Three Tough Questions That The Rise Of Chatbots Forces Us To Confront
- By Nicole Collins
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- 06 Nov, 2017
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New technologies have a way of forcing us to confront tough questions. When phones became mini hand-held computers, questions about their place in work and school environments arose. When livestream functionality was added to Facebook, criminals looking for shock factor and infamy began using it to broadcast horrendous acts of violence in real time. Since throwing out these technologies in favor of confronting these questions isn’t a practical solution, we have to face them head on. Here’s a look at three tough questions we’re now confronting with the rising popularity of chatbots.
The Ethics Of Digital Labor
The elephant in the room when it comes to chatbots is the effect chatbots might have on the customer service industry, more specifically, the human element of the customer service industry. It has already faced resistance as many customer service jobs were outsourced overseas where labor is cheaper. What happens when it’s outsourced for free to machines? For the time-being at least, chatbot technology isn’t advanced enough to completely replace the need for human customer service agents but some companies are already cutting back and as technology improves, what will become of human workers in the customer service industry?
Implications Of Machines That Pass The Turing Test
Alan Turing, the famed computer scientist who broke the Nazi’s code and helped bring an end to WWII, proposed a simple test for determining true artificial intelligence: if a person can carry on a conversation with a machine, either verbally or through written text, and not tell if it is human or machine, it passes the test. The most advanced chatbots are already close to capable of passing this test. Once they can, will chatbots be required to divulge to humans that they are communicating with a bot?
The Emulation Of Empathy And Emotion
Many brands are already programming their chatbots to simulate empathy and emotion, not just resolve customer issues in a cold and calculating manner. Emotional artificial intelligence is a major obstacle for AI researchers. Psychologists still don’t agree on what emotion is in humans. AI researchers will be tackling the issue of programming a machine to feel, or at least act like they do so that speaking with them will feel more natural and consumers will be more inclined to seek out assistance from chatbots in the future.
Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com
Source: zdnet.com/article/cognitive-chatbots-in-customer-service-beyond-the-hype-and-behind-the-scenes/
The Ethics Of Digital Labor
The elephant in the room when it comes to chatbots is the effect chatbots might have on the customer service industry, more specifically, the human element of the customer service industry. It has already faced resistance as many customer service jobs were outsourced overseas where labor is cheaper. What happens when it’s outsourced for free to machines? For the time-being at least, chatbot technology isn’t advanced enough to completely replace the need for human customer service agents but some companies are already cutting back and as technology improves, what will become of human workers in the customer service industry?
Implications Of Machines That Pass The Turing Test
Alan Turing, the famed computer scientist who broke the Nazi’s code and helped bring an end to WWII, proposed a simple test for determining true artificial intelligence: if a person can carry on a conversation with a machine, either verbally or through written text, and not tell if it is human or machine, it passes the test. The most advanced chatbots are already close to capable of passing this test. Once they can, will chatbots be required to divulge to humans that they are communicating with a bot?
The Emulation Of Empathy And Emotion
Many brands are already programming their chatbots to simulate empathy and emotion, not just resolve customer issues in a cold and calculating manner. Emotional artificial intelligence is a major obstacle for AI researchers. Psychologists still don’t agree on what emotion is in humans. AI researchers will be tackling the issue of programming a machine to feel, or at least act like they do so that speaking with them will feel more natural and consumers will be more inclined to seek out assistance from chatbots in the future.
Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com
Source: zdnet.com/article/cognitive-chatbots-in-customer-service-beyond-the-hype-and-behind-the-scenes/
For most small businesses with a social media strategy, it’s the business owner that has to manage social media accounts on top of all of his/her other responsibilities since there often isn’t room in the budget for a full time social media specialist. When social media is the responsibility of the owner or another employee who must balance it with other job functions, care must be taken to not let social media absorb too much time, especially if it’s not producing measurable results. The following tips will help you achieve more with your social media strategy while doing less.
Create a social media schedule
It’s very easy to open up Facebook with the intention of responding to a few comments on a post you’ve created to find yourself several hours later doing something completely different. To prevent this, try creating a social media schedule where you set aside a set amount of time in regular increments (it could be daily, or perhaps every other day) to work on
social media accounts. In addition to scheduling specific times for social media, you can specify which things you will
take care of during each of those blocks of time. By taking the time once at the beginning of each month to plan out your
social media efforts for that month, you’ll ultimately save time.
Choose your channels carefully
The problem may be that you’re trying to manage too many social media accounts in the first place. There are many social media platforms and no rule that you have to be active on every single one of them. Even major brands will sometimes ignore platforms that are less profitable for them. Different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses and different user bases. When the time you have to dedicate to social media marketing, is limited, you have to be more selective about where you’re spending your time. Look at the platforms you’re currently using. Which ones tend to attract the time of customer you’re looking for. Which ones are seeing the best customer engagement? When you link to your company website from social media, which platforms are driving the most traffic?” These are the platforms you want to prioritize and you can cut back--or cut out entirely--all other platforms to allow you to focus on those that matter more to your brand’s success.
Focus on quality over quantity
The ideal for social media is to frequently post high quality content, but if there’s only time for quantity or quality,
always go for quality. It’s far better to have one excellent, well thought-out and carefully worded post per day than
several hastily thrown together posts every day. Another thing that’s more important than quantity is consistency. Make
sure that you’re not posting a lot one day, and then nothing for several days. One good post per day may be all your brand needs to succeed on social media.
Automate where possible
There are a number of tools that allow you to schedule social media posts in advance so you don’t have to log into all of
your accounts every day in order to post every day. As part of your monthly or weekly social media planning, you can use these tools to plan out and schedule posts for the remainder of the week or month so you can literally set it and forget it to focus on other things.
Another way to automate social media efforts is through designing a chatbot to operate on a social media’s chat platform such as Facebook Messenger. If you have a chatbot that can answer customers’ questions for you, then you can get by without signing into social media every day without upsetting customers who might otherwise feel ignored.
Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter. com
Source: entrepreneur. com/article/295067
Create a social media schedule
It’s very easy to open up Facebook with the intention of responding to a few comments on a post you’ve created to find yourself several hours later doing something completely different. To prevent this, try creating a social media schedule where you set aside a set amount of time in regular increments (it could be daily, or perhaps every other day) to work on
social media accounts. In addition to scheduling specific times for social media, you can specify which things you will
take care of during each of those blocks of time. By taking the time once at the beginning of each month to plan out your
social media efforts for that month, you’ll ultimately save time.
Choose your channels carefully
The problem may be that you’re trying to manage too many social media accounts in the first place. There are many social media platforms and no rule that you have to be active on every single one of them. Even major brands will sometimes ignore platforms that are less profitable for them. Different platforms have different strengths and weaknesses and different user bases. When the time you have to dedicate to social media marketing, is limited, you have to be more selective about where you’re spending your time. Look at the platforms you’re currently using. Which ones tend to attract the time of customer you’re looking for. Which ones are seeing the best customer engagement? When you link to your company website from social media, which platforms are driving the most traffic?” These are the platforms you want to prioritize and you can cut back--or cut out entirely--all other platforms to allow you to focus on those that matter more to your brand’s success.
Focus on quality over quantity
The ideal for social media is to frequently post high quality content, but if there’s only time for quantity or quality,
always go for quality. It’s far better to have one excellent, well thought-out and carefully worded post per day than
several hastily thrown together posts every day. Another thing that’s more important than quantity is consistency. Make
sure that you’re not posting a lot one day, and then nothing for several days. One good post per day may be all your brand needs to succeed on social media.
Automate where possible
There are a number of tools that allow you to schedule social media posts in advance so you don’t have to log into all of
your accounts every day in order to post every day. As part of your monthly or weekly social media planning, you can use these tools to plan out and schedule posts for the remainder of the week or month so you can literally set it and forget it to focus on other things.
Another way to automate social media efforts is through designing a chatbot to operate on a social media’s chat platform such as Facebook Messenger. If you have a chatbot that can answer customers’ questions for you, then you can get by without signing into social media every day without upsetting customers who might otherwise feel ignored.
Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter. com
Source: entrepreneur. com/article/295067
