Chatbots are almost a hype cycle on top of a hype cycle. Deep neural networks gave us AI as a hype cycle, someone imagined what they thought AI could do and thought that could be used to prevent people from talking to a real person, leading to cost savings, and so we have hype around chatbots built on a foundation of hype around AI.
The reality is, AI doesn't do what people think it does, and people call in to get a sympathetic human assessment of their issues, not because they're illiterate. So chatbots have no future outside of customer hostile applications that think people will keep paying no matter how disrespectful and unhelpful support is (see Uber). Unfortunately, this seems to work for a lot of companies.
So while we were late in delivering the promise of those early ideas of digital assistants, I think global tech giants have mostly delivered on those promises, and even surpassed them in some respects (e.g. image recognition).
Chatbots are a separate topic and are mostly neutered by the power imbalance between and differing requirements of companies and customers - a chatbot designed by a company clearly serves their needs, not the customer who engages with it.
To beat the Vodafone one in Germany you have to speak random baby like gibberish until it finally decides to actually give you a human, but this is a matter of luck, as it can hangup instead.
You can imagine how fun it is to deal with Vodafone helpdesk.
Switching operator won't change much, as everyone uses the same toys.
At least then if I screw up it's on me.
> it’s true that many of the Hype Cycle’s one hit wonders survive today, enjoying minor success or mindshare: Crowdsourcing - 2013, HTML5 - 2012, BYOD - 2012, Podcasting -2005
Those technologies have only "minor success or mindshare"? I'd say they have overwhelming success and they're now embedded in the (computer) culture. The article uses Wikipedia links.
> technologies that seem as poorly considered as parachute pants or perms. Just some of the one-hit wonders: ... Folksonomies
Isn't #tagging either folksonomy renamed or a direct descendant?
> Mesh Networks
Aren't those in the 'Emergence' category right now, being explored and developed by hackers and some businesses?
Ultrawideband: a short range radio technology, ultrawideband reached peak hype in the 2004 hype cycle but was abandoned by 2008