Matt Chalawsky Bio and Blog

It's almost comical how many times I talk to a new entrepreneur who has a billion dollar idea.  It's usually something like Uber for dogs or Twitter for millennials.  Or it's a dating app that "really" works (don't most work?  maybe, just not for them). In reality, most ideas are not new, and most of the work is in the execution.  Paul Graham said it best: " Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going. " 

Read Matt Chalawsky 's answer to How detrimental are leaf blowers to air quality in Los Angeles? on Quora How detrimental are leaf blowers to air quality in Los Angeles? Matt Chalawsky , Chatbot Engineer at Los Angeles Leaf blowers and other gas powered garden equipment create more pollution in LA than cars (source:  NPR ). Epidemiological studies have long recognized the harm from the particles put into air from leaf blowers — including hydrocarbons from gasoline, animal droppings, spores, fungi, pollens, pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers, brake-lining dust and tire residue and heavy metals — cause to people's respiratory systems, according to Bay Area Air Quality Management District reports.

Matt Chalawsky About Me Matt Chalawsky

Read Matt Chalawsky 's answer to What are the best arguments for investing in chatbot startups now? on Quora Conversational UI have always been the holy grail of user interfaces (UI) since the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” came out. This approach more naturally matches the way most people communicate and is a major paradigm shift from conventional UIs. At the heart of chatbots are Natural language processing (NLP) tools. These tools have been steadily improving and finally reached a point where the economics make sense to build conversational UIs. Many large companies and investors are betting big that conversational UI is a going to dominate many UIs in the future. -- Matt Chalawsky

Matt Chalawsky -- Are Chatbots and Conversational UI a paradigm shift in UX?  It's been over a year since Facebook announced it's Messenger bot initiative.  As with most new technologies, there's a lot of excited at first, but eventually the technology will either prove to be a better user experience or not. There's some evidence that  Chatbots are gaining traction.   This is actually surprising since most chatbots are still fairly unsophisticated and struggle to provide more than a scripted response. Natural language processing (NLP) has been making huge gains in recent years.  NLP allows chatbots to understand the intent of a statement.  This is a very difficult problem given that the English language allows so many ways to say the same thing.  Luckily for chatbot developers, there are a growing number of NLP tools (i.e. API.ai , Microsoft LUIS , IBM Watson )  that solves the most daunting aspects of the problem. Mobile is the key driver of chatbots today sin

Technologies can feed each other's growth Technologies feeding each other's growth - Matt Chalawsky Technology has the potential to grow exponentially, feeding on each other's growth. More effort should be put into interdisciplinary studies. Technologies are bleeding into each other and new areas will be developed.