Chat Bots: A future in AI

Samuel Adams Project Coordinator

August 2016

FY16 Review

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A Bot is an application that performs an automated task, such as setting an alarm, telling you the weather or searching online.

Apps have added 3.3 m jobs just in America and Europe; Many predict that Bots are the next step

Talking to bots may be more appealing than dealing with a customer-support agent.

What are Bots?

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Some Bots are designed to chat w/ other Bots

EX: Google moving on from just giving you the most relevant web results and answering your questions.

VS

We will focus on Chat Bots – Bots talking with actual people.

Bot on Bot Action

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ChatbotsWhat is a chatbot?

A Chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that you interact with via a chat interface.

Example: Being able to order a pair of shoes online simply through Facebook Messenger

For the first time ever people are using messenger apps more than they are using social networks. ------------------------>

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• WhatsApp

• GroupMe

• Line

• WeChat

• Kakao Talk

• MessageMe

• Kik

• Tango

• Cubie

• Facebook Messenger

• Hike

• Google Hangouts

• Maaii

• iMessage/FaceTime

• BBM

• Rounds

• Snapchat

• Skype

• Viber

• Nimbuzz

Chat Apps – Growing Fast

Top 20 Chat apps

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There’s a Bot for that… Weather bot. Get the weather whenever you ask. Grocery bot. Help me pick out and order groceries for

the week. News bot. Ask it to tell you when ever something

interesting happens. Life advice bot. I’ll tell it my problems and it helps me

think of solutions. Personal finance bot. It helps me manage my money

better. Scheduling bot. Get me a meeting with someone on

the Messenger team at Facebook. A bot that’s your friend. In China there is a bot called

Xiaoice, built by Microsoft, that over 20 million people talk to.

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How Can We use them? How Chatbots WorkThere are two types of chatbots, one functions based on a set of rules, and the other more advanced version uses machine learning.

Chatbot that functions based on rules:•This bot is very limited. It can only respond to very specific commands. If you say the wrong thing, it doesn’t know what you mean.•This bot is only as smart as it is programmed to be.

Chatbot that functions using machine learning:•This bot has an artificial brain AKA artificial intelligence. You don’t have to be ridiculously specific when you are talking to it. It understands language, not just commands.•This bot continuously gets smarter as it learns from conversations it has with people.

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Bot Services Services you can use to build your bot:•wit.ai (bought by Facebook)•howdy’s botkit (raised $1.5+ mil in funding)•api.ai (raised $8.6+ mil in funding)•textit.in•Motion.ai•Chatfuel (Ycombinator company)•IBM’s Watson•BeepBoopHQ•Dexter (owned by Betaworks)•converse.ai•Gupshup

Cisco has a partnership with

GitHub

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Bots in Action

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Bots in Action (cont)

https://youtu.be/9JbmAw1E-Wg?t=453

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We should be looking at the best ways to leverage Chat Bots for now and the future.

Good Starting Point:

Quick Emergency Answers & Forward to appropriate human. Facebook Chatbot – how best to leverage? Analyze the types of messages we are already receiving. Facebook has great

chatbot literature available Continue working with Mark Son-Bell & other teams to develop plan

Future Goals:

What works better for Cisco: Working directly with Customers, or Bots chatting with other Bots? [Cisco Bot App] Tech Support [Imagine a tech being able to have a FB chat with a bot while installing new tech]. Sales: Technology available at the push of a send button.

Recommendation

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