A History of Chatbots

Turing Test Are you familiar with the Turing Test? For the uninitiated, the Turing Test was developed by Alan Turing, the original computer nerd, in 1950. The idea is simple: for a machine to pass the Turing Test, it must exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human being. The test is usually conceptualized […]

And The Winner Is…Champion Hackathon Chatbots

The idea of chatbots has been around since the mid 1960s. ELIZA was the first of its kind, created in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Since then, though, there has been a proliferation of chatbots. When they first began to become more widespread and available to the general public, in the late 1990s, they mainly […]

Chatbots and Messaging in Africa

Chatbots are ready to deliver a major impact in Africa. Several economic factors work in their favor, and businesses and nonprofit organizations are already showing what they can accomplish. The next few years should see significant growth in use. Favorable economic factors Since 2016 Africa’s economy has been growing at a healthy pace. The World […]

How Changes in Consumer Behavior in the 2010s Has Shaped the Business World

“Today’s consumers are more enlightened and empowered than ever. And they are placing ever-greater demands on their retailers to either “get it right” or lose their business.”   – Kali Klena, IBM Global Retail Lead Today’s savvy consumers contrast sharply from yesterday’s shoppers. They are confident, industrious, and technologically astute, and expect businesses to exhibit […]

Should Your Brand Build a Chatbot Instead of an App?

The marketing world is abuzz with a new major debate, a split in techniques that will significantly differentiate companies that follow one path or another. Chatbot or App? In the modern world of reaching out to your customers through every available platform, this can seem like a crazy question at first. Of course, you want […]

Chatbots In Education

Students everywhere carry their mobile phone with them. It contains everything they need and is their connection to the world, but the ‘phone’ aspect of the device is fading away. Instead of making calls, many individuals would rather use instant messaging apps. This trend started a with the popularity of SMS and has only surged […]