The Evolution of Chatbots: From Rule-Based Scripts to AI-Powered Conversations
1. The Early Days: Rule-Based Decision Trees In the 1990s and early 2000s, chatbots were essentially interactive FAQs. Developers hard-coded if-then rules or long decision trees. When users typed a phrase that matched a predefined pattern, the bot returned a scripted response. Strengths Fast to build for small, well-defined domains Fully deterministic (every input leads […]