Top minds discuss 'smart bots' at IGNITION 2016

Business Insider

Dennis Mortensen, Michael Roberts, and Alex Wellen at IGNITION 2016.

In addition to compelling keynote speakers, the Business Insider IGNITION 2016 conference included panels of experts who shared their deep, insightful knowledge.

One such panel included Dennis Mortensen, CEO and founder of x.ai; Michael Roberts, head of Messenger at Kik Interactive; and Alex Wellen, chief product officer at CNN.

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They sat down at IGNITION 2016 to discuss smart bots and how they're affecting life as we know it.

Here are our top three takeaways of how smart bots are already fitting into our life:

Real-time news delivery. CNN is focused on making news available using bots. With the use of voice-activated digital assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Cortana, news can be delivered in new ways.

"We see it as an opportunity to deliver news real time in a very personal way," Wellen said. They have a quick turn-around after stories to get the broadcast audio to these platforms, so you can ask Alexa about a news story that aired five minutes ago, and Anderson Cooper will read it to you.

Task completion. Mortensen and the team at x.ai created Amy Ingram, an AI personal assistant who schedules your meetings for you. All you have to do is cc Amy on an email and she will interact with the person you are trying to meet to arrange a date, time, and location. She will send out the calendar invite and let you know the details.

According to Mortensen, we will see myriad more capabilities from these bots in the coming years. He thinks that in the future we'll end up with a "whole host of intelligent agents doing a bunch of little chores we don't want to do," such as getting the news and submitting receipts. Mortensen even said he believes these bots will interact with each other, so you could ask Siri to schedule a meeting and Siri would automatically communicate with Amy to complete the task.

Trustworthy transactions. With the introduction of new technology come new threats to safety and security. Bots are no exception. One area bots will be extremely useful is in financial transactions. With so many people using Kik (one in three teenagers, according to Roberts), they can build a platform where these bots live.

"What a chat platform can do is provide you with a unique interface that you trust," Roberts said. Instead of putting your credit-card information into some website or accidentally getting scammed, you can use a bot that is integrated with a familiar platform. "We can complete the transaction on your behalf," Roberts said. "It puts you in control of where your data is."

Business Insider's IGNITION 2017 will be here before you know it!

IGNITION 2016 included distinguished speakers such as Julia Boorstin, Sheryl Connelly, and Mike Dyer. Over the next few months, we'll be rolling out an all-star lineup for IGNITION 2017, and we can't wait to hear what they have to share.

IGNITION 2017 will take place November 29-30 at the Time Warner Center in New York City. We're offering Extra-Early-Bird tickets that will save you $1,000 - don't miss out!

To hear more about the world of smart bots and the role they might play in our future, check out the full panel below (the segment starts at 2:31:40).