Have you ever asked yourself a question what actually the Bot is?
"You're either the one that creates the automation or you're getting automated"
- Tom Preston-Werner
Instance of the Bot is like box fulfilled with what is called Bot Tasks. Each Bot Task is a script (variety is wild, from XML to Python) that based on the system and GUI accessibility proceed some actions designed during the process of creation. Combining those tasks creates the Bot that is able to act like (super) human.
In the picture you can see the structure of usage Bot as ChatBot.
The idea of the Bot was to cover time consuming and repeatable actions but as you're probably aware - possibility of usage is almost infinite.
Big companies combining Bot capability, ML and AI created huge potential for data processing. For example whole supply chain of international company can be automated in around 85-90% ( shipments, customer claims, payments etc) - hundreds of thousand documents each month are proceeded on VMs with actions that are similar to traditional users.
I mentioned previously about reCAPTCHA - bots are also used to generate fake traffic on websites or to speed up the process of buying stuff online. There're lots of collector goods sell on the internet these days and it's really profitable to resell them. Here's where the bots pops up!
For ex. Supreme - NYC based streetwear brand - each drop of their stuff is sold out within few minutes but the most valuable items are off the "shelfs" after few seconds!! It's because well designed bots that are able to proceed the whole human-experience purchase several times faster that any "real" person.
You can see the example of usage one of automation toolkit which is called WorkFusion :
or if anyone would be interested, Bot creation for Supreme purchase :
Questions :
1. Have you ever heard about the Bots?
2. Have you ever tried to create one?
3. Do you think that replacing human-tasks with robots is dangerous?
Feel free to comment, share your thoughts and I hope that we'll start some interesting conversation!
Sources :
1. https://www.workfusion.com/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY2FbSXlq_I
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGpKm0pdTMM
I've heard about the Bots. I think that many companies which deal with problem of communication with clients started to create their own chatbots. Their most value advantage is a short time of response. I created my own chatbot about two years ago using Microsoft's Bot Framework. It didn't have any AI, but I think that it worked pretty well. It's hard to answer if replacing human tasks with robots is dangerous, because even now many tasks in factories are being made by robots. Main risk is the fact that people may lose their jobs, but it is a price of growth.
ReplyDeleteAccording to last sentence of your post - that's why we've heard an ideas about obligatory minimum salary for those you won't be able to find a work in the future because of automation. It's well known fact that most of the low skilled positions would be taken over by robots.
DeleteYes, I've heard about bots because I used to be Tibia player. I remember the times when half of the players online were actually just bots ;)
ReplyDeleteI've created few chatbots for Discord, but they were very simple and didn't involve any AI or ML. They were only answering some simple, predefined commands.
I believe replacing human tasks with robots is not really dangerous if it doesn't involve any creativity and is just about doing repeatable tasks, for instance website crawling in order to obtain some information.
If we're thinking about combining ML & AI even right now "creativity" it's on the radar of robots. I recommend John Fish youtube video where he used AI for art re-interpretation :)
DeleteYes, I’ve heard about the bots. It was a real scourge in computer games. I recently played computer games about ten years ago, so for sure the concept of bots is nothing new. Actually, my bachelor thesis required me to create a kind of bot. It opened a website, behaved like a real user and scanned all the hyperlinks that appeared during this interaction. Bots are more and more smart nowadays so the number of tasks that can be automated is constantly increasing. For now, I don’t worry that bots replace humans because still most of the tasks require thinking, that is extremely hard to automate.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't agree on that most tasks require thinking! If we would consider a whole list of possible job position - most of them are labour work that is of course important but in most scenarios - repeatable.
DeleteOnce during javascript meetup I've had opportunity to hear about whole process of creating one of messenger bot's called Rowerynka. After some time I've also made some research in this topic. I was very curious how it works under the hood, but never really got into it.
ReplyDeleteI think that replacing human tasks with robots has a lot of advantages such as disadvantages. It can be dangerous and a lot of people might lose work but also there will be new workplaces for maintainment such services and bots.
That's an interesting idea you mentioned - once we're starting to worry about the positions that are in danger because of automation we need to take into consideration that even nowdays we're able to mention plenty of positions that didn't exist 10 years ago. We can assume that's highly possible that new role models would pop up and swap with the dying ones.
DeleteYes, I heard about then. The first BOT that I recall was a chatbot on Gadu-Gadu :) I haven't ever tried to create any by myself, so I have literally none experience with it. I guess that a few or a dozen years ago people also wondered if it is safe, to replace humans for example at production lines and nowadays robots in factories are nothing special. With the development of the whole world, the technology is becoming more and more powerful, and so are potential threats of replacing humans in more and more complicated activities. Replacing human tasks with robots can dangerous, especially nowadays more than ever, but it should not stop us from trying to do it the best as we can.
ReplyDeleteYes, I’ve heard about the bots. Actually I'm a the big fan of the Telegram (this is the one of the biggest messaging network platform in 2019). There are a lot of bots here. In Ukraine a lot of cinemas, restaurants and other services have bots in Telegram.
ReplyDeleteFor example: as a client I start conversation with cinema bot, choose film, hour and seats. After that I'm paying for my tickets. That's so simple, it takes only one minute and I don't need even to visit the website or use the app. I also can get a taxi in the same way or do many other things. Everything in one place and I like it, it is very profitable for me.
I use bots already and I enjoy it, I'm not afraid that bots can replace people's work, I think they was created to simplify people's lives.
Bots are one of the essential parts of the so-called process of digitalisation that's been a major subject of discussion in virtually all major companies across the globe. The list of benefits of it is boundless: they save time, money, and human assets. Having been working for one of the telecoms, I've been dealing with automated systems that were acting bot-like or were actual bots serving customers - they indeed saved time and were more efficient than real workers. I surely believe that this automation is not a human-threatening trend; it helps automating tasks that are simply repetitive and fairly simple, thus it can let people focus on more productive and absorbing tasks - that is what I believe computers and automation are for.
ReplyDeleteI did heard about the bots as well as find them in games or in the internet but to be honest I never gave them second thought. Creating them is outside my circle of interest so I didn't try it but who know maybe in future. There are many opinion about jobs that might be replaced becouse of new algorithms but behind them we can always find a human being that have to do the work so my guess is labor market will provide some alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI thinking Bots are an interesting concept belonging. During Articial Intelligence course I was introduced to the concept of Tourings test, which allows to estimate how well a program can imitate a human. If we cannot distinguish whenever we are communicating with real person or a machine when the program has successful passed the verification.
ReplyDeleteI observed many possible implementation of bots in areas like customer service. The boys can receive orders from client or advise them. I once ordered pizza using a bot. It was pretty convenient.
I am really concern that in the future as programs and machines become more and more sophisticated, that they might plot to dominate humans. I wonder if a machine could developer human desires like greed. Who know if we could be overcome by our own creations and visions from science fiction like “The Matrix” could be present in the future.