Bots are hot news right now, but what gives? Why should we care? What can they do for us? In I like Big Bots, and I Cannot Lie we look at what Facebook and Micrsoft have planned and also provide some reading.

Facebook – what bots can do for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qskRTfQ-mAk

Programming a Facebook Messenger Bot

This duo spend an hour making an attempt at speed-pair-programming a Facebook Messenger Bot in an hour. From no clue of the Facebook Developer documentation on Messenger Bots – to having SOMETHING live in production.
Probably spending most of the time trying to log in to the production environment. And deploying. All the FUN of funfunfunctioning!
Note: Stockholm Hotline is now offline because Facebook does not provide a way to revoke webhook keys. Sorry about that.

Resources:

• Background on the telecommunication hot line (in Swedish, use Google Translate): https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heta_li…)
• Facebook Developers Messenger Bot Getting Started guide: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/…
• Node.js hosting service Modulus: https://modulus.io/

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella about Future Developments Bots Apps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61ClbLFrTmc
Check out Microsoft’s Bot Framework – https://dev.botframework.com/

Other reading on bots

• How to prevent a plague of dumb chatbots (MIT)
• The Humans hiding behind the chatbots (Bloomberg)
• The limits of bots (re/code)
• The Economist Explains (The Economist)

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.