Tag Archives: Google

AI, Digital Assistant, Technology

Evaluating fobi.io Chatbot Powered By Google Forms: AI Digital Agent?

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Interesting approach to an AI Chatbot implementation.  The business process owner creates one or more Google Forms containing questions and answers, and converts/deploys to a chatbot using fobi.io.  All the questions for [potential] customers/users are captured in a multitude of forms.  Without any code, and within minutes, an interactive chatbot can be produced and deployed for client use.

The trade off for rapid deployment and without coding is a rigid approach of triggering user desired “Goal/Intents”.  It seems a single goal/intent is mapped to a single Google Form.  As opposed to a digital agent, which leverages utterances to trigger the user’s intended goal/intent.  Before starting the chat, the user must select the appropriate Google Form, with the guidance of the content curator.

Another trade off is, it seems, no integration on the backend to execute a business process, essential to many chatbot workflows. For example, given an Invoice ID, the chatbot may search in a transactional database, then retrieve and display the full invoice.  Actually, I may be incorrect. On the Google Forms side, there is a Script Editor. Seems powerful and scary all at the same time.

Another trade off that seems to exist, more on the Google Forms side, is building not just a Form with a list of Questions, but a Consumer Process Workflow, that allows the business to provide an interactive dialog based on answers users provide.  For example, a Yes/No or multichoice answer may lead to alternate sets of questions [and actions].  It doesn’t appear there is any workflow tool provided to structure the Google Forms / fobi.io chatbot Q&A.

However, there are still many business cases for the product, especially for small to mid size organizations.

* Business Estimates – although there is no logic workflow to guide the Q&A sessions with [prospective] customers, the business still may derive the initial information they require to make an initial assessment.  It seems a Web form, and this fobi.io / Google Forms solution seems very comparable in capability, its just a change in the median in which the user interacts to collect the information.

One additional note, Google Forms is not a free product.  Looks like it’s a part of the G Suite. Free two week trial, then the basic plan is $5 per month, which comes with other products as well.  Click here for pricing details.

Although this “chatbot” tries to quickly provide a mechanism to turn a form to a chatbot, it seems it’s still just a form at the end of the day.  I’m interested to see more products from Zoi.ai soon

Technology

Beyond Google Search of Personal Data – Proactive, AI Digital Assistant 

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As per previous Post, Google Searches Your Personal Data (Calendar, Gmail, Photos), and Produces Consolidated Results, why can’t the Google Assistant take advantage of the same data sources?

Google may attempt to leapfrog their Digital Assistant competition by taking advantage of their ability to search against all Google products.  The more personal data a Digital Assistant may access, the greater the potential for increased value per conversation.

As a first step,  Google’s “Personal”  Search tab in their Search UI has access to Google Calendar, Photos, and your Gmail data.  No doubt other Google products are coming soon.

Big benefits are not just for the consumer to  search through their Personal Goggle data, but provide that consolidated view to the AI Assistant.  Does the Google [Digital] Assistant already have access to Google Keep data, for example.  Is providing Google’s “Personal” search results a dependency to broadening the Digital Assistant’s access and usage?  If so, these…

interactions are most likely based on a reactive model, rather than proactive dialogs, i.e. the Assistant initiating the conversation with the human.

Note: The “Google App” for mobile platforms does:

“What you need, before you ask. Stay a step ahead with Now cards about traffic for your commute, news, birthdays, scores and more.”

I’m not sure how proactive the Google AI is built to provide, but most likely, it’s barely scratching the service of what’s possible.

Modeling Personal, AI + Human Interactions

Starting from N number of accessible data sources, searching for actionable data points, correlating these data points to others, and then escalating to the human as a dynamic or predefined Assistant Consumer Workflow (ACW).  Proactive, AI Digital Assistant initiates human contact to engage in commerce without otherwise being triggered by the consumer.

Actionable data point correlations can trigger multiple goals in parallel.  However, the execution of goal based rules would need to be managed.  The consumer doesn’t want to be bombarded with AI Assistant suggestions, but at the same time, “choice” opportunities may be appropriate, as the Google [mobile] App has implemented ‘Cards’ of bite size data, consumable from the UI, at the user’s discretion.

As an ongoing ‘background’ AI / ML process, Digital Assistant ‘server side’ agent may derive correlations between one or more data source records to get a deeper perspective of the person’s life, and potentially be proactive about providing input to the consumer decision making process.

Bass Fishing Trip
Bass Fishing Trip

For example,

  • The proactive Google Assistant may suggest to book your annual fishing trip soon.  Elevated Interaction to Consumer / User.
  • The Assistant may search Gmail records referring to an annual fishing trip ‘last year’ in August. AI background server side parameter / profile search.   Predefined Assistant Consumer Workflow (ACW) – “Annual Events” Category.  Building workflows that are ‘predefined’ for a core set of goals/rules.
  • AI Assistant may search user’s photo archive on the server side.   Any photo metadata could be garnished from search, including date time stamps, abstracted to include ‘Season’ of Year, and other synonym tags.
  • Photos from around ‘August’ may be earmarked for Assistant use
  • Photos may be geo tagged,  e.g. Lake Champlain, which is known for its fishing.
  •  All objects in the image may be stored as image metadata. Using image object recognition against all photos in the consumer’s repository,  goal / rule execution may occur against pictures from last August, the Assistant may identify the “fishing buddies” posing with a huge “Bass fish”.
  • In addition to the Assistant making the suggestion re: booking the trip, Google’s Assistant may bring up ‘highlighted’ photos from last fishing trip to ‘encourage’ the person to take the trip.

This type of interaction, the Assistant has the ability to proactively ‘coerce’ and influence the human decision making process.  Building these interactive models of communication, and the ‘management’ process to govern the AI Assistant is within reach.

Predefined Assistant Consumer / User Workflows (ACW) may be created by third parties, such as Travel Agencies, or by industry groups, such as foods, “low hanging fruit” easy to implement the “time to get more milk” .  Or, food may not be the best place to start, i.e. Amazon Dash

 

Technology

Using Google to Search Personal Data: Calendar, Gmail, Photos, and …

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On June 16th, 2017,  post reviewed for relevant updates.

Reported by the Verge,  Google adds new Personal tab to search results to show Gmail and Photos content on May 26th.

Google seems to be rolling out a new feature in search results that adds a “Personal” tab to show content from [personal] private sources, like your Gmail account and Google Photos library. The addition of the tab was first reported by Search Engine Roundtable, which spotted the change earlier today.

I’ve been very vocal about a Google Federated Search, specifically across the user’s data sources, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Keep. Although, it doesn’t seem that Google has implemented Federated Search across all user, Google data sources yet, they’ve picked a few data sources, and started up the mountain.

It seems Google is rolling out this capability iteratively,  and as with Agile/Scrum, it’s to get user feedback, and take slices of deliverables.

Search Roundtable online news didn’t seem to indicate Google has publicly announced this effort, and is perhaps waiting for more sustenance, and more stick time.

As initially reported by Search Engine Roundtable,  the output of Gmail results appear in a single column text output with links to the content, in this case email.

Google Personal Results
Google Personal Search Results –  Gmail

It appears the sequence of the “Personal Search” output:

  • Agenda (Calendar)
  • Photos
  • Gmail

Each of the three app data sources displayed on the “Personal” search enables the user to drill down into the records displayed, e.g.specific email displayed.

Google Personal Search Calendar
Google Personal Search Results –  Calendar

 Group Permissions – Searching

Providing users the ability to search across varied Google repositories (shared calendars, photos, etc.) will enable both business teams, and families ( e.g. Apple’s family iCloud share) to collaborate and share more seamlessly.  At present Cloud Search part of G Suite by Google Cloud offers search across team/org digital assets:

Use the power of Google to search across your company’s content in G Suite. From Gmail and Drive to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, and more, Google Cloud Search answers your questions and delivers relevant suggestions to help you throughout the day.

 

Learn More? Google Help

Click here  to learn more on, “Search results from your Google products”  At this time, according to this Google post:

You can search for information from other Google products like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google+.

Dear Google [Search]  Product Owner,

I request Google Docs and Google Keep be in the next data sources to be enabled for the Personal search tab.

Best Regards,

Ian

 

Business, Economy, Technology

Microsoft to Release AI Digital Agent SDK Integration with Visio and Deploy to Bing Search

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Build and deploy a business AI Digital Assistant with the ease of building visio diagrams, or ‘Business Process Workflows’.  In addition, advanced Visio workflows offer external integration, enabling the workflow to retrieve information from external data sources; e.g. SAP CRM; Salesforce.

As a business, Digital Agent subscriber,  Microsoft Bing  search results will contain the business’ AI Digital Assistant created using Visio.  The ‘Chat’ link will invoke the business’ custom Digital Agent.  The Agent has the ability to answer business questions, or lead the user through “complex”, workflows.  For example, the user may ask if a particular store has an item in stock, and then place the order from the search results, with a ‘small’ transaction fee to the business. The Digital Assistant may be hosted with MSFT / Bing or an external server.  Applying the Digital Assistant to search results pushes the transaction to the surface of the stack.

Bing Chat
Bing Digital Chat Agent

Leveraging their existing technologies, Microsoft will leap into the custom AI digital assistant business using Visio to design business process workflows, and Bing for promotion placement, and visibility.  Microsoft can charge the business for the Digital Agent implementation and/or usage licensing.

  • The SDK for Visio that empowers the business user to build business process workflows with ease may have a low to no cost monthly licensing as a part of MSFT’s cloud pricing model.
  • Microsoft may charge the business a “per chat interaction”  fee model, either per chat, or bundles with discounts based on volume.
  • In addition, any revenue generated from the AI Digital Assistant, may be subject to transactional fees by Microsoft.

Why not use Microsoft’s Cortana, or Google’s AI Assistant?  Using a ‘white label’ version of an AI Assistant enables the user to interact with an agent of the search listed business, and that agent has business specific knowledge.  The ‘white label’ AI digital agent is also empowered to perform any automation processes integrated into the user defined, business workflows. Examples include:

  • basic knowledge such as store hours of operation
  • more complex assistance, such as walking a [perspective] client through a process such as “How to Sweat Copper Pipes”.  Many “how to” articles and videos do exist on the Internet already through blogs or youtube.    The AI digital assistant “curator of knowledge”  may ‘recommended’ existing content, or provide their own content.
  • Proprietary information can be disclosed in a narrative using the AI digital agent, e.g.  My order number is 123456B.  What is the status of my order?
  • Actions, such as employee referrals, e.g. I spoke with Kate Smith in the store, and she was a huge help finding what I needed.  I would like to recommend her.  E.g.2. I would like to re-order my ‘favorite’ shampoo with my details on file.  Frequent patrons may reorder a ‘named’ shopping cart.

Escalation to a human agent is also a feature.  When the business process workflow dictates, the user may escalate to a human in ‘real-time’, e.g. to a person’s smartphone.

Note: As of yet, Microsoft representatives have made no comment relating to this article.

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Finance, Healthcare, Legal, Media, Mobility, Technology

AI Email Workflows Eliminate Need for Manual Email Responses

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When i read the article “How to use Gmail templates to answer emails faster.”  I thought wow, what an 1990s throwback!

Microsoft Outlook has had an AI Email Rules Engine for years and years. From using a simple Wizard to an advanced construction rules user interface. Oh the things you can do. Based on a wide away of ‘out of the box’ identifiers to highly customizable conditions, MS Outlook may take action on the client side of the email transaction or on the server side. What types of actions? All kinds of transactions ranging from ‘out of the box’ to a high degree of customization. And yes, Outlook (in conjunction with MS Exchange) may be identified as a digital asset management (DAM) tool.

Email comes into an inbox, based on “from”, “subject”, contents of email, and a long list of attributes, MS Outlook [optionally with MS Exchange], for example, may push the Email and any attached content, to a server folder, perhaps to Amazon AWS S3, or as simple as an MS Exchange folder.

Then, optionally a ‘backend’ workflow may be triggered, for example, with the use of Microsoft Flow. Where you go from there has almost infinite potential.

Analogously, Google Gmail’s new Inbox UI uses categorization based on ‘some set’ of rules is not something new to the industry, but now Google has the ability. For example, “Group By” through Google’s new Inbox, could be a huge timesaver. Enabling the user to perform actions across predefined email categories, such as delete all “promotional” emails, could be extremely successful. However, I’ve not yet seen the AI rules that identify particular emails as “promotional” verses “financial”. Google is implying these ‘out of the box’ email categories, and the way users interact, take action, are extremely similar per category.

Google may continue to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft, possibly adding the initiation of workflows based on predetermined criteria. Maybe Google will expose its AI (Email) Rules Engine for users to customize their workflows, just as Microsoft did so many years ago.

Although Microsoft’s Outlook (and Exchange) may have been seen as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool in the past, the user’s email Inbox folder size could have been identified as one of the few sole inhibitors.  Workaround, of course, using service accounts with vastly higher folder quota / size.

My opinions do not reflect that of my employer.

Business, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Healthcare, Technology, Work

AI Digital Assistant verse Search Engines

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Aren’t AI Digital Assistants just like Search Engines? They both try to recognize your question or human utterance as best as possible to serve up your requested content. E.g.classic FAQ. The difference in the FAQ use case is the proprietary information from the company hosting the digital assistant may not be available on the internet.

Another difference between the Digital Assistant and a Search Engine is the ability of the Digital Assistant to ‘guide’ a person through a series of questions, enabling elaboration, to provide the user a more precise answer.

The Digital Assistant may use an interactive dialog to guide the user through a process, and not just supply the ‘most correct’ responses. Many people have flocked to YouTube for instructional type of interactive medium. When multiple workflow paths can be followed, the Digital Assistant has the upper hand.

The Digital Assistant has the capability of interfacing with 3rd parties (E.g. data stores with API access). For example, there may be a Digital Assistant hosted by Medical Insurance Co that has the ability to not only check the status of a claim, but also send correspondence to a medical practitioner on your behalf. A huge pain to call the insurance company, then the Dr office, then the insurance company again. Even the HIPPA release could be authenticated in real time, in line during the chat.  A digital assistant may be able to create a chat session with multiple participants.

Digital Assistants overruling capabilities over Search Engines are the ability to ‘escalate’ at any time during the Digital Assistant interaction. People are then queued for the next available human agent.

There have been attempts in the past, such as Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves) is a question answering-focused e-business.  Google Questions and Answers (Google Otvety, Google Ответы) was a free knowledge market offered by Google that allowed users to collaboratively find good answers, through the web, to their questions (also referred as Google Knowledge Search).

My opinions are my own, and do not reflect my employer’s viewpoint.
Business, Development, Economy, Entertainment, Media, Technology

Twitter Trolls caused Salesforce to Walk Away from Deal? Google reCAPTCHA to the Rescue!?

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According to CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer, Salesforce was turned off by a more fundamental problem that’s been hurting Twitter for years: trolls.

“What’s happened is, a lot of the bidders are looking at people with lots of followers and seeing the hatred,” Cramer said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” citing a recent conversation with Benioff. “I know that the haters reduce the value of the company…I know that Salesforce was very concerned about this notion.”

…Twitter’s troll problem isn’t anything new if you’ve been following the company for a while.”

Source: Twitter trolls caused Salesforce to walk away from deal – Business Insider

Anyone with a few neurons will recognize that bots on Twitter are a huge turnoff in some cases.  I like periodic famous quotes as much as the next person, but it seems like bots have invaded Twitter for a long time, and becomes a detractor to using the platform.  The solution in fact is quite easy, reCAPTCHA.  a web application that determines if the user is a human and not a robot.  Twitter users should be required to use an integrated reCAPTCHA Twitter DM, and/or as a “pinned”reCAPTCHA tweet that sticks to the top of your feed,  once a calendar week, and go through the “I’m not a robot” quick and easy process.

Additionally, an AI rules engine may identify particular patterns of Bot activity, flag it, and force the user to go through the Human validation process within 24 hours.  If users try to ‘get around’ the Bot\Human identification process,  maybe by tweaking their tweets, Google may employ AI machine learning algorithms to feed the “Bot” AI rules engine patterns.

Every Twitter user identified as “Human” would have the picture of the “Vitruvian Man” by  Leonardo da Vinci miniaturized, and placed next to the “Verified Account” check mark.  Maybe there’s a fig leaf too.

In addition, the user MAY declare it IS a bot, and there are certainly valid reasons to utilize bots.  Instead of the “Man” icon, Twitter may allow users to pick the bot icon, including the character from the TV show “Futurama”, Bender miniaturized.  Twitter could collect additional information on Bots for enhanced user experience, e.g. categories and subcategories

reCAPTCHA is owned by Google, so maybe, in some far out distant universe, a Doppelgänger Google would buy Twitter, and either phase out or integrate G+ with Twitter.

If trolls/bots are such a huge issue, why hasn’t Twitter addressed it?  What is Google using to deal with the issue?

The prescribed method seems too easy and cheap to implement, so I must be missing something.  Politics maybe?  Twitter calling upon a rival, Google (G+) to help craft a solution?

Business, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Help, Media, Mobility, Music, Reviews, Technology

Hey Siri, Ready for an Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple? Guess Who’s Suing.

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The AI personal assistant with the “most usage” spanning  connectivity across all smart devices, will be the anchor upon which users will gravitate to control their ‘automated’ lives.  An Amazon commercial just aired which depicted  a dad with his daughter, and the daughter was crying about her boyfriend who happened to be in the front yard yelling for her.  The dad says to Amazon’s Alexa, sprinklers on, and yes, the boyfriend got soaked.

What is so special about top spot for the AI Personal Assistant? Controlling the ‘funnel’ upon which all information is accessed, and actions are taken means the intelligent ability to:

  • Serve up content / information, which could then be mixed in with advertisements, or ‘intelligent suggestions’ based on historical data, i.e. machine learning.
  • Proactive, suggestive actions  may lead to sales of goods and services. e.g. AI Personal Assistant flags potential ‘buys’ from eBay based on user profiles.

Three main sources of AI Personal Assistant value add:

  • A portal to the “outside” world; E.g. If I need information, I wouldn’t “surf the web” I would ask Cortana to go “Research” XYZ;   in the Business Intelligence / data warehousing space, a business analyst may need to run a few queries in order to get the information they wanted.  In the same token, Microsoft Cortana may come back to you several times to ask “for your guidance”
  • An abstraction layer between the user and their apps;  The user need not ‘lift a finger’ to any app outside the Personal Assistant with noted exceptions like playing a game for you.
  • User Profiles derived from the first two points; I.e. data collection on everything from spending habits, or other day to day  rituals.

Proactive and chatty assistants may win the “Assistant of Choice” on all platforms.  Being proactive means collecting data more often then when it’s just you asking questions ADHOC.  Proactive AI Personal Assistants that are Geo Aware may may make “timely appropriate interruptions”(notifications) that may be based on time and location.  E.g. “Don’t forget milk” says Siri,  as your passing the grocery store.  Around the time I leave work Google maps tells me if I have traffic and my ETA.

It’s possible for the [non-native] AI Personal Assistant to become the ‘abstract’ layer on top of ANY mobile OS (iOS, Android), and is the funnel by which all actions / requests are triggered.

Microsoft Corona has an iOS app and widget, which is wrapped around the OS.  Tighter integration may be possible but not allowed by the iOS, the iPhone, and the Apple Co. Note: Google’s Allo does not provide an iOS widget at the time of this writing.

Antitrust violation by mobile smartphone maker Apple:  iOS must allow for the ‘substitution’ of a competitive AI Personal Assistant to be triggered in the same manner as the native Siri,  “press and hold home button” capability that launches the default packaged iOS assistant Siri.
Reminiscent of the Microsoft IE Browser / OS antitrust violations in the past.

Holding the iPhone Home button brings up Siri. There should be an OS setting to swap out which Assistant is to be used with the mobile OS as the default.  Today, the iPhone / iPad iOS only supports “Siri” under the Settings menu.

ANY AI Personal assistant should be allowed to replace the default OS Personal assistant from Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana to any startup company with expertise and resources needed to build, and deploy a Personal Assistant solution.  Has Apple has taken steps to tightly couple Siri with it’s iOS?

AI Personal Assistant ‘Wish” list:

  • Interactive, Voice Menu Driven Dialog; The AI Personal Assistant should know what installed [mobile] apps exist, as well as their actionable, hierarchical taxonomy of feature / functions.   The Assistant should, for example, ask which application the user wants to use, and if not known by the user, the assistant should verbally / visually list the apps.  After the user selects the app, the Assistant should then provide a list of function choices for that application; e.g. “Press 1 for “Play Song”
    • The interactive voice menu should also provide a level of abstraction when available, e.g. User need not select the app, and just say “Create Reminder”.  There may be several applications on the Smartphone that do the same thing, such as Note Taking and Reminders.  In the OS Settings, under the soon to be NEW menu ‘ AI Personal Assistant’, a list of installed system applications compatible with this “AI Personal Assistant” service layer should be listed, and should be grouped by sets of categories defined by the Mobile OS.
  • Capability to interact with IoT using user defined workflows.  Hardware and software may exist in the Cloud.
  • Ever tighter integration with native as well as 3rd party apps, e.g. Google Allo and Google Keep.

Apple could already be making the changes as a natural course of their product evolution.  Even if the ‘big boys’ don’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest, all you need is VC and a few good programmers to pick a fight with Apple.