Hlo,

Certain personal commitments have been keeping me from giving time to the newsletter. Until now.

If you recall, we touched upon how most web chatbots are expensive but poorly designed tech projects in the last issue. I came across a news coverage that shows just how costly these projects could be. The NYC city AI Chatbot costed $600,000 just to build and many agree, including the new Mayor, that it was “functionally unusable“. This is not counting the ongoing maintenance costs where, allegedly, most of the improvements and fixes would come from.

Hlo,

This is the first email from my small monthly newsletter with writings on Conversational AI. I will try to cut through the hype and talk about real world implications of Conversational Systems.

The first piece looks at web chatbots and argues that most of them don’t add new capabilities. They repackage existing website functions behind a conversational layer while disclaiming responsibility for errors. The result is often worse UX, unclear accountability, and new privacy risks.

But there is a meaningful role for chatbots as Assistive Technology. Read the full post here.