Is conversational AI all it's cracked up to be, or is hype eclipsing hope when it comes to deliverables?  Has the gap between expectations and reality grown so wide that disappointment is inevitable, both for end-users and enterprise decision-makers?  Or have the majority of chatbot vendors simply been targeting the wrong use cases, inadvertently leading their customers to insurmountable dead ends?

One man with a clear-eyed vision of the market opportunity uncluttered by misconceptions about the technology's potential is Kevin Collins, Founder & CEO of Charli.ai.  Following GE Digital's acquisition of his IoT company Bit Stew, Kevin set out to build a personal AI Chief-of-Staff front-ended by a chatbot.  With Charli.ai recently emerging from stealth mode, Kevin joins us on the podcast to explain why despite expert predictions falling short about conversational AI's advances he's still enthusiastic about the technology; why front-end conversational interactions must never exceed back-end automation capabilities; and how CIO's should approach conversational AI implementations.