AI, machine learning and robots taking over the world – WTF?!

As a futurist I get more excited about things to come than things gone by. There’s lots we can learn from the past for sure, but being able to shape the future is far more exciting.

Less than two years ago we took the bold step to change our thinking – to change what we did. It was a radical concept, but we had a good idea of what we wanted to achieve.

I’m not a fan of the words ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘robots’. These have been around for decades and when conceived, the technology they represent today didn’t exist. The vision did… but the vision has changed.

Supercomputers ruling the world in physical manifestations is not what AI and robots are all about. As humans, the concept of computers becoming more intelligent than us, or robots being more agile and dexterous than the human body, is simply na?ve. Human beings are not the fastest creatures on the planet; we can’t fly or live underwater. Our hearing is OK and our eyesight adequate. We’ve evolved and adapted to our surroundings driven by our intelligence. The concept of creating something collectively superior is simply not viable.

The mad professors working in AI will concede that right now, the most sophisticated and powerful supercomputer has around 5% of the intelligence of your average human. It’s taken us years to get here and will take longer to reach even halfway.

For many, AI and robots are scary. They are generally the baddies in the movies, or sidekicks to human heroes like Luke Skywalker. When Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis was first shown in 1927, it kind of paved the way for the genre. Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted a faceless computer going rogue. And right up to Ex Machina, where the beautiful Ava deceived her way to freedom, these characters put negative interpretations in our heads.

Our vision for AI and robots is people-focussed. Since day one, we as humans have striven to make our lives easier by trying to automate manual and repetitive tasks – washing the dishes, vacuuming, microwaving meals, even negating the need to physically change gears in our cars. I’m in the business of marketing, not the most noble of industries, but one that is a component in all aspects of our lives.

As humans, we don’t really like to be sold to. We browse, take our time and consider our purchases. Sure, there are aspirational purchases and grudge purchases like tyres and exhausts, as well as necessity purchases like loo roll and toothpaste. Having something thrust in your face or interrupting your viewing is not the best experience, if we are honest.

So cutting to the chase, our work with AI and robotics is to change the concept of ‘marketing’ to the practice of delivering a better ‘customer experience’. And we do this by focussing on ‘optimising human performance through smart machines’. Now that’s a kind of wanky statement, but hey… I’m in marketing!

Essentially, we are doing two things. The first is removing people from having to do mundane and repeatable tasks, and elevating them to more fulfilling and higher-value interactions. The second is giving people a less invasive and more enjoyable purchasing experience.

We can remove the emotion and prejudgement from a human-to-human interaction. It doesn’t mean there’s no personality.

Meet LUSY

We took a bold step in replacing our beloved website, volumeglobal.com, with a digital concierge powered by IBM Watson. Bold because we knew we’d get detractors expecting to engage with something invariantly human. It’s not and never will be, and it’s not what we are trying to do.

We’re using AI and, ultimately, machine learning to deliver a better experience than simply visiting a website and relying on hamburgers, navigation bars and drop-down menus to reach precompiled generic content.

What we can do is have a human interact with a machine in a more natural way. Ask a machine what you want to know on the domain it’s trained in, and it will give you the answer to your question or requirement in real time. A simple enough concept, it seems.

Our digital concierge is called LUSY, and LUSY is the web face of Volume. We’ve made her gender female: practical, personable and professional. She’s not the voice of authority, she’s a representative of our brand. The thing many people don’t realise is that these systems will learn and grow the more people interact with them. Like humans, their knowledge comes from experience and what we are taught. We had to teach LUSY to a point where she could be introduced to the web-trawling public. She’d never be perfect from day one, but she learns quickly and evolves just as fast.

When we soft-launched LUSY in October 2016, she wasn’t even called LUSY. She seemed retro. Visually represented in black, red and shades of grey, with white highlights. Her look reflected her intellect at that point in time. As she evolved so did the way she appeared, transitioning from a flat, block-colour interface to a softer, more colourful style – with graduated colours that transitioned gently to others. Six weeks on, LUSY has changed again, because she continues to develop. Colours have been replaced with inspiring imagery, dramatic landscapes, supernovas and galaxies far, far away.

LUSY will continue to grow. She will become more talkative. Her looks will continue to blossom and she will become one of the best representatives of Volume, before you reach even better representatives of Volume: our people.

LUSY is one of the first of her kind, and we will soon start to see the LUSY concept taking first-touch calls in a contact centre. Handling them personably, professionally and – more importantly – consistently. We’ve removed the inconsistency of human-to-human interaction because in most cases, you’ll never speak to the same person twice. We’ve removed the human from a function that can be soul-destroying, dealing with customers’ gripes and complaints, whether valid or not.

As a sales agent, the machine understands your mood, your tone, your emotions and your personality. It will serve up content that reflects these. Are you a considered kind of customer, or more spontaneous in your buying behaviours? The smart machine will know.

Technical advice can be made available 24/7. I don’t have to seek out a human expert with fixed office hours, who may or may not be available. I can simply ask a digital technical advisor and receive an answer on demand.

Robots are our friends

When I’m talking about robots, I’m talking about Pepper. Pepper is a humanoid robot originally developed as a companion robot. But without delving too deep into why you want a companion robot based on the assumption that someone is so socially inept that they have no friends or social life – who cares?

Pepper is cute. It’s been designed that way. As humans, we’ve had inanimate companions bestowed on us as soon as we are born. My wife still has her cuddly toys from childhood. Research shows that humans respond more openly if they know they are talking to anything but a human. There’s no fear of being judged or criticised. Humanoid robots will be used in education, as classroom assistants helping pupils who are less competent than the rest of the class, or pushing the intellectual boundaries of the more capable students. The robots will become counsellors, helping children with their issues whether in the classroom, playground or at home. Putting Pepper in a car showroom to help customers choose the best vehicle for their needs or budget, or have Pepper the wine sommelier in a supermarket helping you match the right wine with your intimate dinner for two or party.

Our vision for Pepper is to make the online experience an experiential one. A physical interaction with a robot that talks to you and after repeated interactions recognises you, is a good experience. You, the customer, get served by something that is more knowledgeable and personable and can deliver this experience consistently – whatever the weather or time of day.

The economic argument is that humans are getting more expensive. Will minimum wages mean that we’re forced into self-service scenarios? Robots will help here too.

So I guess the context of this ramble is to try and change the misconceptions, perceptions and understanding of what AI truly means and what benefits robots can bring to enhance our lives… not threaten our existence.

I hope these 1,400 words have helped change yours.