Chatbot, Virtual Agent, ChatterBot,
and AI Bot.
What do these phrases even mean?
Are they the same thing?
Can I use them interchangeably?
Let's find out.
Hi, I'm Morgan with IBM.
So to figure this out, we've got to
talk about the progression
of chatbots over time.
So the very first chatbot to be
invented was actually in nineteen
sixty six and her name
was Eliza.
So Eliza's sole purpose
was to provide responses
to users based on different
keywords. So since she was the first
chatbot, they were like, "Hey, let's
see if we can make something
automated that's going to respond to
what users say." So
think of it as like a bunch of if
then statements.
If we say to Eliza,
for instance, "I like Apples."
She's going to take the key word
Apples and then give us some sort
of response based on that.
She's literally just looking for a
keyword and giving us a canned
response.
If I say something about
"I have two dogs and their names
are Apollo and Mr. Hubbell."
She's going to take the key word
dogs and then give me some response
based on that.
So it's not super customizable.
You know, she's not going to have
like a human conversation with me,
but she's going to be able to do
some relatively basic things.
So this is called a Rule-based
Chatbot.
Next, we're going to fast forward to
the 2000s.
Now this chatbot was named
ALICE.
ALICE stands for
Artificial Language Internet
Computer Entity.
Which is a lot of words to say
that Alice's sole purpose was
to use pattern recognition to
have conversations with people,
that was literally it. She was just
there to act as a human
just in order to communicate.
She actually serves as the
foundation.
The technology that she's based on
is the foundation for most chatbots
these days.
There is a concept of something
called the Turing test.
And what that means is if
a chatbot can be
tested by humans and the human
can't determine whether it's a human
on the other side or a chatbot,
then they fail the Turing test.
But if I'm performing
this test on a chatbot and I can't
tell if it's a human or a chatbot,
then they pass.
Unfortunately, ALICE did not pass,
but she did win a lot of awards
for her work.
Now, I'm sure everyone is familiar
with Apple's Siri.
So this was kind of the first
entry into using a
chatbot as a personal assistant.
You know, you take out your phone,
you say, "Hey, Siri, I'd
like to place an order, or
what is the weather?
Can you send a text message and
stuff like that?" So
she was kind of the first in this
sense to give us a
sort of concierge experience,
and that kind of led into
also in the 2010s Home Assistants.
So, when I say home assistant,
think about mostly
a smart speaker, most
of us have either an Alexa
or Google Home or
something like that in our home.
So if I tell my Alexa,
"Hey, Alexa, start my day"
she's going to be able to do a ton
of different things.
She can turn my thermostat
to a different temperature.
She can turn on all the lights.
She can tell me what the news is,
the weather and all that kind of
stuff. So this is when we start
getting into more intelligent
chatbots, which leads
us to twenty sixteen.
Now in twenty sixteen, We
had what is called the AI
boom.
AI, artificial intelligence, what
this means is that we are
essentially integrating AI
into everything
in our daily lives, so whether it's
a smart device
or a chatbot, AI
is there.
So, when
we think about, "what
is a virtual agent?"
Let's say we have our chatbot,
and her name is going to be Sally.
I can tell Sally
a number of different things, and
she's going to be able to understand
what I mean, no matter how
I say it.
So over here, you know, Rule-Based,
we would have to look for a specific
keyword like apple or something like
that. But like, what do you do with
the apple or what do I want the
apple to be, you know, a specific
type. Well, Sally is really
smart. She's using Natural Language
Processing to figure out exactly
what it is that I want.
She can connect to a
bunch of different services, so
think if
you want to make a..check
a order status.
For instance, I ordered some shoes
and I'm wondering, where are they?
They haven't gotten here.
I can ask Sally, "Hey Sally, where
are my shoes?" She can connect
to the specific
shop's database and check
the status of where my shoes are.
And then say, "Oh,
your shoes were delivered.
You have to check your front porch",
something like that.
Like I said before, she can also
control different smart devices, so
if I am hungry, I say,
"Sally, start the
oven, preheat the oven to 350."
She's able to go into
this specific integration and
communicate with the oven.
That leads us to what
about what's going to happen in the
future?
So we could have,
potentially chips embedded into
our brains so that we don't have
to communicate with a chatbot via
voice or text or anything,
it can just read our minds..."Like
and subscribe." And know exactly
what we want without us having to
say anything at all, possibility.
So back to the original question,
"We've got Chatbots, Virtual Agents,
ChatterBots and AI Bots.
What's the difference?" We started
with a rule-based chatbot over
here, which is very simple, looking
for specific keywords or specific
patterns, but it's not really
doing very much.
It's just taking some input and
giving us something out.
And this is what Eliza and ALICE are
doing.
Over here, we've got our virtual
agents or AI bots.
Now they're intelligent.
They use natural language
processing. They can connect to
a ton of different services
and do many, many things.
So that's what Siri and our home
assistants are doing, and we're
currently in the AI boom.
And that's the difference between
all of these terms.
Thank you.
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