What chatbots can and can't do

Source: HalalTrip website. Farah is an AI chatbot.

HalalTrip, an online lifestyle platform to inspire Muslims to travel and explore the world, introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot called Farah in conjunction with IBM about a year ago.

Flik Fok, Chief Developer Advocate, ASEAN, IBM, spoke about misconceptions about artificial intelligence (AI) during his session at the Halal-In-Travel Asia Summit.

He started his session saying that virtual assistants may be able to think like a human based on keywords, but are not human. "No matter how smart your chatbot is, no matter how equipped it is, it can never be a human," he said. 

"Don't be too afraid that with the emergence of AI, it will take away your jobs. The human can be moved up to do higher-value work."

Another myth is that chatbots mean that people are interacting with a machine, with no personalisation involved. "Every chatbot - as it gets smarter - will try to give you a personalisation experience," he said.

He said that the AI chatbot used by HalalTrip, Farah, is basically the IBM virtual assistant, powered by IBM Watson and natural language processing technology.

"Watson can help to (get to) know you, speak with you, engage you and empower you. In future it can remember you," he said. "Even you may sometimes think that you are talking to a real human and not a chatbot."

Fok discusses misconceptions about AI.

How IBM Watson can help businesses.

The Farah chatbot is at stage one of IBM's scale of AI complexity, laying the foundations for further capabilities. In stage one, a base AI platform is established. The AI can answer basic queries and may give slightly more intelligent answers, such as listing halal restaurants when asked about them.

Further up the pyramid, a "more intelligent" AI might integrate with other systems such as call centre, referring niche or specific questions to a human agent. Virtual agent capabilities are next. IBM has technology such as a tone analyser which can be used to sense emotions like anger so that the AI can react accordingly.

"You can't just implement and post it online," he said. "The more you use it, the more it gets smarter."

Fazal Bahardeen CEO, CrescentRating and HalalTrip, shared that Farah answers 90%-95% of all queries today, with the remainder being handed off to a human agent to handle. Farah currently uses instant messaging to chat, but may be voice activated in future.

The Halal-In-Travel Asia Summit was hosted by CrescentRating and HalalTrip at ITB Asia 2018. 

Hashtags: #halalintravel, #itbasia2018