Chatbots are the next evolutionary step for robots

Bots are currently all the rage, but they're not a new concept. Bots are only as useful as the services they are integrated with, and their purpose is essentially automation -- that is, creating and executing actions based upon a set of criteria. In order to know where bots are going, though, we need to understand where they've been. While no one knows exactly when bots started, they're widely thought to have gotten off the ground with ELIZA. The bot was built by Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT professor, in 1964.