{"id":2013,"date":"2016-06-17T09:35:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T09:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fraser.yt\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2021-03-02T13:55:45","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T13:55:45","slug":"the-rise-of-the-bots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frasersm.it\/h\/the-rise-of-the-bots\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of the Bots"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Also published<\/a> on Medium<\/p>\n

Earlier this year there was a flurry of of talk in the non-tech press, on the back of Facebook<\/a> launching their bot platform. Most had an air of uncertainty over what bots actually were, but certainty, none the less, that if Zuck was excited about them, then they must be the next big thing, and something which that particular journalist didn\u2019t want to be behind the curve on.<\/p>\n

But the rise of the bots has been a while coming. It\u2019s been running just under the radar for a few years now, from productivity bots on Slack to forum moderation bots on Reddit. There\u2019s a sense, however, that it took a huge mainstream company throwing their weight behind it to bring the idea to the masses.<\/p>\n

And then, a matter of weeks later, we already have BBC reports of porn bots spamming Islamic State<\/a> twitter accounts, and, excellently, a bot specifically written to troll confused Donald Trump supporters<\/a> (Are there any other kind?). There are services anyone can sign up for, such as Wit and Beep Boop which allow you to construct your own bots. So are the bots really about to take over?<\/p>\n

Facebook weren\u2019t the first of course. Siri has been around for five years now and the Amazon Echo, which sits in your living room listening constantly so you can change channels on your TV or buy crap from Amazon with just the power of your voice, has been around since late 2014.
\nHowever, there\u2019s no doubt when interacting with these examples that the intelligence is anything other than artificial. They pick key words from what you say to them, then serve up stock responses. They\u2019re basically toys. Cute to play with, but with no real utility.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s artificial intelligence is way ahead of everyone else (outside of academia and the military) in this regard. While Siri was responding to your questions with snarky stock answers, obviously scripted by a human, Google Now was looking at your current location, comparing it to the location of that appointment in your Google Calendar an hour from now, checking traffic data on the route between and finally pushing a pop-up notification to your phone to tell you when need to leave to get there on time. All without you having to actually do anything. It all just happens!<\/p>\n