Bots Are NOT About Conversation
Most bot developers seem hung up on the conversational aspect of bots. Natural language processing (NLP) is a novelty for many (most?), so…
Most bot developers seem hung up on the conversational aspect of bots. Natural language processing (NLP) is a novelty for many (most?), so this obsession is understandable. But it’s one thing to get stuck with some technical challenge, and quite another thing to declare that very challenge as being the end goal.
If bots be essentially all about conversations then apps are essentially all about graphics. You see the error in that kind of thinking? Yes, apps rely on graphics when interacting with humans. And bots rely on text when interacting with humans. But neither graphics nor text define the purpose of those software products.
What Is The Purpose Of Bots?
The true meaning of the word bot is digital expert. These digital experts serve the purpose of delivering expertise that users expect. Do I have an example, you ask? Sure. Let’s look at digital experts in existence today. One such digital expert (or bot) is Homebrew.
This bot provides formidable expertise to all users who need to install stuff. Typical install utility expects a human operator to be the expert when wishing to install software. Homebrew is different. This bot lowers its expectations when interacting with humans. It assumes that humans are extremely bad at doing the legwork needed for installing software. Homebrew only expects humans to tell it what they want to install, and then it goes away and does the rest. Flawlessly!
So we see that the purpose of a bot is to serve humans. A bot needs to be able to amortize the chores. A bot needs to be able to do that while listening to and understanding human commands.
Conversational interface is merely a side effect of this important interaction with humans. Anyone who has used Homebrew or Git (or similar bots) had realized that text is much more expressive than graphics. Text is where bots thrive, and full service delivered by bots is where humans thrive.