How may A.I. assist you?

By Melanie Batley

Are conversational agents going to take over the workplace? Not quite, but a new whitepaper from the Lighthouse, KPMG’s Center of Excellence for Data and Analytics, sees a strong possibility that these sophisticated examples of Artificial Intelligence will be imminently integrated into businesses and working side by side with humans.

In “How May A.I. Assist You,” KPMG data scientist Dr. Arthur Franke, explores the applications of how Conversational A.I., such as chatbots and intelligent assistants, will interact with people via natural voice or text dialogs, on devices such as smartphones, automotive infotainment consoles and smart speakers.

In the workplace, conversational artificial intelligence "can help workers interact more seamlessly with each other, streamline office operations, execute internal processes, and deliver data more efficiently,” Franke says.

More enterprises are turning to these conversational agents to improve productivity and streamline internal operations, from ordering lunch to helping with IT tasks to even reporting monthly financials. Success, however, is dependent not only on the functionality of the bot, but its design and personality, the paper asserts.

Franke outlines the keys to using conversational AI successfully:

· Ensure the bot has a unique personality: Yes, bots have personalities. For a bot to succeed within an organization, that persona must align with a company’s values and understand how to engage with different employees, from an entry level hire to a busy executive.

· Ensure bots learn over time: Not only will the bot become better at completing tasks and learning new skills, it will use machine learning to understand who it’s talking to and adjust its tone and responses accordingly.

· Design bots to fail usefully: Conversational AI agents must recognize when they are verging past limits of their understanding and create a constructive response.

The paper also discusses how businesses can design, implement, and effectively sustain bots and when they should be implemented.

To set-up a time to talk to Franke in more depth, contact, Melanie Batley.