About whether customer-service chatbots can hold natural, human-like conversations.
Has this happened?
Yes 66 (52%)Not sure 29 (23%)No 32 (25%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether customer-service chatbots can hold natural, human-like conversations.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
The problem is when you're holding a conversation were sitting at the edge of the uncanny valley. The nuances of human communication are many and subtle and most bots come across as uncannily creepy, or develop traits like Microsoft Tay did when she was on twitter. Getting chatbots to be both natural and capable is very difficult task and not something that anyone I know has actually reached. Most still fail a turing test if you give it properly and repeatedly.