The world is about to get its first really angry artificial intelligence, in the form of a computer designed to help understand customer complaints.
Touchpoint Group, a technology firm based in New Zealand, wants to create the world's angriest artificial intelligence computer, with hopes that it will help companies with customer service issues defuse such anger when it arises with real people.
Of course, an angry AI could end up being our worst nightmare and the stuff guys like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have warned us about, but Touchpoint sees their AI a little differently: this is all about helping companies better gauge their customers' reactions to their systems, processes, products and services.
It will take about six months for data scientists to input data based on real-life angry customer service calls and interactions, as well as program the necessary algorithms to make the angry AI simulate those calls and interactions that often become explosive. The idea is that using these interactions could help those in customer service better understand what triggers such behavior in the first place.
"The end goal is to build an engine that can recommend solutions to companies - and we're talking about the people at the frontline here - how they can improve particular issues that customers are facing," says Touchpoint Group chief executive Frank van der Velden. "This will be possible by enabling our AI engine to learn right across a whole range of interactions of what has and has not worked in past examples."
The project's name is also interesting. Touchpoint is calling their AI machine Radiant, after The Prime Radiant, a device in Isaac Asimov's Foundation book series that shows the future development of humanity.
Although Radiant might provide valuable data to companies invested in customer service, let's just hope that it doesn't become sentient and decide to bring about the apocalypse. We've already seen that happen in Terminator, and we've been warned about it from several of our generation's lead scientists.
"Computers will overtake humans with AI at some within the next 100 years," says Hawking. "When that happens, we need to make sure the computers have goals aligned with ours."
Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Musk agrees and even stated that he believes that artificial intelligence is more dangerous to the human race than nuclear weapons.
Let's just say that we hope Radiant's creators put in some basic concepts that protect us from the world's angriest computer. Otherwise, we're probably doomed.
[Photo Credit: Fox]
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