Satya Nadella is wrong about chatbots

Source: venturebeat.com --- Wednesday, August 24, 2016
GUEST: At Microsoft’s recent Worldwide Partner Conference, CEO Satya Nadella laid out his vision for a world in which A.I.-powered chatbots “fundamentally revolutionize how computing is experienced by everybody.” Bots, according to Nadella, will become the next interface, shaping our interactions with the applications and devices we rely on. Of course, granting bots more control over our apps and devices naturally requires that we create rules to govern how they operate. Nadella earlier outlined a set of rules for bots that prioritizes empathy, efficiency and assistance. “A.I. must be designed to assist humanity,” he wrote. That’s a smart position, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Bots merely represent an interface layer between humans and computers, akin to applications and mobile apps. It’s what’s behind the interface that makes all the difference. Can artificially intelligent bots really assist humanity, or is it more about replacing ? Let’s start by creating some order around what A.I. means. A.I. vs. I.A. The debate over the role of intelligent machines in society has raged since the 1950s, but can be broken down into two basic camps: artificial intelligence (A.I.), and intelligence augmentation (I.A.). On the one hand, the A.I. camp argues that the future of computing should be autonomous systems that can be taught to replicate and ultimately replace human functions. On the other hand, the I.A. folks believe that techno ...

from Microsoft http://ift.tt/2bjcbXf