2 min readPeople have been dreaming up different applications for artificial intelligence for decades—but the reality of what it’s accomplishing is changing both our present and our future.
Who hasn’t used a chatbot to troubleshoot a problem or request information? Chatbots are an AI-assisted application for answering common pre-defined questions, used most frequently for self-service customer support. Chatbots optimize efficiency while satisfying customers more quickly.
Chatbots traditionally offered a text-based interface. However, voice-activated chatbots and conversational commerce add a level of intimacy and personalization to interactions, comprehending entire exchanges, tones, and languages. According to Gartner, by 2021, early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%.
Voice interfaces can even serve as pseudo therapists, as in the way of Replika, an AI “friend” that listens to you.
Natural language processing (NLP) is driving the charge, putting voice control in the spotlight as one of the best innovations in the immediate future. NLP is enabled by cognitive computing, technology that processes language the way humans do—making sense out of something that is naturally unstructured.
Cognitive computing is the next step.
While digital assistants like Siri and Alexa have pre-programmed responses to certain commands, cognitive computing will interpret sentiment and emotion as well as anomalies in speech that aren’t fixed to specific responses.
Cognitive computing will also translate to text, where it can interpret written word as well as spoken word. These software robots can study large amounts of irregular data and understand it the way a human would—in a fraction of the time.
This future relies on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cognitive computing. Curious to learn more about the possibilities of AI in creating humanistic technology? Check out our white paper, “What if Software was Human?”