It is a story representative of the concerns for employment that the development of artificial intelligence entails. On July 10, Suumit Shah shared on Twitter the adventure of his company, which took advantage of the development of this technology to transform the way its customer service works thanks to an AI-driven chatbot. But this had a cost for its employees.
“We had to lay off 90% of our customer support team thanks to this AI chatbot,” explains the founder of Dunkaan, a company that allows the launch of specialized e-commerce sites. “Was it difficult? Yes. Was it necessary? Absolutely”, he then assures, on Twitter. Questioned by CNN, the manager has since clarified that the 23 employees concerned had been dismissed last September.
If Internet users were immediately offended by this announcement, the boss points out significant results: “The response time went from 1 minute and 44 seconds to immediate, the problem resolution time went from 2 hours and 13 minutes to 3 minutes and 12 seconds.” He also rejoices in improved profitability thanks to this solution with “customer service costs that have dropped by around 85%”.
Now, his company’s customers mainly deal with conversational robots that work thanks to artificial intelligence. While some congratulate this initiative in the comments of the Twitter post, others display their dismay: “This is the most cruel tweet I’ve ever seen”, indignantly a user. “There is no reason to celebrate this publicly,” adds another. “As expected, I found no mention of the 90% laid off employees. What help did we give them?” asks a third.
According to a recent university study, certain professions are particularly threatened by artificial intelligence and are in danger of disappearing. This is particularly the case for telemarketers, teachers, sociologists and political scientists. Another Goldman Sachs study estimated that 300 million jobs could one day be replaced by artificial intelligence. “If we take into account all automation technologies, including AI, 27% of jobs correspond to professions highly exposed to the risk of automation”, warned, for its part, an OECD study, this week.
