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BotSpot® Bi-Weekly Newsletter April 11, 2001 No Longer Chatter When I was a very young boy growing up in the hills of Southern Indiana, my grandmother would often hang up the laundry behind the small frame house they lived in. Surrounding the house was a stereotypical white picket fence. After Grandma was finished with the laundry and made sure I was busy doing something constructive and not off chasing garden snakes in the too-tall grass near the very back of the yard or eating mudpies, she would wander over to the fence and talk about the town events with her neighbor. I cannot recall the name of this woman, nor what they talked about, save that it was very boring for a four-year-old boy to endure. Not when there were snakes about. Eventually, even snake chasing became boring, and the hot summer sun would make me want to get inside where it was cool. But my grandmother was far too shrewd to let me wander into the house and out of her sight. Not when there were creamsicles unguarded in the deep-freeze. So, I would have to endure a wait that seemed like eternity while my grandmother would finish what she called her "natterin' and chatterin'." It is this image that leaps into mind whenever I hear the term "chat bot." There is nothing technically wrong with the term chat bot. When it was first coined to describe the then-new Eliza bot and her ilk, it made a lot of sense. These bots, at the time, did little more than chatter—directing the conversation back to the user in clever, but not terribly substantive ways. Eliza, after all, did a lot towards moving users to self-examination. But did she every actually diagnose users' problems? Of course not. Chatter bots, in the beginning, were good at chattering to users. Reflections of conversation used to entertain and amuse the user. Today, there's a lot more going on in this realm of bot technology than chatterin' and natterin'. Chatter bots, as they are still euphemistically called, are taking care of a lot more business than just amusing users. Their technology is being used to represent entire corporations with virtual agents. Internal and external help desks' virtual helpers are answering frequently asked questions more efficiently and quickly than their human counterparts. And yet we are still calling them chatter bots. Perhaps the time has come to rethink the nomenclature a bit. I submit that a new period in the history of these conversational bots is upon us. And new times reflect new ways of thinking of things. Thus, I am proposing a simple change in what we call these bots. Nothing terribly radical, but something that reflects their slightly more sophisticated nature. They should be called chat bots. This is not a new idea, nor is it mine. While I am not trying to take the lead on this, consider BotSpot officially behind the small groundswell in getting this terminology changed. You will notice that as of today, all references on BotSpot to this branch of bot technology will be changed to reflect this decision. Chat bot is a better representation of what this technology does right now. No longer do these bots "chatter." This implies an empty and vapid form of communication. Chat bots can do far more than merely prattle on. While chat bots are not up to the conversational art of human beings, they are certainly doing a lot better than just chatter these days. We can leave that luxury to the human beings once again. News Stories Intelliseek
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