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Failures would bring AI-powered chatbots closer to humans |
"Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master," said Norwegian Nobel
Laureate Christian Lous Lange more than a century ago. As companies pin their
hopes on chatbot and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the big question
the world is facing today is whether these neural machines would turn out to be
friends or foes of the human race.
While AI-powered chatbots are doing superbly when it comes to data analytics,
facial recognition, voice recognition and cognitive comprehension, the next big
frontier is to prepare them for "real-life" conversions with people.
A daunting task, indeed.
Microsoft's AI chatbot "Tay" ran into trouble last year when Twitterati began
slamming the "innocent" bot with racist and offensive comments. Launched as an
experiment to engage people through "casual and playful conversation", Tay was
soon taken off Twitter.
"Bob" and "Alice" -- two bots created by Facebook -- were switched off last
month when the team at Facebook AI Research (FAIR) found that the duo defied
human-generated algorithms and started communicating in their own language.
According to the Facebook team, while the idea of AI agents inventing their own
language may sound alarming for people outside the field, it is a
well-established sub-field of AI.
"You can call these experiment times as many companies are piloting chatbot
initiatives. Fortunately, we've already seen some successful use cases that can
deliver business and customer value. Chatbot and AI technologies will definitely
evolve and have more use cases than today," Xiaofeng Wang, Senior Analyst with
global research firm Forrester, told IANS.
"But whether it would be friend or enemy really depends on how we use it. As
chatbots need to have a human-escalation protocol, any new technology
application should be under control with careful planning and disciplined
execution," she suggested.
According to Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst with Adobe Digital Insights,
advances in technology always go through phases and we are currently in the
failure phase.
"Most chatbots are based on simple-decision trees, sourcing siloed and
incomplete data to provide answers. Users are mostly disappointed with any sort
of complicated interaction but AI bots will improve dramatically because of the
failures we encounter today," Gaffney noted.
Companies today are increasingly looking to rewire their DNA to adapt to the
buying habits of digital customers and innovative technologies like AI and
chatbots are helping them create immersive brand experiences.
"Intelligent bots will transform every facet of industry and dramatically
improve the customer experience. Chatbot apps with natural language processing
(NLP) are expected to become the norm by 2018 and will dominate brand
interactions by 2020, ushering significant changes within the enterprise
ecosystem," Mitesh Agarwal, Vice President-Solution Consulting and CTO, Oracle
India, told IANS.
Early adopters and AI start-ups are hopeful that chatbots will unleash a new
wave of technology.
"AI-powered chatbots are essentially meant to reduce manual labour and cut down
tedious tasks that humans performed hitherto. With AI, automation, IoT and
experimentation riding high, one can argue these are probably the best times in
technology as the innovation is expected to touch every industry vertical,"
noted Suman Reddy, MD, Pegasystems, India.
Some experts, however, are wary of AI-driven chatbots and their future.
Famed theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, Tesla CEO and SpaceX
founder Elon Musk, philanthropist Bill Gates and ex-Apple founder Steve Wozniak
have raised fears that humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution,
could be superseded by AI in the near future.
In the ongoing spat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Musk recently tweeted
that Facebook founder's understanding of AI is "limited". Zuckerberg, on the
other hand, calls himself an optimist when it comes to AI.
According to experts, where AI comes into the picture is when it can build its
own algorithms by analysing patterns in large volumes of data, as long as there
are good learning sets.
Combine that with the power of automation ('bot'ification) and the knowledge
available on the Internet, and we can harness enormous capabilities.
"However, 'general intelligence' is still a far-reaching goal for AI. The fancy
digital assistants in our smartphones (Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft
Cortana, Samsung Bixby, etc) can book an appointment, give you weather, play
music and so on. But ask a general question and they would open a browser and
show search results at best," explained Rajesh Kumar, Delivery Head (Retail, CPG
and Manufacturing), Mindtree.
For Prakash Arunachalam, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Servion, we have to
look at the technology from a broader point of view.
"We will definitely see conversations expand and become deeper and mature over
time and will not be limited to data analytics or search through knowledge bases
alone," Arunachalam told IANS.
The change will probably be in two phases. In the first phase, it would happen
between customer and enterprise or customer and device.
"In the second phase, we will start to see this change in enterprises and
employee interactions with systems too, following natural conversations,"
Arunachalam added.
For Gaffney, the term chatbot will probably disappear soon.
"Our most likely method of mass access to AI bots will be via voice interaction.
We would allow AI bots to evolve to levels beyond and to a degree that human
conversations themselves will evolve because of the AI bots," the Adobe analyst
told IANS.
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