Truphone co-founder James Tagg recently addressed the critical role artificial intelligence (AI) will play in helping smartphones and other technology platforms evolve. Tagg, who authored'Are The Androids Dreaming Yet,' kicked off his presentation in Mountain View, California, by exploring some of the basic differences between humans and machines. "Human brains are fundamentally'broken' in certain ways, especially when it comes to accurately remembering a specific event a few weeks after it occurred. Yet, we can recall more than 1,000 faces – in less than 370ms (each)," he explained. "We also understand hierarchy quite well, although we have difficulty with recalling names. Plus, humans adhere to strong rules of etiquette around face-to-face communication."

The Turing test is a test, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. When I joined Slack, my vision was to help developers build bots that pass the Turing test 2–3 times a day. As time passes, I understand the "beer test" might be much more important. Now the Beer Test is much less complex than the Turing Test: When I worked in New Zealand, I was asked to interview several engineers and product managers. In addition to assessing their tech and product skills, I had to answer this question: "Would you go out for a beer with this person?"