Our Co-Founder and the CEO at HiringSolved, Shon Burton, recently shared his musings on bots and what his team has been working on to streamline the recruiting process..
The last chatbot I wrote was called “Larry”. It was written in 1999 to simulate a conversation with my boss at the time, Larry Rocha. “Larry’s” main function was called RochaBrain() and it contained conditional triggers and responses which allowed my workmates, including Larry himself to enjoy a good laugh while interacting with it. It was just believable enough to be pretty funny for a minute or two, albeit in a limited context.
So why the sudden hate for chatbots? Let me explain. As a kid growing up in the 80’s, I was fascinated with AI. I’ve collected and modified different versions Eliza, Racter, Alice and more. Computer programs that could hold a human-like conversation were not only fun to play with, they were and still are regarded as one of the primary indicators of artificial intelligence and even consciousness. The famous Turing test, a thought experiment postulated by the great Alan Turing over 60 years ago, is still referenced today as a primary measuring tool and metric for artificial intelligence.
If Turing himself were alive today, he may have different ideas about how to define and measure artificial intelligence. The concepts of “thought”, “intelligence” and “consciousness” are entirely philosophical in nature in that they defy rigorous scientific definition. These ideas are entertaining to ponder but not very practical. Chatbots in my view, are similar; entertaining but not practical. The high-water mark of a Turing Test certified chatbot, is a casual conversation in which the software’s responses are indistinguishable from a human. I think that we can do better.
AI needs to be better than a human. More useful. More like Alexa and Siri on steroids, rather than HAL or C3PO. Shifty, insecure and homicidal, HAL was far too human. Even Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S is too human. Too opinionated, too chatty. Data from STTNG is also too human for some of the same reasons. On the topic of Star Trek, the computer intelligence powering the Enterprise D strikes the right balance. It communicates very well but it doesn’t exhibit any of the human eccentricities or flaws which would impede its usefulness.
So what is a better AI and how do we build it? Useful AI is an exercise in UX Design. The main advantage that artificial intelligence has over human intelligence is it’s ability to quickly access and process massive amounts of information. Combine this ability with a human level understanding of language and you have something interesting: A conversational interface to knowledge and computation. Human creativity will still be required but it will be greatly magnified with this new tool.
We’re experimenting with a tool like this at HiringSolved. We call it RAI. We think of it as Siri for recruiting. RAI is a closed domain tool working on a retrieval based model with access to HiringSolved’s massive index of talent data. RAI is not ground-breaking from a Turing Test perspective. It won’t fool anyone into thinking it’s human, but for practical recruiting tasks it’s already quite useful. By combining the practical conversational interface of tools like Siri and Alexa, with a Wolfram Alpha inspired ‘knowledge engine’, we’ve developed a recruiting assistant with which a non-expert user can conduct a talent search conversationally.
Current systems require the user to construct searches using keywords and boolean operators. RAI simply allows the user to say: “I need to find female javascript developers with reactjs experience within 25 miles of Austin, Texas” and RAI produces results. From there, RAI can help the user construct and send a message to the selected candidates. This isn’t going to replace a human recruiter but it does reduce the number of steps involved in recruiting, letting the recruiters be more personal in their approach. If you would like to experiment with RAI sign up here. We’re releasing user accounts in small batches next month.
Shon Burton is CEO and Founder of HiringSolved, a market leading HR Tech startup focusing on the talent acquisition and talent search market. Prior to HiringSolved, Shon founded MLconf along with Courtney Burton. In his spare time Shon enjoys long walks on the beach with Courtney, playing Legos with his daughter and and spending hours restoring ancient, obtuse computers.
