Chatbots in the World of Retail

http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/5-ways-chatbots-are-already-revolutionising-e-commerce/

When I saw the title of this article, it really stood out to me. My summer internship project at UPS was to develop a chatbot for AES processing. Our chatbot was to retrieve Schedule B and HTS codes as well as their corresponding commodities. The purpose of it is to increase efficiency in the parcel hubs so that the hub personnel can spend less time figuring out out the proper codes for the packages that need to be sent out. It was a great opportunity to work on this project since artificial intelligence is on the frontier of technology these days. The article describes 5 different ways that chatbots can impact lives outside of companies. Many people have experience with using chatbots already. Lots of websites contain chatbots that pop up to assist users with what they want to do. The article also mentions technologies such as Amazon Echo, Alexa, and Dot, as well as Google Home and how they aim to improve the daily lives of consumers by doing things like providing information, ordering groceries, and playing music. I think it is very interesting to think about what other applications that chatbots can be integrated with. If the technology gets advanced enough in the future, we might have bots that can interactively teach people new languages or musical instruments. This delves into the topic of automation taking over jobs and the ethics behind that. As of now, there are already machines taking over simpler jobs but if in the future, even teaching jobs are replaced, it could lead to a bigger discussion about ethics.