Chatbots Are The New Skeuomorphism. How Do We Find Another Way?

Pop culture these days is awash in tales of AI run amok, from machines that act like humans to humans in love with machines. The reason seems clear enough: We're anxious about a world in which machines have superseded us. Designers are already grappling with whether a robot should ever really act like a human. I don't mean robots in the futuristic sense, like you might find in Westworld or 2001, but rather robots that we're increasingly dealing with everyday. I mean the robots that live in Google Allo, Facebook Messenger, and a host of other new services that use chat-based assistants to serve up everything from airplane reservations to outfit advice.