A Chat bot, or a chatter bot, is a computer program designed to maintain an intelligent conversation with a human. Chat bots have become a huge part of our life without even noticing it. Our daily life presents a number of activities where chat bots were involved.
The purposes of chat bots vary from simple and entertaining ones to more sophisticated. You can use a chat bot as your chat partner (knowingly or unknowingly) because you feel lonely or bored, or you can use the chat bots’ services as a virtual assistant to help out in your business.
In all cases it would be unwise to ignore the ability of chat bots to sustain a human-like real-time conversation and not use it to our benefit. Constant development of technology contributes to the practical aspects of chat bots’ use.
Many companies have already taken advantage of chat bots by implementing them into their business schemes. There are chat bots that work as virtual assistants, consultants, customer service managers, etc. Over 500 companies around the globe have “hired” chat bots to perform simple (sometimes more complex) tasks. This helps to reduce costs and operational time.
Another field where chat bots were effectively used is education. Today’s teaching and training are different from those 10 years ago. Again we can thank rapid technology development for this. The use of computers in educational process changed the traditional approach to teaching. Of course, we can’t say that the number of computers per person in every country is the same. In some countries people have not seen a computer other than on TV while in others there might be 3 to 4 personal computers per household.
However, we can’t deny that “computerized” nations have a choice between traditional education methods and new-age ones. New methods include Intelligent Tutoring Systems which was based on the adaptation to the needs of a particular learner.
These systems use the so called pedagogical agents which are presented as a certain person, have a name, an avatar, so that you know who the student communicates with. Depending on the course, these programs can be the student’s classmate, competition, a helper, or a guide. To make the process efficient, the agent is suppose to answer the student’s questions, give explanations as needed, and monitor the student’s activity and progress.
One of the effective working solutions is SmartHelp System by Apangea (http://apangea.com/index.htm). It is mostly used to teach math to high school students. The program includes combination of tutoring technology (based on chat bots’ algorithm) and human teachers. SmartHelp provides information, adapts the learning material to the needs of a student, controls his/her progress. In case the program can’t handle an issue that might arise, a real teacher steps in and provides individualized support and assistance to the student.
Another interesting Intelligent Tutoring System is Wizard-of-Oz (WOZ), also known as Tutoring Spoken Dialog System. This system was based on a computer-student interaction for the purpose of providing learning materials. This system was experimentally used for teaching students of Birmingham University the basics of C programming by discussing of several aspects of this computer language. Students acknowledged the simplicity of the system’s used and confirmed that they enjoyed interaction with a chat bot.
As long as technology is evolving virtual tutors will keep conquering the education world. The idea of teaching computers to teach students the way a human teacher would do looks appealing.
Such programs can provide basic science concept; illustrate them with charts, diagrams, pictures; answer students’ questions; ask them questions in order to evaluate their understanding; maintain a dialog; and monitor the progress of each student. The most important thing is that each student will have personal attention of a tutor which often lacks in schools where the number of students in a class is at times too high for a teacher to reach out to each individual student.
We don’t know how far it might and will go. We don’t know if such education has benefits, advantages and is better than a traditional system. It might be better, it might be worse. But we can’t deny that things are changing.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Chatbot review 1
A chat bot, also known as a chatter bot, is a computer program that stimulates real-time conversation with one or more adults. It uses hearing as well as text to communicate with human beings. The word 'chatterbot' was coined by the creator of the first talking robot, Michael Mauldin. The basis of these programs come from a paper written by Alan Turing and titled 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence.' In this paper, he talks about computer systems that can take the place of humans in a real-time conversation with other human beings. Based on this idea, many individuals and companies started to write programs and these came to be known as chat bots.
Chat bots are used for many practical purposes today. It is used to provide online help to users, act as a virtual assistant, extend personalized service to customers and be a talking companion to anyone who is looking for some company. They have become popular in many fields and have replaced human beings as customer service representatives in many online sites.
Numerous chat bots are existing today to perform different functions in many countries. We will review some of them in this article.
ELIZA
ELIZA is one of the best-known chat bots. It was developed in 1960s and is one of the first examples of artificial intelligence programs. In those days, many people even mistook her to be a human being. This program was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT University and was used to simulate a Rogerian Psychotherapist. The program used text as the only means of conversation and she could give intelligent answers to questions that were related to the personal life and family of an individual, including the problems and concerns that was faced by an individual.
This program matched string patterns to ask questions and provide comforting answers to the individuals. A typical converstaion can be:
User : I am feeling sick
ELIZA: How long have you been feeling sick
User: For a week now.
ELIZA : Tell me more...
When the above conversation is analyzed, one can see that the string was matched with another question and for anything that ELIZA did not understand, there were generic replies like ”Tell me more..” or ”I do not understand you fully” or ”Elaborate on that.”
Though it was an elementary idea of artificial intelligence, the beauty lies in its simplicity. There are no complicated algorithms involved and it used a simple idea of pattern matching. ELIZA took the world of Internet and AI by storm. She was the first step in showing the world a glimpse of the potential of AI. This led many individuals to work on similar programs and this led to more and more advanced AI programs that could mimic human beings in every way.
ANN
Ann is a virtual assistant who represents Aetna, the US Health-care company. She can help users to find the information they are looking for on the website and can also help them with logging in. She can even help users with the registration process and retrieve lost or forgotten passwords. Users get the service that is similar to talking to a customer service representative over the phone. This program is available round the clock and is interactive.
ISIDORA
Isidora is a chat bot and virtual assistant used by Kraft Foods. She can answer questions regarding the different products and help users find the information they want on the website. She also asks questions and makes users feel that they are talking to a real person and not a chat bot. She also helps the HR team to make product presentations and to convey important messages using the different multimedia options like audio and video. The unique aspect about this program is that it is a video-generated AI program that can interact intelligently with all customers.
The above-mentioned examples give an idea of how AI has been used to provide a better customer experience. From the companies' point of view, it is a lot of savings. They can save on the salary and benefits paid to humdreds of customer service agents to provide round the clock assistance to customers. These programs have replaced many interaction-based jobs around the world.
In short, chat bots are a perfect example of AI and its uses in the real-world. It provides great customer service at little or no maintanence cost to the companies. It is also the first step in the world of AI and its huge potential that can benefit mankind in a profound way in the future.
Chat bots are used for many practical purposes today. It is used to provide online help to users, act as a virtual assistant, extend personalized service to customers and be a talking companion to anyone who is looking for some company. They have become popular in many fields and have replaced human beings as customer service representatives in many online sites.
Numerous chat bots are existing today to perform different functions in many countries. We will review some of them in this article.
ELIZA
ELIZA is one of the best-known chat bots. It was developed in 1960s and is one of the first examples of artificial intelligence programs. In those days, many people even mistook her to be a human being. This program was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT University and was used to simulate a Rogerian Psychotherapist. The program used text as the only means of conversation and she could give intelligent answers to questions that were related to the personal life and family of an individual, including the problems and concerns that was faced by an individual.
This program matched string patterns to ask questions and provide comforting answers to the individuals. A typical converstaion can be:
User : I am feeling sick
ELIZA: How long have you been feeling sick
User: For a week now.
ELIZA : Tell me more...
When the above conversation is analyzed, one can see that the string was matched with another question and for anything that ELIZA did not understand, there were generic replies like ”Tell me more..” or ”I do not understand you fully” or ”Elaborate on that.”
Though it was an elementary idea of artificial intelligence, the beauty lies in its simplicity. There are no complicated algorithms involved and it used a simple idea of pattern matching. ELIZA took the world of Internet and AI by storm. She was the first step in showing the world a glimpse of the potential of AI. This led many individuals to work on similar programs and this led to more and more advanced AI programs that could mimic human beings in every way.
ANN
Ann is a virtual assistant who represents Aetna, the US Health-care company. She can help users to find the information they are looking for on the website and can also help them with logging in. She can even help users with the registration process and retrieve lost or forgotten passwords. Users get the service that is similar to talking to a customer service representative over the phone. This program is available round the clock and is interactive.
ISIDORA
Isidora is a chat bot and virtual assistant used by Kraft Foods. She can answer questions regarding the different products and help users find the information they want on the website. She also asks questions and makes users feel that they are talking to a real person and not a chat bot. She also helps the HR team to make product presentations and to convey important messages using the different multimedia options like audio and video. The unique aspect about this program is that it is a video-generated AI program that can interact intelligently with all customers.
The above-mentioned examples give an idea of how AI has been used to provide a better customer experience. From the companies' point of view, it is a lot of savings. They can save on the salary and benefits paid to humdreds of customer service agents to provide round the clock assistance to customers. These programs have replaced many interaction-based jobs around the world.
In short, chat bots are a perfect example of AI and its uses in the real-world. It provides great customer service at little or no maintanence cost to the companies. It is also the first step in the world of AI and its huge potential that can benefit mankind in a profound way in the future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)