Technology advancements have been on the rise recently with people turning to new and more sophisticated applications related to computers with the notion of making computers behave, think and act like human beings. In every technology related discussions, forums and meetings, you are probably going to hear the term “Artificial intelligence” highly mentioned.
Artificial intelligence is the technology behind robotics technology, process automation, bot technology amongst many other recent computer-related developments. Bot technology refers to a type of artificial intelligence technology where software is developed to run independently or embedded on some hardware to operate without human intervention.
Bots are found everywhere and people communicate with devices made using bot technology every day, for instance, the chatbot we interact with when using electronic commerce websites, and application as we request for clarifications or help of a company’s services.
Also read: RPA technology.
Bots are also used to help us in getting updates from informative websites like BBC News, CNN, etc… Additionally, bot technology is also very useful in; setting reminders, scheduling our time, assistance when using search engines which rely on Talk bots, Marketing purposes, business and enterprise services. Bots deliver these services at a faster speed hence act as virtual assistants having the ability to answer and help users get things done within the shortest time possible.
The bot word has different meanings, as it can mean hijacked computers when referring to the botnets but in our case, we are focusing on the bots working as virtual assistants in Facebook, Skype and any other messaging app where bots are used. Some of the bot technology applications we are talking about entail Cortana, Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant.
There is also another popular type of bots known as the internet type of bots, these are software run and they are used to perform highly repetitive and simple tasks. Internet bots are also called Web robot, WWW robot or simply bot and they run automatic scripts on the internet.
Types and Applications of bot technology
Bot technology is used by businesses to respond to simple queries from customers because they are fast and cost-effective in dispensing their services. Actually, bot technology is claimed to be taking over the internet with an average of 52% of websites being run by bots; The survey which entailed visits on over hundred thousand domains involved over 17 billion websites and the data analysis showed that bot technology has taken over the internet. Bots offer different functionalities depending on the bot type used within the application; some of the most popular bot technology categorizations entail:
Web crawler bots
Also referred to as the spider bots, Web crawler bot technology facilitates services around the Web for the convenience of the website owner as well as people accessing the website services. Using the Web crawler, a site is able to load smoothly and retrieve information as per user’s requests as the bot automatically facilitates the access of the data. The spider bots browse and index web pages then the search engine is able to analyze and conceptualize the web page contents before returning to the user the possible feedbacks. The search engine usually has numerous spider bots which facilitate simultaneous fetching of information hence generating feedback at the same time. Additionally, this bot technology helps organizations see the ranking of their websites depending on the searched keywords. After receiving information the bots usually builds a large searchable database covering the words the bot encounters or is likely to encounter in the near future that’s based on the respective bot’s algorithm.
Google Web crawler bot is made by the Google company and it is known as the Googlebot; Googlebot crawler looks for all possible keywords match with the user’s input information and takes note of where the words are found that’s a title page, in tags, the main body or conclusion of the website’s content.
Video Game Bots
This bot technology is used to ensure that gamers are having optimal fun and the best gaming experience. The video game bots are an artificial intelligence software algorithm that takes the place of a human being in video games.
Web scraping scrawlers:
These bots are basically like the normal web crawler bots but they are used to dispense data scraping and data harvesting services rather than indexing as it is the case in the normal crawlers. The data harvesting entails activities involving; fetching content via crawling, then storing the information in a database for later extraction of relevant bits that’s during analysis. Web scrapping sounds to have a simple application but the web scraping bots are really complex and their sophistication is getting intensified as developers try to advance the functionality of these bots. Developers are trying to make the bots fetch specific information from websites depending on the user’s preference hence increasing the coding complications of this bot technology. There are several uses of web scrapping bot technology which entail;
- Compare things like product functionalities, product reviews, and product price fluctuation. Thus this bot technology is very important in customer-oriented applications and software.
- Used in weather monitoring.
- Compiling of data and contacts from different sites.
- Used in compiling trending topics on the internet.
Text-reading algorithm
Text-reading bot technology takes in text and compares the text’s keywords to the text and actions matched with these keywords under its database to effect the appropriate action. However, the text algorithm cannot precisely think and act with similar speed and accuracy as the human brain thus they take time to digest and respond to inputs. Google has taken the text algorithm bots a notch higher by introducing the translation feature where the bot can receive text in a different language and translate it to come up with the ideal response.
Chatbots
This bot technology entails bots designed to respond to human conversations through their algorithm which is programmed to conduct specific conversations. Chatbots are expected to pass the Turing test in which real people determine if the conversation with the bot feels like conversing with a real person and these bots are being used mostly in Virtual assistant software.
Bot technology: Conclusion
Bot technology has contributed immensely to the technological advancement of the internet as now surfing is fast and reliable courtesy of the bot technology. With higher speed and more accuracy than human beings, bots have facilitated the automation of repetitive tasks in organizations as well as ensured a consistent and well-ordered execution of the organization’s responsibilities.