The benefits of AI vs the loss of human interaction
We ran into a brick wall this week and it clearly demonstrated that one of the problems with the AI disruption is that the loss of human interaction is not always a benefit for the consumer.
Whilst busy (ok! flat out busy) with designing the day’s video postings on YouTube, Instagram and FaceBook, our design team decided to investigate Pinterest as a possible platform for our parenting guidance.
First blockage: we were told that we could not “claim” our website, as it had already been claimed by someone else. How was this possible, we asked, since we are the registered owners of the domain “thefriendlyprofessor.com”?
"Your website has been claimed by another user"
That was when we found out that there is another similar domain registered, “friendlyprofessor.com”. Although this was a bit of a shock and meant we would have to carefully differentiate our website from the other one, surely there was enough of a difference for an algorithm to separate the one from the other.
Apparently not. The head of our design team was determined to “sort it out”, and I have been married to her for long enough to know that when she sets her mind to something she usually produces a result.
“At last,” she said, some hours later, ”I have finally got hold of a human.”
By which she meant that she was now on an “email chat” with someone called Bev. The confusion was explained, denied, re-explained, finally understood and – amazingly – Bev promised to claim our website on our behalf.
"Your account will not be restored"
Before she could get back to us with the good news that this had been done, we received a message from somebody with the entirely appropriate name of Cloud, telling us that our account had been suspended because Pinterest considered it to be “spam”.
We were allowed to appeal against this decision, which we did, and inevitably we received the final news that our account would not be restored.
The result is that Pinterest has lost a (very small) client and we have lost a (very small) sales channel. A few hours wasted on our side, and a few minutes on theirs.
So why is this problem still irritating me, days later?
I think the answer is because it is a perfect example of how Artificial Intelligence is being blindly applied where it shouldn’t be.
I am a great proponent of AI: the entire structure of The Friendly Professor is built on AI research. We could never have afforded the salaries of the researchers that we would have needed to comb through all the available knowledge from trusted sources in order to distill it into the 50 or so parenting guides that we have.
And when we branch out into healthy eating, home schooling and exercise regimens for the elderly, we shall, once again, be dependent on AI for much of the research.
So it irritates me when I see that so many corporate entities are using AI in the one area where they shouldn’t – customer queries – and for the one reason they shouldn’t – to reduce costs.
The problem is that when AI is involved in a system, the remaining humans in that system become progressively lazier. They find it easier and easier to hide behind the AI curtain and ignore the irritating customer with a valid query.
This is, of course, bad for the company, but it is also bad for the future of AI.