The way communicate with computers is becoming conversational. With chat interfaces or our voices, we’re using natural language to ask our devices for information. And they’re talking back. Advances in natural language processing, voice recognition and artificial intelligence are literally bringing this technology home -and also making it easier for newcomers to build conversational “specialty” bots to fit specific needs. In this class, we will explore the emerging role of conversational bots in society (including journalism), the qualities that make a bot effective (or not) and the process making good bots. And we’ll make our own. You will learn some code in this class, but previous coding experience is not necessary.