Humans > Chatbots

This is a thought piece on people power and the avalanche of bots plugging into our platforms.
Do you use chat? Do you use chat bots? Most people answer yes to the first question, from whatsapp, skype, messenger, native sms apps, viber, to any messaging service. 100% of mobile and desktop users have at least one thing in common, they all use messaging of some sort, google(r) chat for example, who doesn’t use chat to communicate. The prevalence of these platforms has given rise to plugins, in the form of chatbots that surface information in your immediate eco system, your chat window. This is great for on the fly action when you are participating in a stream of communication. Ordering a pizza from your uber(r) driver while engaging with doordash(r) and booking an airbnb(r) via your overworked messenger is becoming more and more common place.
On the evolutionary scope, we first engaged with people face to face, then used the internet to connect with each other irrespective of location. The internet, well as you know, is kind of a big deal. But it was always about connecting people. How do you order a pizza now? How do you get your weather? How do you book something? Most the time its a static step by step method or process with steps 1,2,3,+ to get something done, without any interpretation force yielded from the receiving input software. That is, you have to tell the software (one dimensional as it is or as it was in recent history) what steps to take one by one to accomplish a goal. Nowadays you have the added layer of context and neural network interpretation with dynamic learning pathways. Now you can can simply say “I’d like pizza tonight when I get a ride home” — — the goal is for the software to be a serendipitous force for good, knowing that you usually leave around 6 on Fridays and take a ridesharing service to your place, that you usually like pizza from that one place around this time with this type of toppings combo… so it learns patterns and predicts future value actions.
So no doubt there is tremendous value to be had with the contextually interpretive world of chat bots…. but when is it better to speak to a human? When there is nuance involved… when you want to speak to someone of your own species, and not of the bot kind. We love you bots, but not all the time ok?
Think about your day, how many times do you run a question in that brain of yours? Multiple times 10-over 100 times in our survey, per person per day. We all need that law, cooking, nutrition, working out, school, family…. you usually go to your inner voice… now think about all the wonderful stuff you know, buy the time you were 18, 20, 30, 40, 50… who benefits from all of this life and professional knowledge? Your family and work for sure… but wouldn’t it be great to unleash the beast? The beast of knowledge in your brain?
Think about your life, when you had to buy that car, that house, fix that leak, paint that shed, raise that child, apply for that job, create that resume, plan a date, take your relatives out, take coworkers to a night on the town… you went to your brain trust, the internet, those closest to you… this knowledge was invaluable. Think about all the times you helped others with what you know… gave advice, recommended where to go, how to throw that ball, how to get to that beach and where to park.
We all have amazing knowledge, each and everyone of us has special, refined insider knowledge about life and work. Think about flying over a city, all those homes, with all those people, each of them a beacon of knowledge light, blocked by walls and lack of access.
What if you could unleash this knowledge, what if you could even monetize it? That’s the lightening bolt that struck in our minds.
Human’s have superior knowledge for when it comes to being human. We have nuance and context that chat bots can’t compete with. Valuable connections are waiting to happen.
Relayo.com was a project started while in the middle of another tech project. We needed help, in real time, on demand and just couldn’t get it fast enough.
So think about a scenario where a person knows about cooking, taking care of pets, the scene in San Francisco, how to get a job at a startup — would that be useful to someone else? YES! Now that person can get a profile on www.relayo.com and attribute some tags to their profile that relate to exactly what they know. Best thing is, others can find that person based on these tags, engage in a chat INSTANTLY and even tip or pay per minute of expertise. Our solution is in beta currently and can be found at www.relayo.com.
The mission is this: to unlock the knowledge that exists in people all around us but far from reach. The on demand brain trust is here and we need people to help us make it great. A social knowledge network is born.