Artifical Intelligence? More like Artificial Idiot!
I have yet to see a single instance where AI has produced anything of value to a typical workplace. As far as I can see it has two uses for most businesses :
- Writing copy for marketers who can't be bothered/aren't able to write it for themselves.
- Acting as a glorified search engine who's results you can't actually trust.
There are obviously some industries where AI is clearly beneficial. It's ability to sort, classify and evaluate large volumes of strictly typed data against a desired outcome is far ahead of anything humans can achieve unaided - a huge boon to research in many areas but these are not the type of AI's that people generally see. They're specialised, trained for a specific task and they do it very, very well indeed. Whether anyone can train a model to deal with unstructured human input and produce reliable,trustworthy and useful outcomes is questionable to say the least.
As for AI replacing human call centers, why not - in far to many it's as though it already has. Just try calling any 'communications provider', by the time you fight through the impenetrable wall of telephone menus, all too often fronted by an 'AI powered' speech recognition system that can't actually understand anything at all unless you speak in BBC English & an Oxford/Cambridge accent then lose the will to live listening to an unending loop of 'We are experincing high call volumes' & brain-melting muzak you are inevitably wound up and annoyed. Then you are faced by an inquisition that would put the Spanish to shame in the name of 'security' only to end up speaking to someone who probably has less authority to actually do anything than king canute had over the tide. I'm sure AI couldn't do any worse.
Contrast that with another call I had to make to an insurance company. Simple press button menu, short (under 1 minute) wait, speak to a real person who listens, checks and resolves the issue in less than 5 minutes.
Guess which compnay kept my business?
AI will not fix poor customer service. It will however increase executive bonuses while infuriating customers even further. Do that too much or too often and customers will vote with their wallets & go elsewhere.
And someone might want to remind said executives - if the AI is running the call enter and technology is delivering the back end product, what's left? Wouldn't it be more efficient for AI to manage the AI's.. and a whole lot better for the shareholders.....