Applications are dying. Hail bots, fulfills all your desires
Technologies / / December 19, 2019
You are probably already familiar with bots. These virtual assistants are found in a variety of services and respond to text or voice commands. Journalist James Temperton told why robots will soon replace mobile applications.
James Temperton (James Temperton)
British journalist, author of Wired magazine. In the past, I am writing for publications such as Computeractive and Expert Reviews.
People do not want to establish and develop new programs
Dawn applications has passed. Now software for Android and iOS for more than 4.2 million. But three-quarters of users had almost ceased to download new utilities on the Smartphone. And this despite the fact that the majority of applications is freely available, and how to install them is quite simple.
According to comScore, the average we usually use only three programs, with one of them, almost 50% of screen time. What type of applications the hottest? It messengers.
With the increasing popularity of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Skype developers have started to turn when a simple chat application in complex ecosystems. And at the center of these changes - a horde of service bots.
Bots do not require installation and speak to us in one language
For some investors and developers bot - this clever creation with elements of artificial intelligence, which understands almost any verbal requests. For others it is deliberately simplified interface that responds only to a limited set of commands.
Boat first type will attempt to simulate a live conversation. A second type of bot is able to communicate with you only a simple list of options: "What kind of pizza do you want? Press 1 for "Margarita", 2 for "Diablo"... ".
It opens great prospects. After a few years robots will be everywhere.
Phil Libin (Phil Libin)
New interfaces are composed of intricate graphics menu. They will have the form of dialogue. And you do not have to download a new application, understand it and create another account just to order a pizza. It will be enough to open the messenger and write a bot or simply voice your request.
Virtual assistants can destroy the stubborn barrier between man and machine and make thousands of unnecessary programs. Slack, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram - Bots are becoming the main interface of these and other services.
For bots are the largest technology companies
Microsoft, Facebook and Google, one after another entered the race of new platforms.
In March of tools for developing bots laid out in an open Microsoft Access. In April, a boat-platform announced Facebook. And in May, Google revealed Assistant - a new personal assistant with artificial intelligence.
But the West is playing catch-up. Chinese messengers broke out far ahead.
Chinese WeChat messenger serves 762 million people. It allows them to order a taxi, buy a plane ticket and concerts, to transfer money to charity and to run the game without having to open other programs.
Bots in China filling the gap between the digital and the real world. Restaurants use the QR-code for bots WeChat, so customers can quickly access the menu, order food and pay for it - all in a live chat with the bot.
Large cloud platform will be able to provide the necessary brain power for a huge number of bots.
Tim O'Reilly (Tim O'Reilly)
Progress smart cloud assistant Siri, Google Now and Cortana - the result of large investments in artificial intelligence and processing of natural speech. Huge amounts of data already accumulated by these platforms, will help introduce conversational interfaces in the new services.
We are waiting for new boats and new opportunities
- Over the next 6-12 months, I think you will see a new wave of ideas associated with bots. Ideas of well-designed and implemented, intended to be treated seriously - says Libin.
Today, robots are mainly text. I think of them as a browser as it was 20 years ago. In it were the only line of multi-colored text, and then people add images, video and animations. Rewind 15 years from now - if it was possible to create any application in the browser. Applications for the chat will look like way.
Ted Livingston (Ted Livingston)
Not only that messengers huge audience, so still and development bots cheaper to build applications. This should speed up the progress.
Libin as one of the leading investors in the industry doubts the transformative potential of bots: "There will be hundreds of millions of bots. It will resemble a gold rush of applications, but even larger scale. " According to him, as in the case of applications, many boats will be useless. "But a few hundred really good must change the world" - says Libin.