The Bot Landscape

No doubt, this is the best-known line from Mario Puzo's book, The Godfather (1969) and the Oscar-award winning film of the same title (1972). Perhaps it may be one of the best-known lines in any film and ranks second only to "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" as the most celebrated quotation from an American film. Of course, the'offer' here is "do as I say or I'll kill you"… Corleone's preferred method of intimidating those around him and assuring that he gets exactly what he wants in an expeditious fashion. So you may be asking, what does this famous gangster line have to do with the fast emerging field of "bots" – software applications that run automated tasks and scripts over the Internet. Quite frankly, some people have a healthy fear of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the potential for unintended consequences of a future where machines have taken control of the world and reign over humans (think about the plot of The Matrix or The Terminator). So the purpose of this blog is to take a deeper look at the current state of AI applications on the Internet and to some extent, demystify what is going on with bots.