Why Silicon Valley and mobile operators are putting their eggs in the bot basket

Even if you haven't tried it, everyone knows about Siri, Apple's speech interpretation and recognition personal assistant. The bot is available at the touch of a button or voice activation to answer questions about tomorrow's weather or recommend a nearby coffee shop, all with its signature sassy style. Siri was just an apple in Alan Turing's eye when he developed a test in the 1950s to see if machines could think. This was a highly influential first step in the development of artificial intelligence, but when Apple wowed an auditorium of cheering spectators five years ago at its launch, Siri was one of the first technologies to set expectations for technologists and consumers about what they could actually do with these capabilities. Because of Siri and other computer assistants, consumers finally have their own notions of what A.I.-enabled technologies should be able to do.