What To Do When AI Chatbots Get It Wrong?

What To Do When AI Chatbots Get it Wrong?

AI Chatbots

At present, everyone is excited because artificial intelligence has at last attained a position of prominence in the world. We’re all waiting with to find out how AI will influence our day-to-day life and regular activities.

At some point, online shoppers must come face-to-face with some really irrational Chatbots, who don’t grasp what they want and need, apart from misbehaving and showing off their intelligence.

Badly created Chatbots give patrons an impression that they have been created to trim down customer service costs; yet, why does this crop up?

Though Artificial Intelligence (AI), without doubt, is getting better every day — our robotic buddies, i.e. ChatBot Technology is still genuinely deficient in practicality and good judgment. For that reason, it will require some time before Chatbots are fully prepared to join and merge with human society.

Take, for example, this query of an operating Chatbot:

“The costume would not fit in the black bag because it was too large. What was too large?”

The costume, clearly, because if the bag was too large, the sentence would lose its meaning.

Nevertheless, Chatbots still make a great effort and do all they can to understand this kind of language.

Here’s another illustration of an ineffective digital assistant:

“The urban municipality denied the activists a permit card as they were afraid of bloodshed.” Common people would easily understand that the urban municipality was frightened of bloodshed, rather than the protestors; however, that’s very problematic for a Chatbot to figure out.

Chatbots are generally very clever at statistical analysis; but then again, this kind of thoughtful intellect is not natural for them. Additionally, it is challenging to design this kind of interpretation and language sensitivity by means of statistical analysis.

Though Essentially Dumb, Chatbots Are Not Rubbish

Despite Chatbots being basically foolish, they cannot be deprived of its constructive potential.

Commercial establishments can make a large amount of money by utilising them. Besides, businesses need them to restructure and modernize their customer service department to make it more efficient and simple.

For instance, the working example of a live chat; thanks to its instant response (something that only Chatbots can deliver), it is immensely popular.

Why Clients Like Live Chat Better?

As a rule, when customers encounter problems, they want it resolved without delay; typical human nature. Messaging statistics show that, generally, clients dislike hanging around more than 60 seconds for a reply.

So, Chatbots are not totally pointless and can be effectively used to supply swift responses and simple solutions.

Some of the admiring comments that people make about Chatbots include:

1. They are so friendly! It feels like you’re having a word with a real pal.
2. Chatbots make buying experience more enjoyable.
3. Chatbots are improving my chances at generating profits.
4. Chatbots are proving to be cost-effective for my company.

Good Reasons Why Chatbots Fail

Following are some of the reasons why chatbots disappoint and exasperate customers:

• Tend to make poor decisions
• Make stupid or careless mistakes
• Give silly or in-appropriate responses
• Lack common sense
• Unable to think clearly
• Inept at acting intelligently
• Acts bewildered with sudden and unforeseen queries
• Does not appear genuine or natural
• Displays shortage of naturalness or spontaneity
• Exhibits computer-generated human actions or behaviour
• Appears artificially well-mannered
• Don’t value context
• Don’t recognize human slip-ups
• Misread a buyer

Chatbots And Their Cool Tricks

With Chatbots, there is bound to be:

• Responses to simple questions
• Insertion of pre-set phrases into a messaging app

The procedures that are followed to help a Chatbot communicate are a result of decision-tree logic; and on the whole, is not adequate for a large variety of conversations.

Here’s how the whole thing functions:

For example, you have a Chatbot that wishes to put up shirts for sale, and the buyer requests to see skirts in its place, the bot will arrange for its miserable default message such as “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that.’ And nothing can make your blood boil more than receiving a preloaded response as a reaction.

Chatbots Letting Go Of a Sale

Nothing destroys a would-be purchaser’s enthusiasm more than a cheap and stupid Chatbot.

An individual wants to pay money for a particular product, and even locates the company’s bot and messages it to set off communications with the business.

But if in a buyer’s opening contact with a firm, a Chatbot mismanages and makes a mess of things, then the multinational, a second ago, failed to catch a thoroughly suitable buyer, thanks to a brainless Chatbot.

Unpleasant Incidents With Clumsy Chatbots

There’s nothing more unnerving than dealing with a tactless and bungling Chatbot.

These hard-to-deal-with situations arise because the developers of these Chatbots didn’t try hard enough or have the time to make them brighter.

Scores of Chatbots have dialogues that are ok, but several embarrassing instances can occur when bot developers don’t pay much attention to detail during their construction.

More to the point, these awkward bots and their upsetting exchanges can negatively affect a company’s transaction and selling.

How Chatbots Could Squander Business Money

Signing up competent Chatbot developers is one way of getting around such difficulties.

The Chatbot designers should be cautious enough to first test it and ensure that they’ve opted for the finest and appropriate keywords to trigger certain responses.

Here is how the decision-tree logic runs:

• A specific phrase or keyword triggers a response from the Chatbot.

This implies that if developers don’t devote a sufficient period of time, inserting the precise word triggers to the bot’s intelligence, it will stay on as simple. And it is meaningless to have conversation with a simple Chatbot.

As a matter of fact, the simple Chatbot could lead to loss in a company.

Also Read: Effective ways to create Whatsapp Chatbot

Chatbots Have Limited Awareness And Information

A Chatbot’s information is limited in scope, area, or application as their awareness is controlled.

Take for example, a Facebook Messenger Chatbot; it will only gather data about users with respect to certain interactions.

It doesn’t take into consideration the following:

• If each visitor stops at a particular website on a regular basis
• What kind of things draw an individual’s attention
• How attractive the product is to the user

That’s a setback because buyers generally have a preference for personalized offers. So, how will Chatbots furnish consumers with personalized offers when they have almost nil knowledge about them?

In view of the fact that Chatbots don’t have knowledge of the user’s likes and dislikes, therefore they can’t customize their messages. And the public likes to receive offers that are made to order, with their name, buying history, etc. So, this becomes a tricky question for both Chatbot developers and businesses.

Overestimated Prospects Of Gain From AI Bots

There is plentiful gossip about AI Chatbots being primarily robots that can deliver superior and above-average interaction and exchange of ideas.

Bots have their own distinguishing characteristics and behaviour and their faces either have human-like or robot-like appearances.

This intensification of possibilities was mainly due to ambitious and single-minded merchants of NLP engines who wanted to propagandize this new and promising but not fully formed technology.

Despite that, trade and industry are hopeful of receiving true intelligence in Chatbots. This is an unreasonable and unjust expectation from businesses as this is a nascent technology in its early stages.

Wrong Approach Towards Training

AI bots require training to arrive at an agreed standard of proficiency.

Training here means giving help to a Chatbot so that it can improve its ability to spot intent and context in which it is running a dialog.

Pragmatically speaking, a system administrator (or a NLP, Conversation expert, etc)

• Should re-evaluate the failovers
• Enrich the rules in NLP engine to improve recognition of user intents

That is the dead loop.

One option is to have a good corpus conversation to train your NLP engine on the relevant conversations and on the other hand, the user will not begin speaking to your Chatbot until it is in an excellent condition. Consequently, you are not able to get a general idea of the conversations.

So, What Are The Choices Available To Us?

As a matter of fact, there are 2 possibilities:

• Accept superior tools and processes
• Stay away from using AI Chatbots

Make AI Bot Training Process More Desirable

Just now, AI bot training procedures can be improved in a more excellent way without waiting for influential companies to bring their solutions up-to-date or making un-reasonable investments in data science by:

a) Utilising all of your obtainable conversations with end clients to train your NLP engine from the very beginning.

No matter what you have (call records, mail conversations or queries to live agent to your FB), anything and everything can be utilized to train your NLP before the day zero.

b) In case, body of historical conversations is not available, then live agents, who will track the defined conversation scripts can be employed.

When a sufficient amount of training has been imparted, automatic responses, little by little, can be fetched.

c) Engage a live agent immediately when the intent is not recognized or a customer is displeased with the response.

This technique maybe expensive but is satisfying for users and is unlike the publicized flow -make your AI bot public first and train it once it speeds up.

Also Read: ChatBot In Healthcare

Upgrading The NLP Engines

NLP Engines will also start to improve.

For example:

• The NLP engines must help out and back generic spelling mistakes (which nowadays is not the case) is more advantageous when the number of intents in the system is on the rise.

Besides, they should find out from all the conversations in the system (and not just in a single account) and understand; moreover, they can offer suggestions on what is absent in the bot.

The dissimilarity between NLP engines, English, in particular is nowhere to be found; from NLU point of view, they look the same.

Is Having AI Chatbots a Necessity?

A lot of customers anticipate and insist on a specialized service from the Chatbot like:

• Booking an appointment
• Paying for a ticket
• Placing an order
• Making a reservation in a restaurant, etc.

They do not expect Chatbots to participate in all kinds of conversations.

For instance:

When you enter a supermarket, do you look forward to having discussions on AI with their shop assistants? In all probability, the answer is NO.

Something similar can be said about a Chatbot.

If Chatbots are not indispensable in your organisation, then you can safely stay away from them.

NLP For English And Western European Languages Is Sufficient

NLP engines are very much controlled and shown the way by market demand and features of the language (it is structured).

In addition, there are either a few NLP engines for other languages or they are inaccessible. For example, there is no NLP engine for Ukrainian.

Prior to building a Chatbot in a specific language, it is necessary to scrutinise that language first. Possessing an adequate amount of conversations (in that language) to train the bot, right from the very start is an essential criterion.

AI Chatbots are not advocated if there is shortage or absence of conversational data. If one proceeds, despite unavailability of conversational data, it will result in unpleasant experiences and misuse of time and money.

Thus, if a considerable quantity of conversations in a certain language is un-available, then either apply the above-mentioned procedures or do not build AI Chatbots in that language.

When Chatbots Are Absolutely Necessary

There are occasions when AI must be supplied to your Chatbot. Take for example, in situations where the Chatbot interface does not provide for any buttons. WhatsApp and SMS are the best examples of such occurrences. Using Chatbots here is unavoidable.

It is better that Chatbots have buttons and distinct conversations when plenty of content have to be passed on to the end-users. For instance: A large FAQ requires such kinds of Chatbots.

Conclusion

AI growth has reached its zenith; if implemented judiciously, Chatbot Development can be a great blessing.

What To Do When AI Chatbots Get It Wrong? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.