As technology begins to take over the world, the advent of Artificial Intelligence has proved to be a milestone in the technological breakthroughs of the world. Chat bots are one such segment, in the arena of Artificial Intelligence, and are slowly gathering momentum on the road to technological advancement, ready to take human experiences with machines to a new realm.
A chat bot(also known as a smartbot, talkbot, chatterbot, Bot, IM Bot, interactive agent, conversational interface, or artificial conversational entity), is a software agent that converses through a chat interface, either via auditory, or via textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly stimulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner. Users can interact with a chat bot by typing in their end of the conversation or by providing a voice input, depending on the type of chat bot provided.
Virtual chat bots, like Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa are the two most popular chat bots, interacting via voice inputs and not via text. Typically, the chat bot greets the user and invites him to ask a question. The user replies and the chat bot analyses that reply to find out the intention of the user’s question. Finally, the chat bot provides an answer in some consequential or logical manner, or makes further inquiries before finally answering the question.
However, this back and forth interaction between the chat bot and the user has to be within the scope of design of the chat bot. It makes the user feel understood and helped, and builds a rapport with the user without pretending to be human.
The earliest chat bot dates back to as early as the 1950s. In 1950, Turing’s famous article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” was published, which proposed what is now knows as the Turing Test, as a test of intelligence. This test was used to prove the ability of a computer program to impersonate a human in a real-time written conversation with a human judge, in such a way, that the judge is unable to distinguish – on the basis of conversational content alone – between the computer program and the real human.
The Turing test proved to be the benchmark for the creation of ELIZA in 1966, by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum. The ELIZA chat bot, with only 200 lines of code, took the form of a psychotherapist who responded to its users with questions. It was capable of answering basic questions and asking for users to elaborate on their discussions. However, the program was only so much evolved and was unable to understand the questions it was answering. ELIZA was a ground-breaking invention despite its lack of “real” intelligence. Despite only being capable of using pattern matching and substitution methodology to form new sentences, ELIZA received an overwhelming response, as users were suddenly confiding their most profound thoughts in ELIZA. In the decades that followed, chat bot makers have developed on Weizenbaum’s model to strive for more human-like interactions.
PARRY was developed by American psychiatrist Kenneth Mark Colby in 1972. The program imitated a patient with schizophrenia. It attempted to simulate the disease. It was a natural language program that resembled the thinking of an individual. It embodied a conversational strategy and was much more serious than ELIZA. PARRY worked via a complicated system of assumptions, attributes and “emotional responses” triggered by changing weights assigned to verbal inputs. To validate the work, PARRY was tested using a version of the Turing test. Fifty years ago, Kenneth Colby was the only psychiatrist thinking about how computers would contribute to the understanding of mental illness.
JABBERWACKY was created by developer Rollo Carpenter in 1988. It aimed to stimulate a natural human conversation in an entertaining way. JABBERWACKY has led to innovations in technological growth. Its working-memory-based model leveraged a well-understood trick of human psychology.
DR.SBAITSO was a chat bot created by Creative Labs for Ms-Dos in 1992. It was one of the earliest efforts of incorporating AI into a chat bot, and was recognized for its full voice-operated chat program.
The next notable chat bot was developed by Richard Wallace in 1995, named A.L.I.C.E.(Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity). The program worked with the help of the XML scheme Artificial Intelligence Markup Language(AIML), which helped specify conversation rules. In 1998, the program was edited in JAVA, and in 2001, Wallace printed an AIML specification. From there, other developers drafted free and open sources of ALICE in different programming languages and a variety of foreign languages. The program simulated chatting with a real person over the Internet.
The next stop in the brief history of chat bots is when they made the transition to messaging platforms outside of standalone applications.
The most well-known example of this is SmarterChild, launched in 2001. Closer to the experience we have with chat bots today, SmarterChild was way ahead of its time. It brought NLP to SMS networks and AOL Instant Messenger and served as many users’ introduction to chat bots. In addition to making conversation, SmarterChild carried out many useful tasks, providing news, weather, stock info, sports scores and much more. This demonstrated and popularized chat bots’ potential to serve as sophisticated digital assistants, all via popular messaging channels. It’s also worth noting that SmarterChild was only one of many chat bots developed by Active Buddy, who was eventually acquired by Microsoft. Active Buddy offered many promotional bots as well (including an Austin Powers-themed bot), changing the chat bot definition of the time by establishing them as novel marketing tools, not just conversation partners.
Before chatbots were incorporated into messaging apps, they were built into mobile devices. Siri was the first mainstream assistant built natively into a mobile OS, released in 2010. With Siri, users could interact via text or voice, accomplishing many tasks easily via natural language. Like other mobile assistants to follow, Siri’s feature set extended into tasks that could be performed across the device’s operating system, including apps that users installed on their devices.Capable of scheduling events, booking reservations at local restaurants, utilizing speech-to-text to transcribe text messages and more, Siri has become a staple of iOS devices. Siri relies on natural language processing to understand user requests, listening to them, and utilizing a complex algorithm to understand exactly the kind of answer that the user needs. It also notices a specific user’s dialect, interests, and preferences so it can better custom-tailor the results to the user.
Google Now was launched at Google Inch in 2012. It answers questions, performs actions through requests made to a set of web services and makes recommendations. It was part of a package of updates and UI modifications for mobile search, which included a female-voiced portable assistant to compete with Apple’s Siri. Google Now was initially a way to get contextually appropriate information based on location and time of the day. It evolved to become much more complicated and elaborate, with a broad range of content categories delivered on cards.Sometimes it refers to us as predictive search. Currently, it’s built for use in smartphone and has been upgraded to accommodate several features. Google Now is one of the more aggressive growth methods of Google’s search software.
Cortana was first demonstrated at Microsoft’s Build 2014 developer conference, and it became directly integrated into both Windows phone devices and Windows 10 PCs. This program uses voice recognition and relevant algorithms to get and respond to voice commands.For someone to get started, he or she must type a question in the search box, or select the microphone and talk to Cortana. If a person is not very sure of what to say, he or she will see suggestions on the lock screen, as well as in Cortana home by selecting the search box on the taskbar. Cortana can perform tasks like reminders based on time, places, or people, send emails and texts, create and manage lists, chit-chat, and play games, find facts, files, locations, and info among others.
Alexa is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Amazon. It was introduced in 2014 and is now built in to devices such as the Amazon Echo, the Echo Dot, the Echo Show and more. There is also an Alexa app and more devices from third-party manufacturers that have Alexa built in to them.Using nothing but the sound of the user’s voice, he can search the Web, play music, create to-do shopping lists, set alarms, stream podcasts, play audio-books, get news or weather reports, and many more such functions.
Our brief history of chat bots takes us to the present-day and near-future. In the latest development, mobile assistants are transitioning to other devices like smart speakers. Similarly, niche bots we’re used to talking to via messaging apps are becoming voice apps. Here, the chat bot definition changed again. No longer just assistants for accomplishing tasks, chat bots are serving as the primary interface for managing a whole suite of connected devices. And it’s not just smart speakers in the home, either. Voice assistants and chat bots are gaining traction in wearable devices from the Siri-powered Apple Watch to the Google Assistant-powered Pixel Buds. Together with the Internet of Things, chat bots are set to revolutionize the way we interact with everything around us, perhaps eventually cutting out the need for computers or mobile phones for the average consumer. The future looks bright for chat bots, and we’re excited to see where things are headed next!
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