Is your bot making this basic mistake?
We were watching the gymnastics – the all around women’s individual finals.
It was down to the wire.
Well, it was down to the wire for every place apart from gold. Simone Biles was competing and she’s basically super-human.
A Canadian gymnast stepped up to vault. What vault would she attempt? Could she retain excellent leg form during the flight phase? Would she stumble?
Then suddenly, we were ripped away from our focus as someone’s mother loudly announced “I have a huge Canadian flag, you know! It’s so big, and so so beautiful. I got it when I was…”
RAGE!
Don’t get me wrong. This mother has great stories of travel, of adventure on the high seas, of illicit trysts with swarthy Canadians.
The problem was that we were right in the middle of the gymnastics story arc.
It was communication with no consideration of our context.
This is a danger with bots.
Unless a bot can realistically gauge context, it can come across like one of those conversational nightmares who gloms onto a random insignificant word and hijacks proceedings to the frustration of all present.