5 Inspirational Startups Using AI and Chatbot Technology
2017 was the year that AI and chatbots took off in business, not just in developed nations, but across the whole world. Sage have reported that this global trend is boosting international collaboration between startups across all continents, such as the European Commission-backed Startup Europe Comes to Africa (SEC2A) which was held in November 2017.
While the majority of chatbots are being created to assist business industry, from hospitality and retail to banking and services, developers around the world are also finding innovative and inspirational ways to use chatbots to improve society.
Top 3 Bot Tutorials
Here are some of our favorites.
1. SimbiBot
Developed to assist Nigerian students preparing for their secondary school exam, the University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), SimbiBot is a chatbot that uses past exam questions to help students prepare for a variety of subjects. It offers multiple choice quizzes to help students test their knowledge, shows them where they went wrong, and even offers tips and advice based on how well the student is progressing.
2. Polly
Polly may be a business-focused application, but the chatbot is designed to improve workplace happiness. Using surveys and feedback, managers can keep track of how effectively their teams are working and address problems before they escalate. This doesn’t only mean organizations will run more productively, but that workers will be happier in their jobs.
3. Spot
Spot is a chatbot developed by Criminal Psychologist Julia Shaw at the University College London. Using memory science and AI, Spot doesn’t just allow users to report workplace harassment and bullying, but is capable of asking personalized, open-ended questions to help you recall details about events that made you feel uncomfortable. The application helps users process what happened, to understand whether or not they experienced harassment or discrimination and offers advice on how they can take matters further.
4. Endurance
Endurance is a companion chatbot that uses neurolinguistics programming (better known as NLP) to have friendly conversations with suspected patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. It uses AI technology to maintain a lucid conversation while simultaneously testing the human user’s ability to remember information in different ways. The chatbot encourages the user to talk about their favorite activities, memories, music, etc. This doesn’t just test the person’s memory but actively promotes their ability to recall.
What’s especially great is that the results of these conversations can be uploaded to loved ones and medical professionals to help with diagnoses and tracking of memory degradation.
5. Niki
Niki is a personal assistant that has been developed in India to perform an impressively wide variety of tasks, including booking taxis, buses, hotels, movies and events, paying utilities and recharging your phone, and even organizing laundry pickup and delivery. The application has proven to be a huge success across India and won the Deep Tech prize at the 2017 AWS Mobility Awards.
These are just a few of the most inspirational chatbot startups from the last year, with numerous others around the globe currently receiving acclaim for how quickly and innovatively they are using AI to change the world. With development becoming more intuitive and accessible to people all over the world, we can expect to see more startups using new technology to solve old problems.
