There is one particular confusing question for many beginner software engineers. And that is whether ChatBot is part of AI (artificial intelligence) or not?
This question is particularly amusing for us, as it opens your eyes and mind to the current world’s understanding of AI as well as the future scope of AI.
What really is AI?
Simply speaking AI can be termed as a computer’s way of coming to a parameterized complex solution. What is meant by this confusing term? Consider the human brain and its working. How do we humans come to conclusion on anything? For some mundane tasks, we do not think just perform. As we have learned that through repetition aka ‘Habit’.
But for a computer, the same is true in a somewhat different way. A computer program that is meant to show AI characteristics will perform some action and when it arrives at the result of this action. It will store this result and perform the same action again with slightly different parameters and arrive at a slightly different result.
the computer will save and compare both the results and then will declare one answer to be more true than the other depending on the parameters and logic it was provided.
What does one mean by ChatBot?
Its main features
A chatbot is a software that acts as a customer service agent online. You can see many chatbots online which are integrated into the website’s contact area. These small programs help drive an appropriate conclusion to your problems through similar previous conversations.
If we take a deep look at a chatbot. It is in fact mimicking human behavior. The chatbot will try to understand your problem and provide relative answers.
Many industries use chatbots online to help in following areas:
- Maintaining a record of customer queries
- Quickly identifying customers problems
- Identifying future customers
- Finding major areas of defects in their services or products
A chatbot’s only job is to keep running on a particular website or software to assist the consumer and keep track of past conversations in order to quickly handle similar problems in the future.
ChatBot AI
Yes, the ChatBot can surely be considered as an AI. Since AI is, in fact, the learning and growing of computer programs in a manner in which it mimics the human way of thinking. A Chatbot basically does this within its own space.
Some ChatBots are even powerful enough that the people chatting with that chatbot don’t really know that they are talking to a bot instead of a real human being. To achieve this level of mastery in ChatBot AI is surely difficult but is already done by various online services/platforms.
Hence, If you think of the Chatbots from this perspective then you can realize that chatBots can be termed as a very basic level AI, or a very high end AI assistant, depending on the performance or quality of the chatbot.
Building chatbots should be encouraged in boot camps or online classes. As it helps new beginners understand the true power of AI with few easy algorithms. Of course, mastering this art would require more time and effort. but a small scale simpler AI chatBot can be up and running within a week by enthusiastic beginner level developers as well.