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posted by martyb on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the at-least-for-now dept.

Google's Duplex AI could kill the call center

Google is reportedly shopping its Duplex AI system around as a tool for call centers, according to The Information, including a large insurance company.

Duplex would handle simple calls for the insurance company, and if the customer started asking complex questions the bot can't handle a human would step in, according to the report. However, it's unlikely that AI research will cease after mastering simple conversations, meaning call centers could one day be largely automated using this technology.

[...] Update: A Google spokesperson reiterated that Duplex is only being tested as a consumer technology for now, and that the company isn't testing it for enterprise. The entire statement is below:

We're currently focused on consumer use cases for the Duplex technology and we aren't testing Duplex with any enterprise clients. As we shared last week, Duplex is designed to operate in very specific use cases, and currently we're focused on testing with restaurant reservations, hair salon booking, and holiday hours with a limited set of trusted testers. It's important that we get the experience right and we're taking a slow and measured approach as we incorporate learnings and feedback from our tests.

Also at Techspot and CNET.

Previously: Google Duplex: an AI that Can Make Phone Calls on Your Behalf
Google Starts "Limited Testing" of Google Duplex AI System


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @01:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @01:17AM (#704375)

    Different AC. Our economy is jiggered in many ways to aid the rich in becoming richer as the poor become poorer. We built the Autobahn, but you're not allowed to walk on it. You need a car. We designed the Volkswagen as the car for the common person, but the desperately poor couldn't afford even a Volkswagen.

    Free software is like that. It doesn't cost anything, but you need a computer to use it. The common person, even some of the desperately poor, can afford a personal computer. With free software, a person can read e-mail, browse and design the WWW, work with business documents, make music, draw, chat or play games. The free software to do those things often comes at no cost. Charities that provide computers to the poor can do so without paying for software--and without the busywork of licence management. We had a city, Munich, that made a policy of using free and open-source software wherever it could. Munich saved #11 million. They had to train their users on the new software, but they were able to avoid hardware upgrades because the free and open-source software was less demanding.