Chat Bots versus ExoTech
Very often, when someone hears about the things that ExoTech makes possible with natural language control, they immediately compare it to Siri, Alexa, Google Nest or some other sort of “Chat Bot” system. ExoTech is a completely different animal, as I’ll try to show in this paper.
In today’s computers, we most commonly control the software using some sort of Graphical User Interface, or GUI. At one time, the GUI was considered to be the ultimate in how to communicate to a computer. To be sure, it had major advantages over what existed before. If you are old enough to remember, or you know the history of computers, you know that before the GUI, we only had the “command line.”
With a command line, after you start up your computer it displays a “prompt,” such as a “>” character or something, and then just sits there and blinks the cursor at you, waiting for you to give it a command. If you know all the commands available to you on that computer, and all the options and special codes to use, you can type them in, and you are off and running. If not, you are out of luck.
Then the GUI came along, and everything changed. Now, you start up your computer, and it soon flashes up a beautifully colored graphical screen. The screen displays all sorts of pretty icons on it. Each icon is a pictorial reminder of something that you might want to do. A little picture of an envelope means “email,” a little picture of a document means “word processor,” a little picture of a calendar means “calendar,” and so on.
Even better, you now have a mouse, or a touch pad or touch screen to poke at things with. No more cryptic commands! All you have to do is click on or touch an icon, and some program visually comes to life with some sort of control panel (technically called a “dialog box”).
What could be simpler?! Now, all you have to do is click and drag and select, and type things into the little boxes and you can learn to use any application, just by poking around with it, until you learn the options.
Most of us are very familiar with GUIs today. We not only have them on our computers, but also on our phones, tablets, televisions, exercise machines, and so on.
No question about it, this is an advance over the old command line. But there are some problems.
In the first place, as software gets more and more features added to it, it eventually becomes a nightmare to navigate through. Every application is different, so the more things you want to do, the more there is to learn, figure out and remember. It’s no longer simple. It’s very complicated! It’s still better than the command line, but the GUI is no longer enough to deal with the myriad of things we expect to be able to do on computers.
This complexity has occurred without us really noticing it. It makes us feel stupid for not knowing how to reach certain settings to change them, or make an application do the things we want.
Another problem is that, a lot of the time, all we want to do is some simple action. We have some task that is clear in our minds. We want to call or text someone, make a note, schedule an appointment, check the balance on an account, transfer money or find out if an item is available in a store.
These simple tasks, or tasks that should be simple, are ordinarily buried in some application in some part of a GUI somewhere inside your phone or computer. Without even realizing it, we have become tired of all the clicking and sliding and dragging and pushing buttons that is required of us to do some simple thing.
What is the solution? The next big thing? Chat! Wouldn’t it be great if we could just tell our computer or phone what we want, and have it done? Why can’t we just say or type, “What is the balance of my checking account?” and get the answer?
Unfortunately, that’s not how a Chat Bot works. You will have to open up your messenger, select the bank, and then type “What is the balance of my checking account?” But then will it work? No!
Probably not.
Most likely, it will display:
What do you want to do?
1-Open an account
2-Transfer money
3-Check a balance
…
Then you type 3.
Then it displays:
Which balance do you want to check?
1-Checking account 123123
2-Savings account 345345
… and so on.
Maybe this is better than a GUI, but not much. You are being forced into a regimen. This is not “ease of use.” It’s a pain in the neck.
But Chat Bots will surely improve over time. Maybe soon you will be able to ask for your balance, and you will get an answer.
But that is not really the point. We have lost the big picture.
How should it work? How is ExoTech different?
In the first place, ExoTech uses natural language. If you ask, “What is the balance of my checking account?” and you have more than one account, ExoTech answers “At which bank?” You say “ABC,” and ExoTech answers “$1,254.33.”
More importantly, ExoTech is a platform. All of your data, and all of the capabilities (applications) are available in one place. You don’t have to choose an application and click the icon, and do this and do that. You just tell your phone or computer what you want to do.
You can have a conversation with your computer or phone. For example:
You: “Joe Smith’s phone number is 303-123-1231.”
ExoBrain: “OK. Saved.”
You: “Remind me to call him at 5:00 p.m..”
ExoBrain: “OK.”
You: “I need bread at the grocery store.”
ExoBrain: “I added it to the list.”
You: “When is my next dentist appointment?”
ExoBrain: “10:00 a.m. on Thursday, the 14th of May.”
You: “What is my account balance?”
ExoBrain: “Which account?”
You: “Checking at ABC.”
ExoBrain: “$15.67.”
You: “Oh! Transfer $300 from savings.”
ExoBrain: “OK. I’m working on that.”
You: “Send a message to my wife that I won’t be home until 5:45 p.m.”
ExoBrain: “Done.”
You: “What do I need at the store?”
ExoBrain: “Wine and bread… By the way, $300 was transferred from Savings to Checking at ABC.”
You: “What’s the balance now?”
ExoBrain: “Of which account?”
You: “Savings”
ExoBrain: “$3,013.22… Your wife replied, ‘Don’t be later than that; Joe is coming over.’”
You: “Tell her I won’t. But ask her to call Joe and find out if he can bring the bread and wine.”
ExoBrain: “OK”
…
ExoBrain: “She asked for his phone number, and I gave it to her.”
…
ExoBrain: “She says Joe says ‘No problem. He’ll bring the wine and bread.’”
Get the idea? It’s natural language. Notice that ExoBrains can interact with one another. But this is under your control. You can allow it or not, at your choice.
What about GUIs? If you want to use a GUI, you can. But can you imagine how much simpler a GUI can be when you can just talk to it?
For example:
You: “What were my expenses for this month?”
ExoBrain: “Would you like me to display them or read them to you?”
You: “Display, please.”
ExoBrain: (Displays a simple grid of itemized expenses.)
You: “Sort them from highest to lowest.”
ExoBrain: (Re-sorts in that way.)
You: “Why is the gardening bill so high?”
ExoBrain: “That’s for two months, you decided not to pay it last month.”
You: “Right. You can pay it now.”
ExoBrain: “There is not enough money in the account to cover it. Do you want to transfer more money from savings?”
You: “No, wait until the next transfer comes in, and then pay it.”
ExoBrain: “OK.”
You: “Send all the usual monthly data to the accountant, and set up an appointment for next week to go over it.”
ExoBrain: “Alright.”
ExoTech brings a whole new way of creating and using capabilities to computing. It is designed from the bottom up to work in this way, with natural language. Anything that can be done with applications and programming today, can also be done in ExoTech. It is possible to build big, complicated applications in ExoTech just like the ones we use today. But who would do that? There are much simpler ways to get the same results.
All of the capabilities we use on computers today are available in ExoTech. This includes formatting documents and reports, doing accounting, playing music, recording videos and sounds, keeping calendars, sending emails, sharing data, playing games, coordinating events; anything you can imagine. But in ExoTech, these are available to be used separately or fluidly with each other, under language control, however you want to use them. They are not locked into big, complicated applications, only to be used in certain restricted ways, the way they are in conventional software.
Natural language control has been missing from computers. It is the answer to complicated GUIs and gives you the ability to organize and use your data in the same ways that you would interact with another human. Most of the clicking and dragging and copying and pasting that we do today is completely unnecessary. But if you want to do that kind of thing, you certainly can.
In short, ExoTech is much, much more than just another Chat Bot like Siri, Alexa, Google Nest, or anything your bank might provide. It is an entirely new way of building and using software. It is based on natural language control, and handling data the way that humans do, so that it’s natural and easy.
A shareholder of ExoTech Ltd, Rick is a software developer with diverse industry and technical experience. Rick has written world-class, award-winning accounting and manufacturing software for the retail market and mission-critical enterprise software for stock trading, mineral rights and publishing industries. In addition, he has upgraded systems based on new security concerns and technologies, developed mainframe, mini-computer, server, desktop and web applications as well as firmware and device drivers for the security, data storage and medical industries.