by Angela Guess
Forbes contributor Daniel Newman recently opined, “Don’t let the fun, casual name mislead you. Chatbots—software that you can “chat with”—have serious implications for the business world. Though many businesses have already considered their use for customer service purposes, a chatbot’s internal applications could be invaluable on a larger scale. For instance, chatbots could help employees break down siloes and provide targeted data to fuel every department. This digital transformation is happening, even in organizational structures that face challenges with other formats of real-time communication.”
Newman goes on, “Still unclear on what chatbots are and what they do? Think of a digital assistant—such as iPhone’s Siri or Alexa, the Artificial Intelligence within the Amazon Echo. A chatbot reduces or eliminates the need for many mobile apps, as the answers are stored inside the chatbot. Need to know what the weather’s like in LA? Ask your chatbot. Is your flight running on time? Ask your chatbot. Is the package you ordered going to be delivered while you’re away? You get the gist.”
He adds, “Chatbots have been around for a while, but the technology is developing in a way that has technology firms excited about the new capabilities. The next generation of chatbots store, synthesize, and recall important data. They can make purchases for you using stored credit cards, or sync your calendar with weather info to warn you about impeding rain at your kid’s afternoon soccer game across town. Chatbots use a process called deep learning, a type of machine learning in which a neural network can recognize speech, data, and specific patterns and transmit that data through the layers of the network. The second layer builds upon the first, and so on, for more accurate results each time the Artificial Intelligence faces a similar query or problem.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ Tsahi Levent-Levi