I think it's equally wrong to just write off chatbots. They are a User Interface tool that works in some areas and doesn't in others (and recently has been dramatically misapplied).
Chatbots work well as an input when your hands are otherwise occupied:
- driving/directions (Google Maps telling you where to go)
- cooking (reciting a recipe)
They work well when you're requesting a specific thing:
- "Play Everlasting Light by the Black Keys"
- "Add Eggs to my shopping list"
- Responding to Answers in Jeopardy: "What is Syracuse?"
They can work as an alternative CTA in certain narrow areas where they function like a traditional "wizard". I've seen some ecommerce stats for things like "Are you shopping for a Fathers Day Gift? Does your dad like sports? Does your dad like gadgets? Want to see some popular gift ideas?"
Where they don't work:
- complex NLP dependencies
- data entry
- when there is an expectation set that you're talking to a human.
Yes, I did. What I was responding to was more the comments in the thread so far which mostly felt like dunking on how bad chatbots were, etc.
And the article was overall hopeful about chatbots (presuming they got better NLP+AI), it didn't really get into examples, etc. that I was hoping to elicit from the HN audience.
Chatbots work well as an input when your hands are otherwise occupied:
- driving/directions (Google Maps telling you where to go)
- cooking (reciting a recipe)
They work well when you're requesting a specific thing:
- "Play Everlasting Light by the Black Keys"
- "Add Eggs to my shopping list"
- Responding to Answers in Jeopardy: "What is Syracuse?"
They can work as an alternative CTA in certain narrow areas where they function like a traditional "wizard". I've seen some ecommerce stats for things like "Are you shopping for a Fathers Day Gift? Does your dad like sports? Does your dad like gadgets? Want to see some popular gift ideas?"
Where they don't work:
- complex NLP dependencies
- data entry
- when there is an expectation set that you're talking to a human.