Today the BBC News includes a pre-announcement of a speech by Theresa May telling tech companies to use AI to control what they mediate.
Well, coming from her I suppose it is a bit like her waving a limp washing-up rag at a dirty dish.
But it does raise the prospect that AI-based censorship facilities may become a side-effect development of attempts like this to curb misuse of the internet for propagandist purposes. Where will it end? I suppose some censorship could, in some circumstances, improve customer experience. (For example by the removal of unpleasant language or offensive content.) But there is a thin line between control meant to enhance customer experience and what may become a tool of government manipulation and social engineering.
There is no doubt that Machine Learning offers a great deal of potential to control what gets through and what doesn't. But how can it know what is good customer experience and what isn't? Already we have media tycoons vying to have such control over public opinion. Giving them clever machines could make things worse.
Whatever we choose to mean by "AI," I propose it should be to put power into the hands of the end-user customers - Not to deprive them of ANY experience.
Perhaps there should be legislation to ensure that, wherever AI is used, its ultimate control lies in democratic choice, subject to general open mores. This would make it incumbent upon telco providers to open up all AI-based services they put into operation to public scrutiny and control.
------------------------------
Peter Duxbury-Smith
Intelligent Solutions Ltd
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 09-20-2017 01:08
From: Ehtisham Rao
Subject: AI Improving Customer experience
Yesterday Ooredo Maldives launched a customer service app that uses facebook messenger. Many operators are moving to digital tools particularly conversational tools that can accommodate automation and AI support over time. I can see this enabling product provisioning as well as reducing support overhead but the biggest benefit is engagement with customers at the opportune time with minimum fumbles.
AI to me is even more useful internal to Telcos. From preempting network events and fault tolerance to identifying fraud, AI can be used in the network to improve up time and experience. Not much progress is being made at the moment but there is a clear path towards this in the future.
Customer facing OSS/BSS operations will change sooner as CRM, ordering and services move to digital and take AI support to reduce overhead, and provide real time support to staff. Marketing will benefit from big data and analytics support including predictive scores and next best actions automated in conversations.
2018 will be the year of a lot of partnerships and experimentation with digital technology for telecoms.
------------------------------
Ehtisham Rao
CEO, Servup
Original Message:
Sent: 09-19-2017 15:03
From: Mukul Gupta
Subject: AI Improving Customer experience
How are the Telecom service providers gearing up to harness the power / insights generated from AI to improve customer experience and drive towards disproportionately leaner & agile organisations.
------------------------------
Mukul Gupta
------------------------------