Would you like to discover more about Kubernetes and Chatbots held by Gavin and Denis? Read the interview with Gavin, one of the Labcamp trainers!
Who is Gavin ? A cloud ☁️ solutions architect working for Data Reply — the Big Data and Data Science focused member of the Reply family. He has been part of Reply since the previous company he was working for was acquired by Reply in 2011 and became Riverland Reply.
He worked on a wide range of technology projects over the last 8 years and had the chance to work at many leading companies across several industries.
Hi Gavin! Thank you for joining us today! 😀 What was the topic of your Labcamp?
On one of my last projects, my team and I built a new Big Data platform in the AWS cloud. We made it super flexible and gave the users lots of options to decide themselves about how much processing power and storage they needed then let them switch between sizes using a chatbot.
In the Labcamp I explained the requirements for the project, and we spent the session having a nice interactive discussion, not only about how to build the bot, but also what we had to prepare in advance to make it happen.
👂 How did you hear about this topic first?
Process Automation has been an interest of mine for a long time and chatbots are just another way of achieving that. There are many areas where we have people answering the same questions over and over and a chatbot can take care of these repetitive tasks freeing up the people to do more interesting or value adding tasks.
You can see chatbots coming into everyday life more and more!
How did you feel while preparing and delivering 📦 your Labcamp?
When creating the Labcamp I didn’t just want to stand up and talk for an hour, I tried to have the audience go through the same process that I did on the project and come up with their own solution. The nice thing about the Labcamp format is there is plenty of flexibility in how to present, whether its hands-on coding sessions or sticking pictures on the wall to build a chatbot workflow. The hardest part is deciding how best to pass your knowledge onto the audience without just standing up and preaching to them about how you did it. It should be fun, but also informative and memorable!
How does Reply supports your research? 🔎
At Reply we are encouraged to share our knowledge, not only internally with Labcamps, but also at conferences and meet ups. There are a lot of opportunities to, not only learn more about the topics you’re focused on, but also on other topics you maybe wouldn’t be exposed to in your normal work. With nearly 8000 employees there are lots of experts in Reply that you can learn from. And at Labcamps you don’t only get to learn about interesting topics, the Social Network team that organises them bring some food 🍕 and drinks 🍸 along as well.
5 🔑 facts we should know about your topic
- 80% of businesses are expected to use a chatbot by 2020
- The first chatbot was called Eliza and was written in 1966!!
- Alexa, Siri and the Google assistant are also a form of chatbot
- The ultimate goal is to create a chatbot that is indistinguishable from a human. There is a test called the Turing test that a chatbot must pass to realise that goal
- Ray Kurzweil, a futurist at Google, says we will have bots that pass the Turing test by 2029!
What’s the future of chatbots? 🤖
Chatbots are here to stay!
As the technology matures and people get more used to interacting with bots, we will see more and more areas where they are integrated. We will also see bots and Voice Assistants start to spread into everyday life.
Take a look at this video of Google Duplex making a phone call ☎️ ️to a small business to schedule an appointment for the user.
When we reach those levels of sophistication across more areas, we will achieve the point of not knowing if we are talking to a human or a really smart chatbot.
Your ✌️cents for the student who’s reading
If you’re interested in finding out more about chatbots, I would suggest looking at the voice assistants, Amazons Alexa and the Google Assistant. They use the same techniques and terminology as chatbots and already have lots of example projects available.
Why a student 👨🏼🎓 should join Reply in one line?
You can learn some really cool stuff and work on awesome projects at amazing customers! 😉
