Bots and automation on the internet
According to the annual internet traffic report of Imperva Incapsula, it is estimated that of the total number of visitors to websites and web pages, more than half are bots. It is not about people.
Bots?
Before moving on, what are bots?
They are programs developed to execute repetitive tasks automatically, and thus save time and effort.
An example of bot creation that almost anyone can create, is the IFTTT application, which allows you to automate a series of steps to execute specific tasks, it even has several pre-defined guides to use as:
If we want to silence the phone when we get to work, or turn off the Wi-Fi when there is little battery left.
Automation and saving time is something that people always look for; we want that instead of us being the ones who do things, they should do it by themselves when they are required.
Proliferation
With the splendor that artificial intelligence and cognitive computing is experiencing, we are seeing more and more bots and autonomous agents in all kinds of digital services, such as Gogle personal assistant, Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa or Cortana in Microsoft.
It is estimated that they will replace the apps at some point, because with just a few bots we could perform more tasks with very little interaction, eliminating most of the time the contact with humans.
Chatbots
Another type of bot that is popularizing in México are the chatbots, agents that answer questions as if they were a person. To make more efficient and reduce costs in customer service.
At the moment they are useful in the most repetitive tasks, such as password changes, although they still have problems solving more complex issues and understanding all the ways of asking a person has; but they continue to develop by leaps and bounds.
Inanimate traffic on the Internet
Beyond the chatbots there are many bots that perform specific tasks and generate traffic that is not from people.
They can be grouped mainly into 4 categories:
1. Searchers, evaluate the sites to determine their positioning in the search results
2. Commercial spiders, collect information to feed marketing tools and offer better ads and customer profiles
3. Content collectors, who browse for information to display on the walls and news from social networks and news aggregators
4. Monitoring, are pending the proper functioning of sites and online services
Among all these, it is estimated that they generate 23% of internet traffic, less than half of the total bot visits.
The other half of the autonomous traffic is produced by negative bots.
Negative bots
They are programs that seek to carry out harmful activities for the websites they visit. They are responsible for 29% of the visits to websites.
They are classified into 4 categories mainly:
- Suppliers, posing as legitimate users to enter through security systems
2. Collectors, seek to extract data without authorization
3. Spam content, inject comments or irrelevant links in forums, discussions and comments sections
4. Access tools, look for open doors to steal data or insert malicious software
Between the damages that cause to the businesses they are:
- Obtaining sensitive personal data
- Payment information
- Fraud in advertising
- Manipulation of information trends
- Artificial increase of visitor statistics
The dilemma
What is still not completely resolved is the dilemma that arises from automation.
On the one hand we want to be more efficient, do more with less resources, be able to serve more customers, have a personalized and tailored service, give unique and unrepeatable offers at the lowest possible cost and without people feeling that they are being served by a machine.
On the other hand, we do not want machines to replace us, to eliminate repetitive activities or those that do not provide real value to keep us competitive.
How do you think we will be impacted by the advent of bots and artificial intelligence?-
