Zoom.ai, Bots, AI, & ML

Matt Burns

Intro

• I am VP Growth @ Zoom.ai

• I have been commercializing AI/NLP technologies for public/private companies for +10 years

• I have been building bots since 2013

• “Full-time thinker, part-time savant”

Past 🤖 Projects• SMS-based concierge for the hospitality industry

• Natural language bot for sports news and statistics

• Digital assistant for families suffering from Alzheimer’s

• Dating bot (focused on bot-2-bot comms)

• HR bot for pre-interview screening

What is Zoom.ai? • Zoom.ai is an automated virtual assistant

• Offload and automate operational tasks to focus on your jobs to be done

• Calendar management, meeting prep, intros, travel, reminders, and more

• Available on 11 platforms including Messenger, Slack, Skype

About Zoom.ai• Founded in 2016, Zoom.ai grew out of the need to

minimize the distractions at work from operational tasks that limit our productivity.

• Mission is to give everyone in the company their own automated assistant so that they can focus on their job duties.

• We are building the OS for your work day

• Intelligent natural language interface to a company’s data and applications

What is a Bot?

What is a Bot?• Bot = software designed to automate tasks like:

• making a reservation

• adding an appointment to your calendar

• fetching/displaying information

• Other names you might come across - chatbot, intelligent agent, digital assistant, etc

• Today’s bots built in CUI (Voice or Text)

2 Types of Bots

2 Types of Bots1. Smart Bots (Dumb)

• Natural Language Processing (NLP)

• Machine Learning (ML)

• Non-linear conversations

2. Script Bot (Dumber)

• Entire interaction based of pre-determined model

• “Script” = decision tree where responding to question takes you down specific path, which opens up a new, pre-determined set of possibilities

• Structured/linear conversations

What is AI?

What is AI?

• If you’re like me, you used to think AI was a sci-fi concept, but lately you’ve been hearing it mentioned by serious people, and you don’t really quite get it

• There are three reasons a lot of people are confused about the term AI

Reason #1• We associate AI with movies

• Star Wars

• Terminator

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

• Even the Jetsons

• Those are fiction, as are the robot characters, so it makes AI sound a little fictional to us

Reason #2

• AI is a broad topic

• Ranges from your phone’s calculator to self-driving cars to something in the future that might change the world dramatically

• AI refers to all of these things, which is confusing

Reason #3• We use AI all the time in our daily lives, but we often don’t

realize it’s AI

• John McCarthy, who coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” in 1956, complained that “as soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.”

• So let’s clear things up. First, stop thinking of robots. A robot is a container for AI, sometimes mimicking the human form, sometimes not—but the AI itself is the computer inside the robot

• AI is the brain, and the robot is its body—if it even has a body

3 Forms of AI

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

• Sometimes referred to as Weak AI

• AI that specializes in one area

• AI that can beat the world chess champion in chess, but that’s the only thing it does

• Ask it to figure out a better way to store data on a hard drive, and it’ll look at you blankly

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

• Sometimes referred to as Strong AI, or Human-Level AI

• Refers to a computer that is as smart as a human across the board—a machine that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can

• Creating AGI is a much harder task than creating ANI, and we’re yet to do it

• Professor Linda Gottfredson describes intelligence as “a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.”

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)

• Oxford philosopher and leading AI thinker Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”

• Ranges from a computer that’s just a little smarter than a human to one that’s trillions of times smarter across the board

• Singularity = “All the change in the last million years will be superseded by the change in the next five minutes.” - David Kelley, co-founder of Wired Magazine

Machine Intelligence

Machine Learning? • "Gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed” -

Arthur Samuel,1959

• Evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence

• Machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data

• Such algorithms overcome following strictly static program instructions by making data driven predictions or decisions through building a model from sample inputs

• Employed in a range of computing tasks where designing and programming explicit algorithms is unfeasible

• Example applications include spam filtering, detection of network intruders or malicious insiders working towards a data breach, optical character recognition (OCR), search engines, computer vision, and of course… BOTS!

Building Bot Businesses

Building Bot Businesses

• Focus on the business - not just the 🤖

• Too many 🤖 are just a feature, like a lot of apps

• Figure out how you are going to make 💵 in the early days, don’t wait until you hit critical mass

• Don’t take the “Field of Dreams” approach to monetization

How to Make 🤖💵

How to Make 🤖💵• Cost-per-Conversation

• Affiliates

• Research

• Lead Generation

• E-Commerce

• Bots-as-a-Service (BaaS)

Cost-per-Conversation

Cost-per-Conversation

• People are willing to pay for things like advice or companionship via messaging already

• As bots become more sophisticated, people will become more comfortable with paying

• Leverage credit-based model so users don’t have to continuously enter payment info

Sensay

Affiliates

Affiliates• Model has been leveraged by entrepreneurs for

years

• Find products that people frequently search for

• Offer additional value in regards to their search like tips/tricks/etc

• Use affiliate links or native integration to facilitate transactions

SnapTravel

Research

Research

• Brands will pay you to do research for them

• Ask simple this-that questions with buttons or allow free-form text input

• Bot doesn’t necessarily have to be Q&A

• If audience is niche, companies will have an interest in conducting research campaigns

Swelly

Lead Generation

Lead Generation

• Deliver insights and information

• Pass along user to businesses who sell services/products

• Must be in-line with content you are delivering

• Commission paid by company to bot

BreakingSports

E-Commerce

E-Commerce

• Most straightforward model for B2C bot companies

• Users can browse or be pushed content

• User makes purchase directly via chat

• Similar to transactions on web/mobile

Eva

Bots-as-a-Service

Bots-as-a-Service

• Same as the SaaS model

• B2B customers are familiar with this model

• Little education required to understand how transaction will work

• Can be simple with tiers, or complex with seats/tasks/requests

Statsbot

Zoom.ai Model

Freemium

Corporate

Professional

Bot CRO

Bot CRO• Getting users to convert from free to premium is

NOT easy!

• Allow users to try all the core functionality in the free version at least 3x

• DO NOT try and push the user to sign up for premium right from the get go

• Clearly communicate the UVP so that users understand the premium offering

Focus on Value

Focus on Value

• NOBODY is going to pay for something that doesn’t provide them with REAL value

• Define your value through the eyes of your customers

• 4 types of value: functional, monetary, social, psychological

Thanks! 🤖 💪 🙌