Chatbots.org Business News

For this series of blog posts, I interview professionals working in the exciting world of chatbots. This week I talked with Alex Galert, founder and CEO of BRAIN: a platform that enables businesses to create chatbots.

BRAIN is basically a chatbot management system: customers can create, implement and update chatbots for their business or client’s business via the BRAIN website or iOS & Android app. But there is more! It’s also a marketplace builder, webshop builder and it can be used to implement processes based on Blockchain.

We have started to work on Crowd Funding: an excellent opportunity for believers in Chatbots.org and for all people working on the website. Never heard of Crowd Funding before? Check out this nice example:

The assignments are likely to be 2-3 months, possibly part-time.

The roles are:

- C# ASP.NET developer, to work primarily on the web based management/authoring tool for our chatbots. You need solid C# ASP.NET skills but the project is not over complex so would suit a more junior coder.
- Unity developer, with a focus on scripting/coding (C#) more than 3D design. Experience of deploying Unity on the web and for iOS/Android would also be highly desirable. May extend in to 2013.

Both roles are likely to start in mid/late September, and will be based at our offices in Birmingham, although some home working may be possible.

You must hold British citizenship and will be required to bring your passport to any initial interview.

Apply through http://www.daden.co.uk

Further details may be posted on our website in due course.

Creative Virtual is excited to announce that they recently become the Chatbots.org Advanced Business Member with the most contribution points. Chatbots.org is a website set up and maintained by Erwin Van Lun and his team as an industrial catalyst to advance the industry of Intelligent Virtual Characters. In 2011, Chatbots.org launched their Advanced Membership Program which allows companies to become more visible on the site, complete an enhanced membership profile and have access to statistics on their profile including lead reporting. Contribution points are earned by individuals associated with the company for activities such as adding new virtual assistant listings, submitting items for the business news section and leaving comments in various areas around the site. All companies added to the site as being involved with Intelligent Virtual Characters in some capacity are included on the Companies page with Advanced Business Members appearing at the top of the list sorted by years of commitment and contribution points.

With this article I would like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how a system like Elbot is enhanced with new capabilities. I’ll do this by walking through one of Elbot’s newer features: color learning. If you would like to try the feature before reading all the spoilers, please visit Elbot.com, and ask Elbot if he can learn.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy from University of Louisville says that we should be aware of dangerously self-aware chatbots and he suggests to keep dangerous AI entities in virtual prison for avoiding social-engineering attacks. According to him, we should improve cybersecurity, because one day disobeying virtual agents could threaten humanity’s existence.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolski from University of Louisville claims that artificial conversational entities, shopping bots, and intelligent software applications became closer in their abilities and intelligence to human beings. Therefore arised the need to recognize and verify the identity of such entities just like it is necessary to authenticate the identity of people.

New, future oriented field of artimetrics, i.e. artificial biometrics, focuses on recognition, verification, and authentication of virtual agents, robots and other nonbiological entities. As a sub-field of cybersecurity, artimetrics is being developed in Cyber-Security Lab, which prides itself on being the world’s first to conduct this kind of research.

MyCyberTwin, a new generation of artificial intelligence technology, today announced the launch of its Turing Test Challenge. The contest gives developers the needed tools and instruction to leverage MyCybertwin’s AI Platform to build intelligent virtual agents (IVA’s) and compete head-to-head with other developer agents.

Wikipedia defines the ‘Turing Test’ as a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. It was first introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence highlighting the ability for machines to think. 

“Developers love working with new technology platforms. They are constantly looking for state-of-the-art products and services they can perfect,” said Liesl Capper, CEO. “Thanks to the inspirational work by the likes of Alan Turing, and the recent launch of Siri, today artificial intelligence is ready for prime time and quickly be adopted by businesses.  The ‘Turing Test Challenge’ allows developer to take advantage of MyCyberTwin’s AI solutions to build virtual agents to compete against other developers. Since creating this concept, the response we have already gotten is tremendous.  We are extremely excited to see what happens when developers get their hands on our technology.” 

The ALICE A.I. Foundation has released a demo of Three Bots Talking.

Chatbot ALICE, chatbot Fake Captain Kirk and chat bot Fake Spock chat together to generate spontaneous, interactive drama. Some of it make no sense, some of it is hilarious, but all of it is highly entertaining. You never know where the conversations is headed with these three.

Three Bots Talking is built on Pandorabots AIML technology in conjunction with Oddcast Sitepal avatars.

An innovative business case calculator has been created by technology company Daden Limited to help organisations understand the potential savings that using an interactive virtual agent – or chatbot - can deliver.

Chatbots are computer applications that can act as a first line of support providing instant responses to questions, without the need for staff intervention, reducing pressure on resources. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week they can also collect information, provide links to pages and answer queries using natural language conversation, whilst allowing human staff to focus on more complex queries.

Research has shown that the average cost-per-contact using a chatbot is under 60p, compared to over £3.50 for live text-chat or over £4 for a telephone contact – almost 84% reduction in costs.  But clients often want to know what the actual benefits and savings would be for their own business.