One thing I hate about chatbots vs. apps is that I have to keep using the "help" function when I forget what input I need to use to get something out of it. Well designed apps are much better at educating people what they do than a blank chatbot. In my opinion desktop apps are for more advanced users than apps and apps are for more advanced users than intended or imagined users of chatbots.
> 1. Uber/Lyft don't own the cars. They are leveraging car owners capital
In Singapore they tried out the model to own cars because car ownership is pretty low here in general ~10%. They bought cars at a massive scale. This model seems to be working for them and they have expanded this model to other countries. Check out Lion Car Rentals. 100% Uber owned.
I live in Singapore and Uber is a little cheaper than the excellent cab services which operated here even before Uber. There is a big competitor to Uber here called Grab. I switched to Uber because their service is good, drivers are gracious and cars are nice and they give me good offers. Last year I took 300 Uber rides, never once taking the usual Comfort Delgro Cab because their drivers suck. If prices were the same, I would pick an Uber over the traditional cab over 90% of the time due to nicer drivers and service consistency across geographies. The rest of the 10% is when I urgently just need to hail a cab.
I don't think you meant to say that Uber won't be a success. You probably meant that you feel it's over valued. Uber is a success. People love it. They pay surge prices for it. I do it all the time. It MAY be over valued but it is already a success. wake up.
They created a product that people love. I live in Mexico City and my experience is similar to the one described in Singapore plus the fact that, so far, nobody has ever been kidnapped while hailing an Uber.
Riding a cab has gone from slightly dangerous and more often than not displeasing experience, to having a private driver that knows exactly where I want to go and how to get there. Besides, not having to use cash is a great plus as well.
So there you go, maybe not in the US, but in many countries where the taxi industry totally sucked, Uber has already succeeded big time.
> I live in Mexico City and my experience is similar to the one described in Singapore
same in brazil. my parents never took cabs and now they are using uber for everything (since they are getting older and don't want to drive everywhere).
They could double the price of a taxi ride and most people would still use Uber. So, I don't know if they are losing money in Mexico, but even if they are they could turn it around today.
First off, Amazon never lost a billion dollars in a single year.
More importantly, Amazon could have been profitable for much of the time. Amazon was losing money because they were taking the profits from they successful ventures and pouring it into new ventures.
With Uber, what change do they make right now to switch to a very profitable company? Amazon had that option, Uber does not.
Amazon's position in the market is so weird that Matt Levine calls it a charity for the American consumer sponsored by the stock market. But it's at least clear how Amazon could generate money long-term; if it wasn't, nobody would invest in it.
It's customers are fucking g happy. What's the end game you're talking about? Have you invested into them? As a customer I LOVE them. As a student, I studied them in HBX.
In 2015, Amazon made $596,000,000 on revenues of $107,006,000,000, or a profit margin of 0.6%. In 2012 and 2014, it lost money. How long should investors wait to see a real profit? Should they expect revenue growth to continue indefinitely?
I have lived in both the states and in Singapore (current). I've taken approximately the same amount of Ubers as you but it's also because its prohibitively expensive to own a car here. For the benefit of others: it can cost upwards of $100k to own a car, and that's for a cheap ass car and you've a maximum tenure of 10 years on that.
I've to agree with you on the other points however, traditional cab companies have shitty drivers who would mostly refuse to take you to your destination. Grab car drivers are usually rude (relatively) and unpleasant to deal with. I seriously wonder why this is so, in an island as small as ours and with both companies marketing to the same pool of potential drivers.
If my business is standing on the street corner handing people Saudi gold, people will love me. For a while. That doesn't make me a successful business.
I lived a short while in Chiang Mai Thailand. At the time Uber was just getting started and Grab was WAY better than Uber. I really wanted to like Uber there, but after about 5 times of the drivers 1. not finding me (yes, even with GPS), 2. not showing up at all after a long time waiting, or 3. not knowing where they were going.. I gave up. It seemed that they lacked training and that they were mostly trying to get the bonus that Uber was offering in the introductory period. Grab was much more established and worked really well.
That said, the past few times I've landed in an airport and need a ride to my hotel, I didn't bother with Uber or Grab (in Thailand and various US states), because it was just so much more convenient to walk to the curb where the taxi mafia was congregated, tell them my hotel, and be on the way.
I was in Chiang Mai for most of December and I wonder how Uber can be successful there. The songthaews and tuktuks are so cheap that I almost always took those. The only time I took Uber was to go to the airport, since I carefully planned my money so that I wouldn't have any cash left over and Uber would charge my credit card and all the other options would require a variable amount of cash.
That said, the Uber was reasonably cheap, quick and friendly, so their service seems to have improved there.
Your statement depends on what people define as 'success'. Is Uber a product people love? Yes. So, by a product measure it's a success. Is it currently or will it be in the future a profitable business (without VC money subsidies)? We don't know, so therefore people have differing opinions on whether it will be a successful business.
People also loved products like Napster and The Pirate Bay, but does it mean they were a success? I'd say that they're not successful businesses, but were successful products that many people used.
I live in India and Uber / Ola (Uber's domestic competitor) are a godsend! In India we have Autos(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw) And the drivers were (are?) ill mannered, demand exorbitant fairs. But Uber changed that. Since the drivers know that the ratings matter, they are nicer. Yes, one in a while you still get a negative experience, but as a whole. it's whole lot better.
For most of the Indians, cars rides are expensive. But I wouldn't mind if the Autos operate the same way Uber for cars work. Ola is already offering Auto rides in the same manner.
Even though I own a car, I don't enjoy driving because of traffic conditions and use Uber and Ola just because I don't feel like driving on a particular day.
I desperately hope that the Uber model succeeds in India, going back to what it was before is too painful to think about.
I haven't taken that much taxi in SG but never had a bad driver. Always polite, speak excellent English and knows where to go. Unlike in MY. They are however often very hard to find. So many taxis but whenever I seem to want one they are all occupied.
But the OP is arguing that it is unsustainable because of subsidies. If I created a business where I give you $100 a day for being a nice person, you would think it's great. But that will not be a successful business most likely.
300 rides x average of approx. $15 per ride = $4500.
Cars here require a certificate of entitlement that cost around $100k and only last for 10 years if im not mistaken. So if he continued taking 300 rides every year for 10 years it would still be half as expensive.
Why would a programmer like to talk to a machine that can't evaluate
the programmer's skills? It's unpleasant enough with clueless headhunter
asking semi-technical quiz questions.
In the case of a programmer, the chatbot will ask questions around expereince and projects and simply collect useful information by asking probing questions. The hiring manager gets to review this information and rate it on a scale of 1 - 5. From a sample of such ratings a model of answer ratings is built which simply assists the hiring manager in highlighting the good candidates faster.
So why would a programmer talk to the chatbot? Because the chatbot actually knows more about the subject matter than a non-technical recruiter.
So the chatbot basically aims to save hiring manager's time, not to provide
anything to interviewed programmer. Or even worse: not hiring manager's,
but recruiter's time.
Again: why would the programmer want to do anything in this setting?
> [...] the chatbot actually knows more about the subject matter than a non-technical recruiter.
It's a stretch to say that the bot knows something. And what is "the subject
matter" here?
Have you ever worked on job applications where you had to spend 45 - 60 mins just to complete the essays and cover letter trying your best to match your skills to what you think is needed? If you are talking to a chatbot while applying for the job it would take no more than 15 - 20 mins answering targeted questions about your background. No essays, just specific questions about projects that the chatbot found on your resume uploaded.
1. That saves the candidate's time she doesn't have to guess what info is required
2. If the employer is okay with it, the chatbot has the ability to give feedback as to why the candidate is not suitable at this time...saying something like we are looking for candidates with more experience in recommendation systems etc.
The chatbot doesn't do well as an interview tool in all contexts. (the contexts you and I have in mind may be different) It would be horrible to assess very experienced people with it. But it is a great tool to shortlist the people you want to interview in person and really spend time with before making the hiring decision. It's great for when 100s of candidates apply for the same job. It's also really good for blue collar positions.
In Asia we have startups using our chatbot because they are growing really fast and their existing team can't handle the pace at which they are receiving applications.
On the subject matter question, we are building ontologies for the chatbot to understand certain kinds of jobs and skills associated with them.
> Have you ever worked on job applications where you had to spend 45 - 60 mins just to complete the essays and cover letter trying your best to match your skills to what you think is needed?
Not really. I maintain a list of my completed projects and work history, and
I simply choose what is relevant and important for the job I apply from that
list, so adjusting a curriculum vitae takes little time. As for cover letters,
I've only seen them in requirements in unskilled job ads, and this was long
ago.
> If you are talking to a chatbot while applying for the job it would take no more than 15 - 20 mins answering targeted questions about your background. No essays, just specific questions about projects that the chatbot found on your resume uploaded.
Chatbot won't understand what I'm talking about (general AI is still a pipe
dream), so I doubt it would ask targeted questions. And it would be very
tiring for me to explain to a brick wall (i.e. software, unless your chatbot
passes the Turing test) why I am proud of this or that project.
> It's great for when 100s of candidates apply for the same job.
First find me a programming vacancy that has plenty of candidates.
> In Asia we have startups using our chatbot [...]
OK, I take my previous remark back. I obviously was projecting the situation
in Europe and US to the whole world. China or India have different setting,
from what I can infer.
> Not really. I maintain a list of my completed projects and work history, and I simply choose what is relevant and important for the job I apply from that list, so adjusting a curriculum vitae takes little time. As for cover letters, I've only seen them in requirements in unskilled job ads, and this was long ago.
This is actually great. A lot of less experienced candidates could learn from this.
> Chatbot won't understand what I'm talking about (general AI is still a pipe dream), so I doubt it would ask targeted questions. And it would be very tiring for me to explain to a brick wall (i.e. software, unless your chatbot passes the Turing test) why I am proud of this or that project.
Agree about the pipedream. We don't have that dream ourselves. We just aim to make our chatbot smart enough to ask good questions and collect good information for a human reviewer. Does that make sense?
> OK, I take my previous remark back. I obviously was projecting the situation in Europe and US to the whole world. China or India have different setting, from what I can infer.
Thanks, I did realize we were coming from different contexts. I am just here to learn! :)
I think sometimes you have to break it to make it good/great again, like the first Mac OS X release. That's my 2¢.
The fact that Microsoft is increasing revenue on Azure, for example, shows they are jumping on a bandwagon that should give them another revenue stream that they can use to reinvest. I might be wrong, but that's how I see it.
As someone that primarily uses windows, that's not my experience at all.
Windows 7 was great; Windows 8 was a parade of misguided user experience experiments, Windows 8.1 was at best a patch over 8 (I still needed third party extensions to make the experience decent).
Windows 10, I no longer need third party extensions, I no longer need the VMs for Linux that I use to keep around with the WSL. Honestly, I've been pleased on the whole.
We can talk about privacy and the biggest misfeature that has cropped up in Windows 10 (automatic upgrades, especially automatic restarts... which I've since disabled)... but on just day-in-day-out user experience Windows 10 is vastly superior as compared to Windows 8.x.
Not particularly, I would think, for the average user. The WSL stuff is a major improvement for me personally, I also recently bought a new workstation class system where I had the choice of 10 Pro or 7 pre-installed and, not having any legacy software issues to worry about, chose 10. I was happy with 7 and am happy with 10. All other things being equal, the newer version would seem to make more sense.
Again, unless you're concerned about the privacy issues or have special need for non-automatic updates/restarts, which really I think are a minority of users, 10 carries incremental improvements in my experience. Having said that, the free upgrade period would have likely been a good thing to take advantage of for the average 7 user... paying for the upgrade now, not so much.
If it's the lock screen ads, I have to say as ads go, I think they are actually the most unobtrusive ads I've ever seen. I actually just had to look up what they were, because I keep seeing them getting mentioned. Turns out, I have seen them, I've just ignored them every time, because when I'm looking to unlock my computer it's generally because I'm about to do something, and spending time futzing around with a small text overlay on the lock screen image isn't it.
So, I don't particularly feel like the lock screen ads are especially egregious. Though, I also got the free upgrade from Windows 8, so maybe that effects my opinion.
> forced updates
I am fully for this. We've seen what a world without forced updates looks like. The only reason the recent major DDOS attacks didn't have a bunch (or as many?) of windows PCs participating is because MS has gotten really serious about security, and making sure it's actually applied.
Also, there is a way to disable forced updating, and that's through a registry hack. You might think that's too complex, but I think that's the perfect level of complexity for what we are talking about. If someone isn't comfortable finding a specific location in the registry and manually changing a value, they definitely have no place determining whether their system should opt out of auto-updating.
How so? I personally don't like all the pre-installed and unremovable stuff like Xbox, the fact that turning off Cortana is now really difficult, and how many knobs you have to turn to keep the os from sending everything you type to MS. Is that what's is ruining it, or is there something else?
It is easy to use Windows Firewall to block XBox, Cotana, etc from access Internet. I blocked all windows 10 services (svrhost) layer from Internet except DNS and NTP. In my windows 10 system, only firefox get to the net unrestricted.
I did that, but it meant I couldn't use Bing anymore (I like it because I can use the "ip:" search operator to find domains hosted on a certain ip address).
That's been the argument since Windows XP and to a lesser extend Windows 98SE were released. Too much has been added! From my experience the thing I dislike about Windows 10 is how often I find myself using WidnowsKey+X to use it.
I've been around a bit longer. I remember that pretty much every "major windows version" (including the first) drew ire from Microsoft PC users. People complained about the transition from DOS to Windows (which was rough), from Windows 3.1 (and WFW) to 95, 98 to ME (probably one of the worst transitions), 98 to XP, XP to Vista (which had 90% of what everyone loved in 7), 7 to 8, and now 7 to 10.
Each iteration people hated it, then loved it. I don't think it's any kind of "Stockholm syndrome", each version introduced and refined new functionality that people grew to love. What a "Desktop OS" means seems to be really in a state of flux right now, so it remains to be seen if people love 10 (I'm enjoying it, but then again I liked Vista).
The "consumer" editions have become more restrictive indeed. But the professional editions, Microsoft bread and butter, is the same as always as best i can tell.
We don't like that companies filter people based on resumes. And we also don't like that there is bias in face-to-face job interviews. So we built a bot that you can use to interview all the job candidates, ask them what is important for you to know and then use that information to find the interesting people.
First we parse the resume, then we ask questions based on the relevant skills for the job. There are also questions about the background, situational judgment and behavioiral judgment. All of this is used by our AI engine to find the "distance" to the job description. Then it is organized nicely for the company to review and make decisions more easily and objectively.
