Is it hilarious that we are entering into a time and place in this world where conversations are best automated? Perhaps so but maybe the potential efficiencies out-way the ludicrousness of messaging a company bot to complain or a business to make a appointment. Or is this just the beginning of a much bigger social-technological interaction?

Humble Beginnings to Forward-thinking Interactions

Just like humanities progress before the advent of fire, we find ourselves at the start of the bot race. I echo the sentiment of a famous computer science professor with a minor twist: machines will become the slaves of the automated information era”.

When thinking about this statement I always wondered what that new medium would be, if we take the previous statement in the literal sense? I think we are at the beginning of finding out the answer: ai-powered human exchanges based upon utility. The bots that we are seeing currently are but only the tip of the iceberg of what the future could hold.

We are in the humble beginnings of this space. I predict over the next few years we will see separate, disparate bots built for single-purpose application. There will be a few select bots that try to be multi-role but in the end do not offer complete customization or knowledge excellence. I call this Human Interaction (HI) I.

The next leap in human-bot interactions will heavily rely upon the previous tenants of HI I, with the important addition of the ability to adapt it’s data integrations. These sorts of bots are able to detect the nature of the topic and find the relevant data endpoint (APIs) and knowledgeably respond. This level will kickstart general adoption and I call it Human Interaction (HI) II. To get to this stage an ecosystem of bot-related technology, sharable features, and tools easing creation.

What does it take for a bit reach Human Interaction (HI) III? When I think of forward-thinking ai interactions I envision a system like Halo’s Cortana (not Microsoft’s). Cortana is a fully functional ai that can answer anything you ask, complete any task, and provide advice based on prior interactions. It can learn what you like and make adjustments to its nature. Importantly, systems like this seemingly have emotions, sass, and a personality. This is not a preprogrammed snarky response. It is a real, adapting, and ever changing personality developed by the everyday interactions it has with its end user.

The Connected System That Could Be

The main problem that I foresee plaguing bot developers of current and future is effectively and easily connecting their service with other services. We are starting to see this fixed with simple portals collecting known-bots and related services together, such as Botlist

No user will want to communicate with a separate agent, for a separate reason, in different systems. Singularity must be achievable to achieve mass-adoption.

Feel free to take that quote of mine. As I started out developing my test-bed bot: a Bitcoin bot named Bitcoiner, I quickly realized my bot would only serve a niche, and needs significantly more interactions to be truly useful: stock market analysis, currency exchange, etc. I thought to myself: “Would it not be amazing to have a central service to easily pass my users query off to a device specifically tailored to that question?”.

Ruby gems and NPM are but two examples of systems that make it easy to incorporate prior-created functionality to your application. 21 Inc created Bitcoin-payable API end points. Let’s fuse these concepts together and create a payable endpoint package manager that anyone can use to create a smarter, more useful product.

Let’s Build This World Together

I get so excited when I think about all the possibilities that a bot-filled future could enable. I especially get flustered when thinking about a package-like system that could enable a synergistic development effort.

Let’s work together to grow this technology together and enable a better, more efficient world.