The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: An optimistic look at the future of bots.In this episode of the O’Reilly Bots Podcast, Pete Skomoroch and I speak with Ben Brown, co-founder and CEO of Howdy.ai, the bot toolmaker behind the Botkit framework. Brown also runs the Talkabot conference, which was held in Austin this past September. Discussion points:
The types of bots that people are building and experimenting with on Botkit
How the evolution of bots compares to the evolution of mobile apps
The strikingly collegial bots community: Brown cites the contributions that IBM and Microsoft have made to Botkit
Praise for new types of bots, including notification bots (such as Poncho), what Brown calls “unfurling content” bots (such as Purple), and bots that open channels to discussions with humans
Thington, an Internet of Things platform that functions like a chatroom for micro-bots connected to different home devices
Other links:
The Harvard Business Review bot, which sends out advice articles
Bloomberg article on Slack’s partnership with IBM to build chatbots
IBM’s “World of Watson” event, held in October