Saturday 9 July 2016

How Long Before The Poor Thing Goes Totally Tonto?

Parit Patel, IPSoft's head of solutions, added that the AI would adjust its emotional tone to respond to that of the caller. He said: "If I told Amelia I didn't think she was doing a good job, she would pick up on that."
Good grief! Is this how SkyNet gets started..?
Amelia, created by "digital labour" company IPSoft, based in New York, has already started answering the phones at Enfield Council in a bid to - you guessed it - cut costs.
Yup, that oughtta do it!

I, for one, welcome our vengeful AI overlords with customer-induced PTSD...

4 comments:

ivan said...

Humm... There is an up side to this, those ringing the council might get a sensible answer for a change.

Antisthenes said...

It is amazing how to cut cost actually means it costs more and someone thinks it will make their job easier but does not but it does inconvenience the customer. But hell who cares if you work for the government or public sector you are a monopoly so sod the customers there are plenty out there with no where else to go also it does not matter what service the customer gets good or bad they pay for it through their taxes come what may. We have nurses doing doctors jobs and teacher assistants and the like. Just non jobs that increase costs, duplicates work and add extra paperwork and administration. Plus of course the necessary extra management to sort out all the extra mistakes that us humans are so good at making. Machines are not immune either as they are inflexible and cause confusion (maybe when AI improves that will be sorted).

Example I see a nurse instead of a doctor answer loads of questions. Nothing is achieved the next time I see a doctor he/she asks the exact same questions. Sometimes something is achieved. I try to get a doctors appointment I spend hours either redialling(no point trying unless you have a phone with last call redial on it) or listening to stupid announcements for 20 minutes or more. Expenditure on buying the right phone, phone call costs and time. The latter not important to me as I am retired. I feel sorry for those who are not.

Lynne at Counting Cats said...

AI is a failure. Your only have to look at the robotic Jezza Corbyn to understand that.

JuliaM said...

"There is an up side to this, those ringing the council might get a sensible answer for a change."

True! :)

"It is amazing how to cut cost actually means it costs more and someone thinks it will make their job easier but does not but it does inconvenience the customer. But hell who cares if you work for the government or public sector..."

Nailed it!