Artificial Intelligent Agents
It’s true! The person you have been chatting to online possesses robot like characteristics. A new generation of artificially intelligent agents is appearing on websites globally, answering questions about everything from opening a bank account to booking a flight or joining the US military.
Based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology from US company Next IT the US Army’s Sergeant Star can answer basic questions about life in the service. The technology has also been used to create artificial personas for Alaska Airlines, Continental Airlines and a range of other websites, complete with names and faces.
According to the founder and chief executive of Next IT, Fred Brown, his company’s mission is to change how humans and computers interact. “There’s a huge need for this, because as technology grows and becomes more and more complex with more and more information, there has to be a way to simplify that and make it more adaptable and more personalised,” he says.
The goal is to provide a better experience for customers. Brown says Alaskan Airlines moved from fourth place to first in a national customer service ranking in the US airline industry after installing its AI application, dubbed Jenn.
“We are helping customers with complex products and technology and services, figuring out appropriate offers for up-selling and cross-selling,” Brown says.
In Australia, the National Australia Bank is using the technology from local developer MyCyberTwin so consumers can chat to an artificial agent about credit cards and home loans and for help with internet banking. The NAB’s general manager of online, Chris Smith, says hundreds of thousands of chat sessions have already taken place between the NAB online assistant (who has a face but no name) and customers.
Smith says the technology enables customers to get answers after call centres have closed. About one-third of the interactions occur outside of business hours. “If you are overseas and want a question answered, you can get answers 24/7,” he says. “There is a whole generation that has grown up with Facebook and live chat, and banks need to be there. We need to be communicating the way that customers want to communicate.”
Smith says most feedback has been positive, although “some people said they prefer to talk to people one-on-one, some want email but a large percentage wanted to have live or automated chat”.
“It’s a statement by the bank that we are keen to communicate with people who are interested in this channel, which maybe traditionally banks don’t use,” he says.
The founder and chief executive officer of MyCyberTwin, Liesl Capper-Beilby, says her company has supplied Cybercafes to publishers, other financial institutions and even NASA. Many customers say they like talking with AI agents, as the process was less of an interruption than making a phone call, and 65 per cent of users would have phoned a call centre if the CyberTwin option did not exist.
“The answer is coming in seconds and it is actually more accurate than the human channel,” Capper-Beilby says. “Humans are not consistent, they say things depending on their mood and they can’t remember 5000 pieces of information like a CyberTwin can.”
While the CyberTwin can take between 12 hours to six weeks to program, Capper-Beilby says its implementations have demonstrated up to 94 per cent accuracy.
“We are able to get high accuracy because the system self-learns,” she says.
Brown does not expect artificial intelligent agents to replace human call-centre operators but their presence would free humans to take on more interesting work.
“I don’t think computers have intuition or a soul,” Brown says. “You can teach them to be polite and courteous but what about compassion and empathy?
“And those things are very important to how you feel. Sometimes you just want to interact with another soul.”