Chatbots today
In the previous section, we discussed what we believe will be possible in the coming years as the technology of AI evolves. As with any technology, we shouldn't wait until everything has been perfected. In this section and for the rest of the chapter, we'll focus on what is possible today and the best practices to make your own applications as useful and user friendly as possible.
In order to leverage the existing technology available today and given that current chatbots still need to be programmed specifically with domain data and specific intents, we should be careful to have a good design and a good plan in place to program our chatbot. Start with clearly defined goals for your chatbot and avoid trying to come up with a broad solution. Currently, chatbots that play in a well-defined and narrow domain space have a better chance of performing well and being useful than one that tries to be a "jack of all trades." A chatbot that is designed to...