Akheel Hassan Bilgrami, Executive Creative Director, CIQIt was not an eerie feeling at all. Maybe I get used to strange phenomena faster than others. Or it’s just that it was that good. At emulating. At replicating. At believing that it is real. A real human. Not an AI agent.
First, let’s talk about the human implications. To be real, no human was meant to spend hours repeating instructions on how to set up a monitor or why those pesky small charges keep appearing on your bank statements. Humans were meant to do better things, like ensuring that the machine does not replicate or repeat or even come up with something that has bad implications for the good of humanity.
So, what about AI agents is so special? If I were to follow what Adam Curtis argues in the incredible documentary ‘All watched over by machines of loving grace’ that computers have failed to liberate humanity, and instead have “distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.”
But will AI make that difference? By making us feel liberated from mundanity or chores that we could be better off not doing. Like Joanna Maciejewska so beautifully, poetically sums up in that famous tweet:
… I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.*
So, I tested an AI agent by a popular name in the field currently. The experience was seamless and felt like would be worth it if it saves me 15 to 30 mins (by personal anecdotes) of time. But it’s not just about the time.
What if I was willing to not just wait but also do something productive with my time. In last year’s first-ever edition of Waitwhile’s The State of Waiting in Line which surveyed 1000 U.S. consumer, findings revealed ‘almost 40 per cent of consumers said that they would continue shopping or browsing at a business while queuing virtually.”
If an AI agent could resolve your query, give you some recipe ideas for dinner that night or even help you shop for your essentials or even just some pure retail therapy, then it would definitely be doing a great service to humanity at large who are stuck at dinner, finding the decision-making each day to be a gargantuan task and would rather let the machine decide it for them.
Now imagine this: all at the speed of three real humans doing their best to keep up with your ever wandering thoughts and needs and desires.
In the region, we all know the brands whose CX or customer service or customer care or whatever it is called these days, we do not enjoy at all. Not even a bit. Coupled with the fact that people here like to spend time shopping for anything and everything.
There is potential for a bank to not just give you options of cards to choose but also on spending some of that instantly approved credit on that pair of headphones you have been coveting for what seems like ages but in actuality has just been two weeks, moreover, doing so while getting you another instant approval this time on 0 per cent monthly installments. Many that I know would be over the moon to be able to do so.
So, in my quest to see of an AI agent can do what it is supposed to do and even help me save some of my time, I have decided to turn myself into one. Soon I will be publishing the results of my self-observed research with the help of some indie friends from around the world.
I am particularly interested in knowing what changes these AI agents of change will bring forth. Whether those changes will be making our lives easier, simpler, somehow happier. Can we hope for a little glimmer of joy in our eyes as we observe that the machine knows us best sometimes and that that’s okay.
So as long as you remember that everything and everyone must be treated with humanity. One of the things I’ve been recently thinking was how AI agents can judge award shows and bring a certain neutrality to it. Something that our advertising, marketing and media industries can benefit from. Now that’s yet another topic to explore.
But coming back to CX and how its far-reaching implications must prepare us for a future where the best things are made possible by machines, and hopefully not the worst. AI agents can also help us navigate the complex worlds of say the financial industry or even the steel manufacturing industry, if you’re so inclined.
They could support us by finding the most cost-effective solution to everyday problems. Now, will it be able to do jugaad like us desis. That’s to be seen!
By Akheel Hassan Bilgrami, ECD, CIQ
