“The bot effect” highlighted in new report from SogetiLabs

Paris, France/Vianen, Netherlands, June 22, 2016 --The post-app era has started including a shift from apps to conversation, from apps to messaging platforms and from app-stores to bot-stores, all triggered by machine intelligence, also known as artificial intelligence. The end of apps is the beginning of doing everything on messaging platforms. This is described in the new report from SogetiLabs, The Bot Effect: Friending a Brand.

 “The fact that machines are now (more and more) capable of understanding natural language like voice and speech, and talk back is something that we've seen happening in science fiction movies. Now fiction becomes a fact. Due to better hardware, new neuromorphic chips and Big Data, these machines are able to learn and improve. The impact of this shift in possibilities has implications for businesses and human beings, for efficiency and psychology”, concludes Menno van Doorn, Director of SogetiLabs, and co-author of the new report on the topic of Machine Intelligence.

4 key findings
As the end of the app era dawns, the SogetiLabs trend watchers behind the report foresee a playground with the following four elements:

1  People-fication of IT

Properties that were previously reserved for humans, such as conducting a conversation, listening to arguments or anticipating certain intentions, now come within the scope of information technology. As these human capabilities of machines get better, it's likely that we will treat computers more and more as if it were real humans. Some proof of that is already found in chatbots like the chines 'Little Bing'. This people-fication, as we like to call it (or antropomorphic personification) could possibly backfire on human to human conversations. When bots are 24/7 willing to listen, when they are more knowledgeable and always serve us with a smile, will people still accept other people not being interested or friendly anymore? Bots will lift the bar for a new standard.

2  The emergence of the 'butler economy'

The ability to engage in a conversation with a bot, creates a master-butler relationship. A servant who is always ready to serve us in a polite and discreet way, means a huge improvement of service quality in most situations. Little things that we need to do daily will be done by bots. One of the side effects is that 'search' as we know it will come to an end. No need to use an internet search engine any more, if the conversation and a butler are leading to the desired outcome.

3  A battle on micro moments is about to begin

Conversations are commonplace and conversational commerce stresses that much 'trade' is done in lost moments. These are the times when people pack their smartphone and do things on the spot. These micro moments are crucial to the strategy of companies. Conversational capabilities will support that strategy.

4  Bot conversations at work

The same principles of conversational commerce can be used in the workplace, and this has become known by the term 'conversational office'. The bot as a colleague or boss is a very likely future. In Japan, McCann, an advertising and marketing organization, has just assigned its first Chief Creative Director to their board. Doctors and Lawyers will collaborate with their machine mates, and call center agents already are getting replaced by robots. With this new reality the work place will look different: intelligent machines will enable new ways of working.

A 4-series report on Machine Intelligence
The Bot Effect: Friending a Brand is the second in  a series of four reports on the Topic of Machine Intelligence. The series started with a first executive introduction to MI, and report three and four will dive into Persuasive Technologies; influencing behavior through machines and Corporate IQ and the Anatomy of fear of AI.

Download the new report here: http://bit.ly/1srsdCv

Click here to download the first report.