AI – The Burble

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A recent report from PWC titled ‘Will robots steal our jobs’ summarised a number of investigations into the potential impact on jobs as a result of the rapid development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI, which in this context includes robotics and machine learning.) The report indicated that up to 30% of insurance and financial services roles could be impacted although exact numbers remain not surprisingly, elusive. Let me repeat that, up to 1/3^rd of all roles in the insurance industry might cease to exist or have to change in a significant way.

That’s a pretty astonishing estimate. With some significant impacts.

Companies are going to undergo major transformations; changing what they do, how they create value, and how they deal with customers. And perhaps, the biggest impact will be on employees; how will they deal with this transformation?

IT Help Desk – how may I ruin your day?

I admit it now that I am not the greatest fan of IT help desks.

Whether that is at work or at home I continue to wonder if the person I am speaking to has the first clue about the problem I am trying to solve. And that is of course if you can get to that person. You know how it goes when you dial the number and the first thing that happens is a recorded message saying that the call may be recorded for training purposes. Based on the number of calls I have made the training regime should be brilliant and all problems should have disappeared by now. But for some reason they still want to record the call.

Maybe it’s actually about training me? In which case can you tell me where I can get access to this training material as I am very willing to learn, if nothing else to make sure I don’t have to phone a help desk ever again.

Anyhow after you have ben advised that someone somewhere will benefit from training its time to press a series of buttons in response to being asked a series of questions. A series of questions that never seem to include anything that is relevant to the problem you have. In this case your computer won’t connect to the internet so

‘Press 1 for billings and payments

Press 2 for our latest best ever pricing on something that you have never heard of

Press 3 for voice activated data requests

Press 4 to hear the list again’

Now what?

My typical response is to disconnect and phone again, hoping against hope that a new list of buttons will have magically appeared and there might be some help at hand. Of course there never is so I invariably hit 3.

And then of course it all goes wrong because there is another list of numbers and things to connect to and each seems further away from the problem you’re trying to solve.

Of course you might eventually find a combination of buttons that connects you to a human being but I would seriously avoid doing this as you will go mad.

The human at the end of the phone will sound helpful and reasonable until you explain the problem. And then they will ask for a serial number or a code that you will swear on your ancestors graves that you have never been given or seen. All the while the phone bill and the tutting at the other end continues to grow.

After a while, and a significant increase in your blood pressure, the human will then decide that they might indeed be able to help you? Always assuming it is a human rather than a new Artificial Intelligence Bot. And here’s another link if you’re interested to the top 10 bots? Who knew there was a top 10

Anyhow back to the story. The person at the other end of the phone will then ask you to click on something. Something that you cannot see on the screen in front of you. No problem says the person at the other end of the phone. Simply click on the link in the same precise order as the morse code for ‘wow clicking on this button really doesn’t make anything happen’ and sit back and watch.

Watch nothing happen at all. And so by now you are literally like the man below.

Image courtesy of marin at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

And then the final insult. The human (or bot) or whatever then tells you the best thing you can do is to switch your computer off and start again……

Featured Image Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net