The last decade saw bots as an integral part of tech companies. For example, IBM has Watson, Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, Samsung has S Voice, Amazon has Alexa, Microsoft has Cortana and Facebook has Portal (backed by Alexa).
Chatbots was first contemplated by Alan Turing, an English computer scientist who authored the paper, “Computer Machinery and Intelligence”, in 1950. In his article, Turing outlined the Turing artificial intelligence test and challenged his students and colleagues by asking whether machines can think.
The Turing test inspired many computer scientists. Among them was Joseph Weizenbaum, who created ELIZA in 1966. ELIZA set out the foundation for the structure of chatbots used today such as pre-programmed responses, keywords, and specific phrases.
Other bots followed thereafter. In 1995, A.L.I.C.E, a language-processing bot, gained popularity. In 2001, Smarterchild, which is considered as a precursor of Siri and S Voice, was distributed across SMS networks.
Bots are taking over the world of customer service, how about yours?
