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Comment by olavgg | Hacker News Reader

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olavgg

Chatbots do work, those who say it doesn't work have just tried the really bad ones.

Examples of chatbots that do work

Nuance's Nina https://www.windstream.com/Support/

Jenn (unknown who is behind it) https://www.alaskaair.com/

Our James https://master.boost.ai/

View on HN

James: Hi!

James: My name is James and I can help you with bank and insurance questions. Write to me in either Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish or English.

Me: Hey, I am French, and am living half in the US and half in France, do I need to purchase insurance in the US?

James: We offer a full range of insurances to meet all your needs.

James: Select an option: Cars other vehicles Home insurance Travel insurance Health insurance File insurance claim

I get the same response when I ask "does my insurance work outside of new york state". It doesn't seem any more intelligent than finding keywords.

Currently our intents match banking and insurance questions related to the nordic market. This type of question needs training data that is specific to the US region. There is no problem supporting it technically, it is just lack of training data.

That's not the point. The UI is not appropriate. It makes me feel like I can ask this type of question, where in fact it cannot.

I'm sure that if I asked the same question replacing France and US by Norway and Sweden, I'd get the same answer.

You right about that, you ask a difficult question that a even human could not answer correctly as it isn't precise enough.

All I actually do know from that question is that it is related to insurance cover abroad. But do you mean car insurance? Travel insurance? Health insurance? As we do not have an intent for "unknown insurance cover abroad" yet, we fail to help you further. This happen sometimes for many contexts, but we work hard to improve this. We do cover this kind of questions very well when people have login issues, as this is the most common inquiry we have in production. It can be a range of problems from token issues, cell phone issues, technical issues on the website or that the account is simply blocked. But we often manage to help people find the final solution without involving a human.

My point is, we can solve this today, we just need more training data. Chatbots are not perfect, but with more training data they will become better, and be a highly praised service. Finding information using natural language is the future. I'm confident that we will solve most of the edge case inquires soon.

Yeah right. I think everybody's answer to that is: I'll believe it when I see it.

Pass the Turing test and maybe, just maybe a chat bit interface will make sense

But....but....they shipped something? However awful it is, they ticked that box and have their awful POS UI live for the world to see. And backed by fancy technology and expensive devs.

Wendy: Hello, I am Wendy our Virtual Agent. I am here to help you with your support questions on High-Speed Internet, Digital TV and Home Phone.

You: Can I get cheap internet without tv and phone?

Wendy: To inquire about or change your current service plan, please contact a customer service representative at (800) 347-1991, or find us at your local retail store.

To locate a Windstream store near you click here.

James didn't do so great: http://i65.tinypic.com/10ojr52.jpg

It's just a search engine with a worse user experience. Reminds me of Ask Jeeves, but more patronizing.

That is a good question, I don't understand why it isn't already covered, but I told our AI trainers that they should add training data for this asap :-)

>Jenn (unknown who is behind it)

If you meant who built it... http://nextit.com/work/alaska-airlines

Thanks!

me: how do I open a savings account?

James: I´m happy to help you regarding savings account.

James: Select an option: Order account Change account Other inquiries

Option 1: Links to google.no without a search term.

Option 2: "Chat with one of my colleagues in online bank, or call us at 00000 if you would like to make changes to your savings account."

Option 3: More options that lead to phrases such as "Interest rate on savings account is X %."

Sorry, but this just cements the fact that chatbots are utterly useless.

Jenn failed my test.

Me: what are some good tourist destinations?

Jenn: I am not sure I understand your question.

Me: where can I fly to cheaply?

Jenn: I am not positive that I understand what you are asking.

Me: do you have any package deals?

Jenn: Takes me to deals page; but I was looking for package deals including hotel and car

Jenn also failed my questions. It doesn't really seem to chat with you, it just likes to direct you to which page it thinks yuo want to use.

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