Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead
by colechristensen on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:24PM
(#16117451)
That is a good analogy.
Chat bots are on a spectrum between command line and a real human assistant. If I hire an assistant, I probably don't need a manual telling me how to interact with them. A command line is pure mystery. I might be stretching a bit for the metaphor, but the difference is how well they understand human language.
A commandline requires, essentially, learning a new language in order to converse with a computer. A human only requires a small amount of learning in getting the social dynamic relationship right.
Chat bots, virtual assistants, etc. are all pretending to be much closer to the human side of language understanding than they are and they won't be all that useful until they make quite a bit of progress. (and actually I would appreciate a much more commandline-like interface with a voice assistant for now because I'd bet it would be much more likely to give me what I want)
Chat bots are on a spectrum between command line and a real human assistant. If I hire an assistant, I probably don't need a manual telling me how to interact with them. A command line is pure mystery. I might be stretching a bit for the metaphor, but the difference is how well they understand human language.
A commandline requires, essentially, learning a new language in order to converse with a computer. A human only requires a small amount of learning in getting the social dynamic relationship right.
Chat bots, virtual assistants, etc. are all pretending to be much closer to the human side of language understanding than they are and they won't be all that useful until they make quite a bit of progress. (and actually I would appreciate a much more commandline-like interface with a voice assistant for now because I'd bet it would be much more likely to give me what I want)