Bot thots

Pete Skomoroch and Jon Bruner will be hosting O'Reilly Bot Day October 19, 2016, in San Francisco. Bots have become hot, fast. Their rise--fueled by advances in artificial intelligence, consumer comfort with chat interfaces, and a stagnating mobile app ecosystem--has been a bright spot in an otherwise darkening venture-capital environment. I've been speaking with a lot of bot creators--most recently at a conference called Botness that took place in San Francisco at the beginning of June--and have noticed that a handful of questions appear frequently. On closer inspection, bots seem a little less radical and a lot more feasible.