
Are chat bots still exciting? - k_vi
It was a hype a while ago and I curious as to if this is something that people are putting their effort into.<p>The far off future looks like people would not necessarily want to learn interfaces to consume several services, but verbal communication might replace the visual interfaces that are out there.<p>Using visual interfaces is probably much faster to use than chatting with a bot to get things done, but from what I have seen most people don&#x27;t use the command line but like using visual interfaces although the former lets you accomplish things faster than a visual interface.
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niftich
In a different thread some time ago [1], I wrote:

"The bot hype right now isn't about average UIs being replaced with text
prompts of "What would you like to do today?", it's about large walled-garden
ecosystems (Google, FB, Amazon, Apple, MS, Kik, etc.) funneling web searches
and services through their own systems."

I believe the hype isn't driven by the desire of people interested in Natural
Language Processing, but rather by providers of chat apps who want to track
your 'click-throughs' and engagement; and by service providers like Uber and
Papa John's who want to expand their services' reach into the hands of users
who may be running FB Messenger or Whatsapp or Kik, but perhaps not running
the Uber or Papa John's app.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12002773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12002773)

