Force Monkey: Messaging with AI Driven Chatbots

Chatbots are a class of intelligent, conversational software agents activated by natural language input.

A chatbot is a service that you interact with via a chat interface. Texting on a console or speaking directly ala "Alexa" or "Siri" are common examples. The chatbot service can serve any number of functions (informational, practical, or even fun) and it can live in any major chat product. The chatbot itself is powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence.

An intelligent chatbot is one that learns conversations all the time to improve its performance.
The modules in a chatbot including user modeling modules and the natural language understanding module which can perform better by learning continuously.

Machine learning (ML) algorithms and human supervisors enable the learning of the chatbot. ML techniques like reinforcement learning supervised, and unsupervised techniques can be leveraged to ensure the AI chatbot becomes a good learner.

The ability to learn is a key factor in creating an intelligent chatbot. With neural networks and deep learning, chatbots can become good learners. Learning is paramount to ensure that the chatbot recognizes patterns in data it receives and responds to user requests in the most appropriate way.

How do we determine if a chatbot is intelligent?

Chatbots adhere to a three-step process for realizing their goal. This sense-think-act cycle defines the intelligence of a chatbot. An AI chatbot goes through this cycle to make progress towards pre-defined goals autonomously.

For an AI chatbot, sensing the environment where it resides becomes a prerequisite for getting the information required to perform a task. The chatbot finds it easy to listen to what the user says than make sense what is being conveyed by the user.

Examples of Chatbots

Here are a couple of examples:

Weather bot: Get the weather whenever you ask.
Grocery bot: Help me pick out and order groceries for the week.
News bot: Ask it to tell you when ever something interesting happens.
Life advice bot: I’ll tell it my problems and it helps me think of solutions.
Personal finance bot: It helps me manage my money better.
Scheduling bot: Get me a meeting with someone on the Messenger team at Facebook.
A bot that’s your friend: In China there is a bot called Xiaoice, built by Microsoft, that over 20 million people talk to.

Chatbots possibilities in Healthcare

Virtual assistance for Care Teams
What is my patient caseload toady?
Did any patients cancel appointments today?
Who is the cardiologist on call tonight?
Did my paycheck arrive yet?
Pull the lab results for Mr. Smith Jones.
Schedule a follow up appointment with Dr. Dre.
What is my outstanding balance?
Explain this claim i just received.
What is the status of my claim?
Is the doctor's office open on Fridays?
Can my heart medication be taken with aspirin?

Chatbot Architecture

There are two types of chatbots, one functions based on a set of rules, and the other more advanced version uses machine learning.

Rules-Based Chatbot:

This bot is very very limited. It can only respond to very specific commands. If you say the wrong thing, it doesn’t know what you mean. This bot is only as smart as it is programmed to be.

Machine Learning Chatbot:

This bot utilizes massive amounts of collected data and intelligent processing to provide responses. You don’t have to be as specific as you might with a rules-based chatbot; it understands natural language, as well as commands. This bot continuously gets smarter as it learns from conversations it has with people.