The Bots + Beer newsletter ran for about 3 years between 2017-2020 during a time when I was highly involved in chatbot and artificial intelligence development. It was eventually folded into Codepunk as part of the Codepunk newsletter.

Some portions of this newsletter were contributed by Bill Ahern.

Image recognition simply becomes exponentially more powerful with machine learning. It follows that we use powerful tools to deal with our most aggravating challenges, and CAPTCHA represents a solution to a problem that passes the frustration onto the user when attempting to fix automated form population. Rule #1: never make the user pay for the sins of the developer.

Bots are Failing and Here's Why

I've given a lot of talks on bots over the last year, and at every one of them I say: It's easy to build a bot; it's hard to build a userful one. This article echos that statement with some great points.

Top 5 AI Trends

Machine Learning and AI are going to be the big innovations of 2018, without a doubt. Enabling our devices to process--or assist in that process--all of the data that we accumulate and share with companies and the cloud is going to be the core of those innovations, which will lead to large leaps in new technology to make life (and shopping… because money) easier. The challenges of these innovations will be humanizing Big Data--also known as: How to make it feel less invasive… or creepy.

MallBots

A quaint novelty that appears to be more of a showcase of what it looks like when real people use real bots in real space. Having apps that help you navigate the layout of where you’re shopping would be a lot more exciting if it were at places that were more likely to require human presence, like a super market (because I’ve spent more time looking for the correct aisle than I have figuring out which organic, USDA approved coconut oil my wife asked me to pick up). There will likely always be people who prefer, or need, the immediacy of purchases at the mall, but if people are going to start looking at an app to find out what they need, they already have Amazon if they can wait two days.

It looks like Pepper is going to be the poster child for any robotics initiative in the service industry. I'm seeing her image almost everywhere.

Mozilla IRL

Mozilla has been putting together a pretty nice podcast recently, and their latest episode deals with the influence and proliferation of bots online. --MS

Dragon's Milk Reserve Mocha Mint Bourbon Barrel Stout

Man, that is a long name! I need more of this beer from New Holland Brewing.

Editor(s) Note:

Organic USDA coconut oil?

Thanks for sticking around for our second newsletter email. This one includes commentary from my Codepunk cohort Bill. Apparently, he was so excited about the beer that he forget to give us some tasting notes.

We're still tweaking a few things, so if you have suggestions, feel free to tweet at us.