Bot Primer !

It's a Gold Rush 

What to Expect ?

 History & Introduction 

Rules to Build better bots 

Platforms to Build  

 My favourite bots

BOTS

1988

Jabberwacky

One of the earliest attempt on creating an AI through human interaction with an ultimate goal of moving from text-based system to wholly voice operated

1972

Parry

Parry was more serious and advanced than Eliza - it was described as "Eliza with attitude"

MIT prof. Joseph Weizenbaum developed, the first ever chatbot, that could “interact” with people like a psychotherapist would. He used a script that would recognize certain patterns and keywords, and generate a response accordingly.

1966

Eliza

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2001

Smarterchild

 An intelligent bot widely distributed across SMS network .with features such as quick data access & personalised conversation .it was considered as precursor to Apples Siri & Samsung's voice

1995

A.L.I.C.E

 "Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity "  ALICE was a natural language processing bot.

AI Speech synthesis program created for MS - DOS- based PC's . Designed to showcase a digitazied voice

1992

Dr. Sbaitso

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2012

Google Now

 Developed by google for google search mobile app , it employs natural language UI to answer questions , make recommendation & perform action over web.  

2010

SIRI

 Intelligent personal assistant , it uses natural language UI to answer questions and perform web service request.

Watson uses natrual language processing & Machine learning to reveal insghts from large amount of data

2006

IBM-Watson

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2016

Bots-Messenger

 Facebook launched bots for messenger platform which allows developer to create bots that can interact with FB user .

2015

Cortana

 Intelligent personnel assistant crafted by Microsoft cortana sets reminder ,recognises voice commands & answer questions .

Voice service inhabiting the amazon echo device , alexa's capable of voice interaction - she used Natural Language processing algorithms to receive , recognise, and respond to voice commands .

2015

Alexa

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Let’s get something out of the way

i love bots

most bots are dumb

some bots are powerful

If I asked everyone here what a “bot” was

you would all have different answers !

A bot is any software application that lives in a messaging tool.

It doesn’t need to be a text based interface.

It just needs to live in a messaging platform.

Rise of Messaging Apps

Rise of Messaging Apps

Let’s look at some strategies for building

powerful bots instead of dumb ones.

12

Rules

to build better bots

RULE  

bots are about platfrom

 #1 

Whether it’s Telegram, WeChat, Facebook, Slack or
another platform, the power of bots is that they
 

LIVE IN A TOOL WE ALREADY USE

RULE  

 look to the future

 #2 

THIS IS HOW YOU BOOK A DOCTOR IN WECHAT

It doesn’t look like most of the “bots” we see today

WeChat has a BILLION users. their platform is used like crazy.

This has 27 buttons

This has 2 buttons

Interface comparison

RULE  

context is powerfull

 #3 

Building on a platform means that you know a huge amount about your users on day one.

Narendra Modi
Age : 57 years old
Gender : Male
From :Guj , IN

Slack tells you about how they work
Facebook tells you about who they are
Twillio now lets you learn about who they are

RULE  

bots are about platfrom

4 

Meekan is a bot that helps schedule meetings.

If it were an iPhone app, everyone on the
team would need to install it.

Instead, it lives in #Slack, where it has access
to your team by default.

The Slack platform enables new kinds of apps

Meekan 

“Meekan schedule a team meeting tomorrow at noon”

TAKE A STEP BACK

Why are we talking about bots? Two words.

VENTURE CAPITALIST

A bunch of VCs decided to give money to bot companies
and now everyone needs a darn bot strategy.

This is the Gartner hype cycle at work.
Tech comes in waves…

Before bots we had 

SOCIAL NETWORK

Before bots we had 

MOBILE

APPS

Before bots we had 

MOBILE SOCIAL APPS

then we got

MOBILE SOCIAL VIDEO APPS

There was one week in 2011 when 11 "Instagram for Video " apps were launched 

These apps all launched in 2011, Only one  snapchat

is making a kill with VC's , rest are DEAD 

That is to say,

Get ready for a deluge of bots

RULE  

it does not have to be mass market

 #5 

In a crowded market one winning strategy

is to build niche apps

 You only need a small percentage of FB
Messenger’s 1 billion users

to build a great business

RULE #6 

Structure thing people are already are doing 

THERE ARE SO

MANY PROCESSES 

THAT CAN BE TURNED INTO BOTS

Why try to

create a

new behavior  ?

DON'T INVENT THE NEW BEHAVIOR

Profit it

1

Find existing behavior

Bot it

2

3

RULE #7 

redefine conversatations

Howdy.ai is a great bot 

it take synchronous meeting & parallelizes them 

Howdy.ai is a great bot 

it take synchronous meeting & parallelizes them

 Someone on the team triggers howdy.

Howdy goes out and ask everyone a question.

Howdy turn the answers into a simple report.

1

2

3

just because a or process used to happen one way , doesn't mean computer's can't restructure it .

RULE #8 

avoid disasters , use human to filter

Blossom bot is the #1 best bot of all time

* Machine Learning

It was built in house at the New York Times.

It uses *ML to identify stories that are prime to go viral.

Stories it finds get 3.4x more views.

Blossom bot is the #1 best bot of all time

Blossom could connect to Twitter.

"Instead, it connects to Slack where the social media
editors can have a conversation about what makes
sense for each of their 100+ social media accounts."

RULE #9 

Eliminate Decisions 

Imagine two ways to order a pizza

imagine two ways to order pizza

Pizza App one 

Super custom

Customize volume of each topping

Pick your cheese types 

imagine two ways to order pizza

 Push a button

Get a Pizza 

Pizza App Two 

WHICH MAKES A BETTER BOT ?

Curate to avoid decisions

RULE #10 

build guard rails  

Even Simple bot can go wary 

 If your bot feels like it can answer anything,

people will ask it anything.

DON’T MAKE IT FEEL LIKE IT
CAN ANSWER ANYTHING

RULE  

understand your platform  

#11

Build experiences that makes sense for the platform you're on.

Target their audience and speak their language .

understand your platform  

A Tale of Two Bots 

Helps teens deal with
anxiety and depression

Helps journalists find
breaking news

Lives in Kik 

Lives in Slack

RULE #12 

this is still new. no one knows what to expect

Platforms

Discord

Telegram

Slack

Facebook Messenger

Kick

Other Great Services

Thank you !

Random Dude

Bots

By Nishant Pandey