What's the consistent interface of bots? You need to know their supported commands to get anything done. Until we have actual AI it will remain an obfuscated command line. Interfaces like Siri are convenient because they actually use AI/NLP!
In many ways this new generation of chatbot is worse than what we had 20 years ago in IRC -- at least then the functionality was clearly presented.
> Until we have actual AI it will remain an obfuscated command line
Well put, sir. I hadn't managed to put that into words quite as succinctly but you've pinpointed exactly my feelings and my reasons for skepticism.
Unless you bother to read up on the commands that it accepts you find yourself greeted 50% of the time with "I don't know how to do that". Now we're on the same turf as any good UX problem - power-users (who have the incentive to learn an interface) vs casual users (who don't and shouldn't have to). Chat bots seem to be targeting the latter but they require the time investment of the former.
Yeah, I was speaking from a slanted point of view because I'm not the typical user. What interests me about them is their potential to be a more powerful terminal command line. One that can render graphical responses as well as text.
I've grown very tired of all the differing UIS I must navigate on a daily basis.
> Until we have actual AI it will remain an obfuscated command line.
I've never met a command line that wasn't obfuscated. Try learning Unix using only man pages as reference. With bots, you can at least expect reasonable responses to some natural-language requests.
In many ways this new generation of chatbot is worse than what we had 20 years ago in IRC -- at least then the functionality was clearly presented.