It is a general consensus that automation in the workplace will increase productivity level and will result in an increase in profits. Most current AI bots are used for customer service but lack the intellectual capabilities to try to convince humans they need a product. The goal of the new wave of the bots is to contact as many people that they see as potentially interested in a product, and then stay in contact with them until they are close to making a deal so they can pass it off to the actual sales reps(The actual sales reps are Human just to make that clear). There are a few companies that are trying to develop a machine learning bot that can attract potential customers such as Conversica or Growbot. Growbot is attempting to bring AI into the sales world and have established their two main goals. "...the challenges with AI have 2 layers: the data you use for training your algorithms--and the algorithms themselves. Without the relevant training data, all of the algorithms are useless. AI researchers say that getting data is 90% effort and 10% building algorithms. Many people wonder why Tesla was the first company to introduce the autopilot feature to their cars, and the answer is quite simple: they've been collecting data from all of their cars on the road, while Google has only been collecting data from a few prototypes," (odd article title but some useful information) For those of you not familiar with machine learning these are the blueprints you must follow, create a data set large enough to get some consistent results and continue to add data to make the machine better. Growbot is dropping a subtle hint that they are going to be the first into the industry because they have been collecting data first. I guess we will see how their building algorithm continues to improve their bots.
A few side notes:
I don't know how many of you guys use Instagram, but from my experience when I search a product on my phone its only a matter of hours before Instagram is trying to advertise similar products on my timeline and I am sure that happens on other social media websites. On the websites "About Us" tab on the Growbot website they include this statement "Growbot is an all in one solution for driving predictable revenue growth. With our AI based platform, anyone who needs to generate leads, from sales to marketing, can reach out to hundreds of potential customers in minutes." Talk about spam!
Also apparently for those who are on the positive side of the debate over Will AI systems ever become conscious? "Over time, these bots "learned" that English was not the most efficient means of communication, and slowly started developing their own language to achieve their pre-programmed goal." Their goal was to be as efficient as possible so the two bots no longer used English as their mode because it seemed less efficient
More in depth article of the two Facebook bots
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
If you haven't heard, Saudi Arabia recently gave a humanoid robot citizenship. Sophia was created by the Hong Kong-based company, Hanso...
-
Photo taken from Botnik's Harry Potter post As A.I. advances, we see new forms of content being created. One of my more recent fa... -
With today being Super Bowl Sunday, I couldn't help but think about how A.I. might be involved with the betting. We have seen artificial...
Very interesting post! I find it extremely neat that the bots started developing their own language to achieve their programmed goals! I feel that fact will be very insightful to the conversation on Artificial Intelligence and consciousness.
ReplyDeleteReading this blog that is specifically about AI in sales made me think about AI in other jobs. This website: https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/ is something I found a year or so ago that gives the probability of a job being automated. Type in Software Developer, and the percentage is very low, but type in Accountant or Recordkeepers, you start getting into the 90%s. You can learn about how they come up with the numbers in the about page of the website.
ReplyDeleteDo you think we should start worrying about automation of jobs? Is it inevitable? Is it a good thing? What are the downfalls of automation? All questions to ask in regards to this information.
This blog post made me wonder about what will happen to most jobs in the future. I think it is good that humans are still involved in the sales process, but it seems like only a matter of time before the process is fully automated. Perhaps automation will improve profits for companies, but where will all of the human workers go and what will they do?
ReplyDeleteI think what ultimately "sells" products is the human element. We might end up with a John Henry situation in which a Willy Lohman-esque American hero must defeat an evil telemarketing robot. But I think salesmanship, or at least quality salesmanship, is safe as a job in the future. Because it is not so much about the consumer as it is about the producer. It is cheaper and easier for the producer to have robots manning the phones than it is to have human beings. Robots might make faster sales, but maybe with less repeat customers. Perhaps the amount of money they bring in does not necessarily match the amount they cost. A human being has that potential, and always has that potential. I think if we have robots manning the phones, unless they absolutely obliterate the Turing test, people will get frustrated and hang up.
ReplyDeleteI don't think a human will always be the best option to sell products. It really depends on the consumer. For some consumers a targeted ad might convince them to purchase an item they've been contemplating. Also, I think it's worth mentioning the data collected by these ad campaigns can be far more insightful then the data collected by a human salesperson. The data collected is much deeper than what is at the surface level and can be used to maintain customer satisfaction, influence product development, and generate sales in the future.
Delete