There is one question people are likely to come across at least once in job interviews. While asking ‘where do you see yourself many years (ideally 10) from now?’ it’s imperative for the job provider to understand the futuristic prospects of the candidate to lead the company’s growth. If crossing this one crucial curve makes way for the dream career, in technology, a question mark at the end of every new discovery is the only way forward. The high-tech journey from websites has taken a pit stop at apps and it is high time we looked into what lies ahead.
The answer has been loitering around for a while — Chatbots, the human conversation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) amalgam. That which promises to cut short the anxious queue for app download and the onus to jam-pack those thousand and one app icons on your smart phone screen, the chat robots are being looked at as the way forward. A simple conversational interface is touted to be a replacement for complexities. Identifying the possibilities, social media and customer service sectors have already got into the business.
In simpler terms, Venturebeat explains what one could expect out of it: “Imagine after a bad breakup you engage with a chatbot. It acts empathetic to your situation and suggests some weekend getaways that might help cheer you up. The same chatbot could book that getaway for you immediately and suggest a few outfits that will make look great on. Maybe it also suggests that you allow it to book you a reservation at one of the nearby hotspots,” it’s clear.
The year opened with Facebook introducing chatbots on its messenger platform. In customer service sector, many big players are already in. Of the seven major brands handpicked by Netimperative.com figures Pizza Hut, London City Airport, Cheap Flights, Netflix, American Express, KLM and H&M. Techcrunch states that one need not look for newer discoveries in chatbots and it’s all about centralising the existing functionalities.
“The first thing to understand about chatbots is that most won’t introduce new capabilities; instead, brand chatbots will centralise where and how customers engage, using social media as an operating system,” it writes. What is the manual role then? And it has an answer. “Although bots are moving in and are likely to mainstream within three to five years, humans will still have a place in social media. However, that too will change. As bots become equipped to handle text content, the human side of brands and consumers will gravitate toward new, richer ways to engage, including virtual and augmented reality,” it says.
