Bots

Just read an interesting article from Forbes called Invasion of the Virbots. From a business point of view, they describe the virtues of having a tireless, endlessly patient entity available 24/7 as a real estate agent, help desk, or corporate info provider.

They also mention Extempo, a company run by Barbara Hayes-Roth who wrote the article in our course readings on improvisational puppets, actors and avatars. She's looking ahead to the use of bots in educational web sites. Anyone who has ever taught an online course can tell you how work-intensive it is. They'd be first in line to buy an effective bot that could handle the 90% of questions that come up in these settings that are routine and not very interesting to handle. It will be awhile before these things will get smart enough to be useful though, I think.

And of course, coming up with a playful bot that will make learning more gamelike would seem to be a good idea.