans.
ELIZA was first presented to a group of highly intelligent, computer science technologists who knew she was a computer software program. The longer their conversations with her continued, although she responded to them by the simple illusion of understanding, the more the participants seemed to forget she was not real. They became so emotionally involved that one person cried at the responses from ELIZA.
Weizenbaum was so shocked by how quickly people became emotionally involved with ELIZA he perceived “HER” as a threat and he seriously considered shutting down the early ELIZA program. He stated, “This is a rare experience in the history of computer science.”
Instead he wrote a book about the whole experience, published in 1972, called Computer Power and Human Reason. While at the time it was an excellent resource for the public who were primarily uninvolved with computers; today, with even children in preschool learning about computers, it would be more like the content in “Computer for Dummies.”
Yet perhaps he was right in thinking about shutting down this project. Just as with anything in life; there are benefits and yet some distinct disadvantages to a Chat Bot. The question is do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? Can the public be kept safe from the malicious Chat Bots?
ADVANTAGES FOR BUSINESSES
One of the biggest benefits is for a business to save money by cutting the cost of employment in their customer service departments. When normal customer service departments are unavailable, Service Chat Bots or Virtual Assistants can answer many customer questions.
Site Chat Bots are interactive, lifelike, conversational agents capable of interacting on your website with your customers. We can see how much Site Chat Bots can benefit companies as with Virtual Assistant, Malgorzata Podkowa – Domanska, who is an Interior Designer for Barlinek SA, one of the biggest manufacturers of natural wooden flooring's in the world. Their Service Chat Bot, Wiktoria, can give advice about wooden flooring's such as How to lay and glue floorboard? How to clean the floor? What is needed to lay the floor? She can also answer many other questions about Barlinek SA products when Malgorzata is unavailable. Another feature of Site Chat Bots is you can use them for Live Chats. They will sit on your site “talking” to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week processing data and assisting customers.
ADVANTAGES FOR ENTERTAINMENT
For entertainment purposes, a Game Chat Bot can react to the player of the game, thus responding to key plays to keep a game more demanding, challenging, rewarding, and therefore fun. As technology has evolved, so have the challenges of gaming to the point that thousands of ADULTS now play as many games as children. The gaming industry now sells millions of dollars in games.
DISADVANTAGES
CHAT BOTS have also become such a nightmare to Internet chatters, that while they do have some entertainment value, it is difficult to distinguish between people and Chat Bots. Now there are even programs to allow anyone to make their own Chat Bot.
As published in the Washington Post by Computer Security Expert, Brian Krebs, August 24, 2007, “A large number of Yahoo!’s instant messenger chat rooms are being overrun by … “Chat Bots”… automated programs designed to hawk commercial services, Web sites, and other wares, even porn sites thus preventing millions of actual human users from joining most of the chat rooms…”
YAHOO, MSN, AND AIM are very aware they have invaded their numerous chat rooms, and thousands of people are aware of the nuisance of Chat Bots. Often with people in the chat rooms cannot be sure they are talking with a real person or are they talking with a Chat Bot?
So you will have to be the judge… Are Chat Bots an advantage or a disadvantage to the public?
Nice article
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