Did Chatbots Miss Their 'Apollo Moment'? A Survey of the Potential, Gaps and Lessons from Using Collaboration Assistants During COVID-19

Kambhampati, 2020; Etzioni and DeCario, 2020; Vaishya et al., 2020; Wynants and colleagues, 2020; Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have long Srivastava, 2020]. Early in the pandemic, authors been positioned as a tool to provide crucial datadriven like [Kambhampati, 2020; Etzioni and DeCario, 2020; decision support to people. In this survey Vaishya et al., 2020] highlighted various scenarios where paper, we look at how AI in general, and collaboration AI could help in tackling COVID19 as well as some of the assistants (CAs or chatbots for short) in particular, potential pitfalls. The AI efforts were helped by different have been used during a true global exigency types of data being freely made available, calls for open - the COVID-19 pandemic. The key observation collaboration [Woodward, 2020] and a sense of urgency. is that chatbots missed their Apollo moment In Table 1, a sample of AI's potential application during when they could have really provided contextual, COVID-19 is shown. They range from decisions to foster personalized, reliable decision support at scale that understanding of the disease and its impact to helping take the state-of-the-art makes possible. We review the actions for individuals, groups and the society at large.