The problem, goal, and business case
Chatbots can, in theory, do just about anything that does not require a physical presence. They can help customers book flights, discover new recipes, solve banking issues, find the right TV to purchase, send flowers to a spouse, tutor a student, and tell a joke.
The natural language interface is so general purpose that it forms the basis of Turing's famous Imitation Game thought experiment. Turing's test, as it has come to be known, describes a way to gauge whether an AI is truly intelligent. In his test, a human and a machine communicate with a human judge through a text interface. The goal of the judge is to determine which of the two interlocutors is the machine.
A subtle but critical feature of Turing's test that many people fail to understand is that both the human behind the keyboard and the machine are trying to convince the judge that the other contestant is the computer. The test is not just whether a machine acts...
