Hi Guys,

I want to build a chatbot providing financial advice, Can you please propose a platform to do so? I want to start small in terms of the domain knowledge but grow as time progresses.

Thanks
Nitin Kasturey

Everyone will have different ideas but either AIML or Chatscript would suffice, assuming you have experience in them (or know someone who does).

Bear in mind that such a complicated subject as offering financial advice which people will rely on is a dangerous task for a chatbot, unless you give it a prerecorded script and allow little deviation by the user.

If you plan on handling something like:

User: I have just inherited $100,000 and wish to invest part of it in blue chip shares whilst providing a moderate monthly income for myself.

Then I think you are very brave.

Thanks Steve.

I plan to start with a small/specific domain. Where do I acquire these tools from ? Do they allow knowledge representation and inference engines ? are there any good books/documentation on them?

Nitin Kasturey - Nov 10, 2011:

Hi Guys,

I want to build a chatbot providing financial advice, Can you please propose a platform to do so? I want to start small in terms of the domain knowledge but grow as time progresses.

Thanks
Nitin Kasturey

You know what!, this would be the single most important factor that would allow life to be born on the internet. You would have to set up a strong Singularity rooted kernel and have it hosted in a financial organization supported by a machine structure (internet2). Otherwise how could you expect to be able to survive the future,- if you want the future itself to live for you to exist in.

You have to create the financial structure that will help your mind survive death much the same way ALCOR makes your body survive death.

Geez…. how do you know that isn’t already happening

peetee Le Trickfox

Hi Nithin,

I would study these 75 chatbots in financial services very carefully:
http://www.chatbots.org/industry/finance_legal/

(available through our home page).

It’s my experience that in financial service accuracy is far more important than engagement. I’m not sure whether AIML is the right solutions then.

But you want to develop a chatbot just to talk a bit about someones financial situation, it might be a good idea.

Unless you intend your financial adviser chatbot to be strictly for entertainment purposes only (and state as much, clearly and simply), you may possibly open yourself to potential lawsuits, should someone follow the advice of your bot, and then lose large amounts of money. When you start messing with people’s paychecks there’s always the potential for things to go wrong, and where money is concerned, most folks have little to no sense of humor.

Nitin Kasturey - Nov 11, 2011:

Thanks Steve.

I plan to start with a small/specific domain. Where do I acquire these tools from ? Do they allow knowledge representation and inference engines ? are there any good books/documentation on them?

AIML would serve you well as a “wrapper” for whatever financial software the bot would access. Do you have financial software that you’d like to integrate with natural language I/O? Or are you looking to build the financial software as well? Because that’s a whole other can of worms—one that people get paid very well to work on. (Don’t plan on building “Jane” from scratch. )

If you’re looking for a “wrapper” though, AIML would probably get the job done. With AIML, you could use a series of questions to direct the bot to give appropriate commands to the financial software, and then formulate the output as natural language. Someone with more AIML experience could probably provide more specific ideas.

AIML isn’t the only option. Other platforms that were designed by forum members include ChatScript and JAIL. There are threads for both on this forum.