Can someone explain to me what bots are for. It looks like using something similar to a REST API over Telegram. Whats the point / use / advantage of that?
We at Microsoft think about bots as somewhat "intelligent", as in - they understand your intent. There's a little example chat with a pizza bot: It's a subtle difference, but being able to have a conversation vs navigating a flow chart is pretty powerful for a bunch of applications.
I wonder if you had a look at what I consider your largest competitor, Facebook Messenger. What are the pros and cons of wit.ai compared to LUIS, in terms of quality, performance, ease of setup?
Bots offer a gateway between human language and API actions. The future (which VC's are very excited about) is one where the human language commands evolve into something non-syntax specific.
- loose syntax, as in human language, which we can parse although it is loose (e.g. I went to the shop, I went to shop, I went to de shop - all are parseable by humans to get the same meaning [1])
OR
- something else?
[1] except that "I went to shop" could also mean "I went shopping" - but ignore that for now, it's just not a good an example.
Anything the bot-builder wants really. I think the aim of this grant is to explore the limits of what bots could be used for.
Bots don't have to use AI or ML to be useful: right now I use the @gif bot to search for and reply with reaction gifs inline (without having to launch browser->search->download->attach into chat). You can create a Jenkins/CI bot that chimes in when a build fails, or create a weather bot that tells you it's going to rain
