The Mad Botter launches 'Alice' AI bot to assist with productivity and collaboration

When you are working on a team -- whether large or small -- collaboration can be a huge pain point. Nowadays, there are more and more remote workers, meaning teammates aren't always in the same state or country, let alone the same office building. After all, there is talent all over the globe -- not just in a 30 mile radius surrounding your place of business. This is one of the reasons why chat solutions like Slack have gained in popularity.

Speaking from experience, many software solutions are quite deficient in maximizing productivity and collaboration. There are still many instances where employees duplicate work and find themselves working off of outdated document revisions. A new startup called "The Mad Botter" is hoping to change this with a new "Wonderland" themed artificial intelligence bot called "Alice." This isn't an entirely new platform, however, and that is a good thing. Instead, the bot ties into existing solutions, such as the aforementioned Slack, plus other services like Trello and GitHub.

"Remote teams have gained more traction as communication and collaboration over the internet has become easier and faster. The challenges of running a distributed team typically manifests itself in not being able to track exactly the status of work and keeping everyone on the same page. Alice is an intelligent personal assistant that helps employees keep their status up-to-date, manage calendars, and keeps the workflow intact and working properly. Allowing everyone on the team to focus on the bigger picture," says The Mad Botter.

Michael Dominick, Founder and CEO of the startup explains, "Alice was born out of the challenges I faced when managing a distributed team. Many businesses are interested in the perks of being able to hire employees all over the world, such as access to great talent at a lower cost. But communication can be challenging without conversations in the hallway. Alice fills the gaps, and makes the distributed office more efficient."

What strikes me as most interesting about this artificial intelligence bot is that she responds to, and uses, natural language. As you can see above, the user doesn't necessarily have to learn commands, instead speaking to Alice as if she were a real person. The more employees leverage "her," I can see the fact that she is a bot fading away, making it feel as if she is a true team member. How cool is that?

If "Alice" seems like something that could help your company or organization, you can learn more here.