{"id":704,"date":"2017-06-21T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine?p=704"},"modified":"2017-06-21T16:34:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T20:34:59","slug":"bot-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/bot-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Bot Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI think 2017 is going to be the year of the chatbot,\u201d says Giuseppe Licata, citing the so-called chatbot boom that has been billowing from the tech industry since last year. It\u2019s not surprising to hear that from Licata, given that this May computer science graduate was a key part of the winning team in a chatbot design challenge held on campus in February. What is surprising is his admission that just six months ago, he wasn\u2019t sure what a chatbot was.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<header>The Facebook Effect<\/header>\n<p>The recent surge in chatbot interest occurred when Facebook launched its Bots for Messenger platform in April 2016\u2014allowing companies to communicate with and offer services to the app\u2019s more than 1 billion users. In Messenger, users can do everything from booking a flight with Expedia to ordering a pizza from Domino\u2019s by chatting with the company\u2019s bot via the app.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Licata can now say with authority that chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation by analyzing keywords and phrases to provide automated responses to an end-user\u2019s questions. The technology has been around in some form since the 1960s, but there has been a surge in interest recently, particularly for use in marketing and customer service operations (see sidebar).<\/p>\n<p>That, in part, is what prompted Jeffrey Weinstein \u201993M, CEO of RightAnswers, a cloud-based knowledge management software and web self-service solutions provider, to sponsor the design competition for Monmouth students last semester.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom the university\u2019s perspective,\u201d says Weinstein, \u201cyou are able to give students exposure to what product development is really like. And for me, it helped me take the pulse of where the talent is today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Student teams had two weeks to develop a chatbot for the industries of their choice. Licata worked with Monmouth M.B.A. students Anthony Vazzana and Nicole Puccio to develop a bot that could answer admissions-related questions. Vazzana and Puccio developed the questions, responses, and business plan, while Licata handled all of the coding. The team\u2019s entry nabbed the $1,500 top prize, but Licata walked away with something more valuable: a job developing chatbot technology for RightAnswers. It was the perfect coda to his undergraduate studies at Monmouth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[This] was the first time I had really worked under a deadline for something I had to present that wasn\u2019t school related,\u201d says Licata. \u201cSo I think it helped with the aspect of, \u2018I\u2019m doing something outside of school \u2026 for the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Giuseppe Licata is coding his way to the top, one chatbot at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":72,\"y\":37}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents"],"thumbnail":"<img width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-300x200.jpg\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-705 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"object-position:72% 37%\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-2800x1867.jpg 2800w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-1400x933.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-828x552.jpg 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-360x240.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata-9x6.jpg 9w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/Licata.jpg 3600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>","catString":"Currents","issue":"Summer 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":930,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}