Customer service chatbot sector forecast to be worth $7bn this year
- Reference: 1646658009
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/03/07/in_brief_ai/
- Source link:
The machine learning software powering these services is allowing companies to tailor general customer service chatbots on their own data. These agents can provide more helpful suggestions instead of generic responses.
For example, the financial unit of General Motors that deals with things like offering car loans, has a chatbot powered by IBM Watson Assistant to help customers pay their loans. The automated software has been programmed to understand certain queries, such as "What is my payoff amount?" or "Did you receive my March payment?" [1]according to the New York Times .
[2]
The text-based digital assistant has saved the company an estimated $935,000; it doesn't have to pay for human workers or lengthy phone calls. Gartner reckons the industry for these customer service chatbots will grow 15 per cent to more than $7bn this year.
[3]
[4]
Business is booming. The technology is rapidly improving; there are a more startups providing this type of software and lots of companies looking to buy.
'No silver bullet for responsible deployment'
OpenAI is going to release new datasets that test the safety of language models like GPT-3.
These systems can generate text that is classified as offensive, NSFW, and false. Companies like OpenAI are trying to figure out how to make language models safer to use so they can be adopted more widely. At the moment, they rely on content filters.
The San Francisco-based business [5]admitted there is currently no silver bullet for responsible deployment, and that it should have been more careful with regard to the types of data GPT-3 ingested during the training process.
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Some developers using the GPT-3 API have tried to abuse it, getting it to generate text to promote dodgy medical products or racist fantasy roleplays. OpenAI has developed datasets to test the safety of its models, and is going to release them.
"Specifically, we have developed new evaluation metrics for measuring toxicity in model outputs and have also developed in-house classifiers for detecting content that violates our [7]content policy , such as erotic content, hate speech, violence, harassment, and self-harm," it said.
Bring your deceased loved ones to life with deepfakes
Dead relatives appear to speak and move in AI deepfakes created by a startup in partnership with MyHeritage, a genealogy company focused on helping customers flesh out their family trees.
A developer built an AI chatbot using GPT-3 that helped a man speak again to his late fiancée. OpenAI shut it down [8]READ MORE
You can see some examples [9]here . All you need to create your own so-called LiveStory clip is to upload a photo of your loved one, and write a short passage of text describing their life. You can edit the voices to match what they sound like too. The results aren't quite perfect, sometimes the mouth movements don't quite match up to the speech; the facial expressions and blinks are also a bit unnatural.
"Our use of AI to breathe new life into historical photos is unique and is helping millions of people cultivate a renewed emotional connection with their ancestors and deceased loved ones," Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage, said in a canned statement. "Genealogy is all about telling and preserving our family stories. We keep showing the world how fun and compelling genealogy can be."
The software behind the LiveStory feature was developed by D-ID, a startup that builds a range of AI-based creativity tools, and licensed by MyHeritage.
Waymo's self-driving cars to make grocery deliveries
Waymo has been granted a permit by California Public Utilities Commission to start charging customers for ordering trips made by its self-driving cars in San Francisco.
The permit doesn't cover taxi services, only deliveries, [10]according to TechCrunch. Waymo has partnered with Albertsons, an online grocery store, to deliver goods to people in San Francisco. A human driver must also be present at all times.
[11]Startups competing with OpenAI's GPT-3 all need to solve the same problems
[12]Photonics startup Luminous Computing bags $105m
[13]Startups competing with OpenAI's GPT-3 all need to solve the same problems
[14]Baidu plans 100-city robot taxi rollout by 2030
Riders can't sit in one of Waymo's flashy AI robo-vehicles with or without any human supervision yet. "We take a step-by-step approach on the path to rolling out our fully autonomous experience to the public," Nick Smith, a Waymo spokesperson, said.
"We start with an autonomous specialist behind the wheel operating in autonomous mode, and open the rides to a select group of Trusted Testers for free, before we begin charging. Eventually we move to launching in rider-only mode (without anyone else in the car)."
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Waymo did not disclose how much it will be charging for deliveries. Meanwhile, Cruise launched a public waitlist for folks to sign up and become its first users. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/technology/ai-chatbot.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YiY6N2bt8eToHE68cAC89AAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YiY6N2bt8eToHE68cAC89AAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YiY6N2bt8eToHE68cAC89AAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://openai.com/blog/language-model-safety-and-misuse/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YiY6N2bt8eToHE68cAC89AAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://beta.openai.com/docs/usage-guidelines/content-guidelines
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/08/project_december_openai_gpt_3/
[9] https://www.myheritage.com/livestory
[10] https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/28/waymo-to-begin-charging-for-robotaxi-rides-in-san-francisco/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/03/language_model_gpt3/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/05/luminous-ai-supercomputer-photonics/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/03/language_model_gpt3/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/02/baidu_q4_2021/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YiY6N2bt8eToHE68cAC89AAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Alternate Reality?
As long as a chatbot is also able to give me useful contact details when it knows it can't answer my question then I won't complain too loudly. A few do this, but they're overwhelmingly in the minority.
The majority of them are just inferior versions of FAQs. At least with an actual FAQ list you know when you've got to the end.
Re: Alternate Reality?
> Chatbots are the most useless pile of steaming software code ever conceived or written.
I have to agree. The only ones I have been unfortunate enough to encounter are, as far as that experience goes, totally useless.
I spoke to a woman who had a fairly complicated problem with her electricity bill, and whose first language was not English. She came to our organisation for advice because she said that the company treated her as if she was an idiot, and showed me the webchat as evidence. It was clear that she had been engaged with an idiot bot, which did not understand what she was writing, so it fell back all the time to "I didn't quite get that, please tell me if you are a customer of ePratts". She was so relieved to know that she hadn't been typing at a human, it was pathetic.
Re: Alternate Reality?
It's taken a couple of decades for telephone -- "Dial 1 for Useless marketing hype, 2 for more of the same, 3 to hear a garbled version of your last transaction, ... 7 to talk to an actual human (located somewhere in Asia and connected via a noisy phone line)" interfaces to improve to the point where some are actually useful. I've had some success using them instead of chatbots. And there's usually a web interface. About half of those actually work.
I imagine that in 20 or 30 years many chatbots will actually be useful and we'll be using them instead of whatever dysfunctional technical wonder is going to be their 7-gazillion dollar this year replacement.
Re: Alternate Reality?
Do you think I would be wasting my life on hold for 40 minutes if I could do what I want to do on your website? That's why I am fecking well phoning you!
The problem is that the 2,000 other people in the phone queue ahead of you didn't bother check the website before calling and need that reminder. Not that they pay attention to it mind you...
Re: Alternate Reality?
Did you know, you can use our website to answer all the enquiries we think you are capable of having.
Did you know, if you come up with an enquiry that we haven't thought of, you can figure out a hack by yourself and publish it somewhere in less time than it takes you to get through to one of our support staff. (Correction: "colleagues". We still pay them peanuts, but we use a fancier word.)
Did you know, you can even start your own company and compete with us. As we are currently demonstrating, it is easier than you think.
Saves them $935,000...
Costs us our sanity...
Re: Saves them $935,000...
.. and loses them plenty customers.
"LiveStory"
And the abomination has started. Soon, the more mentally fragile among us will be talking to their deceased loved ones on a screen, and shutting out the rest of the world to assuage their pain instead of learning to deal with it.
This company should be banned and shut down along with any other company that tries to do the same.
The psychological damage this will do will be uncalculable.
Fake news
How about a GIF of a rich and deceased uncle mouthing "I leave all my money to my nephew, Insert NameHere".
Seriously, I think this is creepy, literally putting words into people's mouths. Eughhh.
A.C. Clarke strikes again
So this company is producing Harry Potter style pictures?
Sufficiently advanced technology truly is indistinguishable from magic (!/?)
Dead relatives appear to speak and move in AI deepfakes
No. Just No.
IBM Chatbot
[IBM] Hello, how may I help you? Please enter your date of birth so I can customise my answers.
[customer] January 26, 1989
[IBM] I'm sorry. You are over 25 years old and I am terminating this conversation. Please try again when you are an 'Early Professional Hire'.
All you need to create your own so-called LiveStory clip is to upload a photo of your loved one
Presumably you can upload any old photo of anyone you want to this.
Like maybe a photo of an old boss, so you can have a video of them talking about their hobby of harming kittens, committing large scale fraud and having been convicted of numerous unsavoury offences.
Chatbots are pointless
I've never ever had a good outcome from an interaction with them. Finding ways to ask it "Let me speak to a human" is always the right way to go.
The AliExpress one is the worst I've had to endure so far, its a bit like Alexa - you might as well be talking to a relative with Alzheimer's as it can't remember what you said to it in the previous sentence, let alone the ones before that. So much for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
I just hope that the companies realise that these are a total waste of time and should be turned off.
I bet that the $7bn figure was plucked from the a$$ of some marketing droid with no information to back it up.
Alternate Reality?
I have arrived in an alternate universe without realising it?
Chatbots are the most useless pile of steaming software code ever conceived or written.
It's like phoning a company to enquire about something, and having to endure 40 minutes of being on hold listening to "did you know you can use our website to answer almost all of your enquiries...." Really? Do you think I would be wasting my life on hold for 40 minutes if I could do what I want to do on your website? That's why I am fecking well phoning you!