Without conversation, there is no market.in artificial intelligence

The war for conversational AI market 

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple are all vying for market share in the conversational AI market

Amazon Alexa claims to be smartest  in response to Google with 15,000 new features

Google claimed a few weeks before Google Assistant is light-years ahead of Amazon's Alexa

and quoted Alexa with only 10,000 new feature

What these features mean for having conversations with a bot? Nothing substantial,really. In fact nobody even lists them, because no one will ever memorize 15,000 items

Talking to a wall

Say you feel lonely on rainy afternoon. You try having a conversation to say Google.Talking to Google is like reading a phone directory. No one reads a phone directory for enjoyment. 

We may learn XXX’s phone is 1234567890. We do not know if this number is still valid. We don't know who XXX is, what she likes, what are her hobbies, interests. These are Q&A bot interactions. They are dry, lifeless and do not engage. 

Q&A means we ask a question and we get an answer. That's all. There is no conversation.

Why this happens?

It is impossible to ask Google or Alexa to know everything. As new information is added , the app is less and less effective. The domain must be restricted a certain audience with similar interest

We must Design for “human fidelity conversations,” where a bot is able to engage a human about a specific topic of mutual interest, rather than attempt to hold an open-ended discussion about anything

.

The question is not whether I can trick you into thinking a bot is human. The question is whether I can engage you on a particular topic in a way that is comparably compelling as speaking to a human who’s also interested in the same subject.

Why restore conversations

Because human transactions and communications used to be personal. 

• They used to treat us like human beings. 
• The “market” was really a function of the conversations comprising it, 
• Without conversation, there was no market. 

With the rise of mass-education web-commerce, the personal, relationship aspect of business waned.

What most of us got was advertising and big-box merchandising, not personal service.

We need to restore the conversation feeling with AI interactions

How we recommend doing it? 

This will be a a different post in the future. 

Can we formulate questions that deliver useful answers, whether from whomever? Yes

The purpose is to discover information not available from Q&A robots aka QandA. 

There must be a conversation among humans, by creating social groups  where a bot can offer limited moderation and later can extract information not available before.

How to Ask Questions

This is just a sample

• Don’t ramble on–terminate the sentence at the question mark.
• Get comfortable with silence.
• Re-ask in a different way
• Don’t fish for the answer you want.
• If you don’t understand–ask a follow-up 
• Rephrase the answer in your own words.
• Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions.