Conversational assistants

We keep hearing about conversational assistants. They sound fancy, but really they’re just interactive agent AI that talks back. The trick isn’t that she answers questions. The trick is that she remembers what we asked two minutes ago.

Multi turn talk

A single question isn’t much. Ask, “What’s the weather?” and get a reply. Fine. But ask, “And tomorrow?” and she knows we mean tomorrow’s weather. That’s multi turn dialogue. It’s what makes her feel like a partner instead of a search box.

Context memory

We don’t want to repeat ourselves. She remembers our earlier words, holds them in working memory, and keeps the thread alive. If we say, “Book the same flight but later,” she knows which flight we meant. Lose that context and the whole thing collapses.

Small rules big payoffs

Think in rules of thumb. Make her forget less so we explain less. Make her recall the last request so we don’t start over. Users forgive a lot when the basics work smoothly. They won’t forgive the same question twice.

Why it matters

When she holds a conversation, she moves from tool to teammate. Not magical, just useful. Like autocomplete that grew up. We code so she can do the remembering for us.