Agentic AI

Agentic AI (artificial intelligence) has gotten quite good. My daughter accidentally damaged a brand new gift card today, so I had to call the big box store's customer service line to ask for a replacement. I waited on hold for about ten minutes, during which time I inadvertently put my own phone on mute.

After the ten minutes of holding, a voice came on the line, introducing himself as "AJ". He repeated the introduction three times before I unmuted my phone and responded. Every time he said his introduction of himself, "AJ" sounded exactly the same. 

Now, I realize that could have just been a recorded message, but my entire interaction with "AJ" seemed like I was interacting with a chatbot that had been trained on real customer service employees in call centers in the Philippines. There were even some "I'm typing on a keyboard" noises from time to time that weren't consistent with what would be expected from the context.

I hadn't realized that chatbots can now perform mostly convincing audio back-and-forth interactions. The phone call did end successfully with a replacement gift card on its way.

Have many of the first job losses to AI have been quietly happening abroad in Indian and Philippine call centers? First US businesses outsourced to India and the Philippines, and now it appears the big businesses are figuring out how to bypass having to hire any humans, no matter how low the salaries, wherever they can do so.