Volunteering during social distancing

Momoko Takizawa

Apr 15, 2020

nmodes is making an effort to assist you during this challenging time. Our team created this online community resource https://nmodes-coronavirus.web.app resource to help during COVID-19 self-isolation. It is powered by nmodes conversational AI.

In case you or your close ones are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, our self-assessment tool could help to determine if further medical care is needed.

With the self-isolation assessment, you could measure whether your self-isolation procedures are appropriate or not. It is important to maintain self-isolation to protect yourself from getting infected.

If you wish to volunteer and contribute to the community our chatbot will connect you with people who need help. You can contribute either virtually and in-person.

Most importantly if you would like to get help the chatbot will connect you with a volunteer who could assist with your needs.

It is fast and easy - answer quick questions and you are all set. We have volunteers ready to help with all kinds of requests , from grocery shopping and home chores to online tutoring and sharing game time.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

The Automation Is Coming

A close look at the history of humanity leaves us with no choice but to admit that the majority of jobs as we know them now will be transferred to automated systems. This is part of the technological and scientific progress our civilization is undertaking and it is irreversible.

Artificial intelligence became mainstream in 2016. For the first time artificial intelligence is not only available to big companies like Google, Amazon or Apple, but to the majority of businesses worldwide. Startups have started building products and services using artificial intelligence en masse.

The essence of artificial intelligence is massive, intuitive computing power: machines so smart that they can learn and become even smarter. The machines are becoming quicker and more nimble. They cover wider range of conversation topics. They now connect to robotic systems and online interactive systems. There is literally very little they cannot, or will not be able to, do as applied to industrial workforce.

With all the good that’s going to come with automation, we are suddenly faced with a new problem: the elimination of many low and middle class jobs. Many jobs that have already been severely impacted by computers (manufacturing, administrative support, retail, and transportation) will continue to diminish. In the nearest future routine-based jobs (telemarketing, sewing) and work that can be solved by smart algorithms (tax preparation, data entry keyers and insurance underwriters) are most likely to be eliminated.

What to do? It is fruitless to fight automation, we need to find ways to work with automation rather than against it.

The solution is to become more creative as species. Creativity is the natural advantage of humans over machines. Automation is about to change the course of the world, it’s going to be a great disruptor and impact the workforce like nothing we’ve seen before. We can sit around and gradually become obsolete, or accept the challenge and use the tool of creativity, which we are in unique possession of, to maintain our superiority.

Travel Chatbots Update

These are early days for travel bots. They mostly specialize in customer service, customer information and sometimes online booking. Advanced AI technology is good and getting better by the day, but it does not replace a person. And that's unlikely to change for a while.

In order to create a positive and enjoyable experience it is imperative to have a clear understanding of what bots do well and what they don’t.

One area where they have clear advantage over humans is response speed. Using bots makes your travel business scalable. Bot can handle mutlple user conversations simultaneously and replies instantly.

The part of the bot technology that needs significant improvement is understanding of the meaning of what customer said. The solution is to take the user off the bot when this stage of the converastion is reached. One of the popular techniques is to redirect the user from bot to the website when the questions get complicated. The majority of users are at ease with website navigation where they find themselves in the familiar environment.

This approach allows to utilize the scalability of the chatbot while maintaining the high level of customer service.