Many movies, media and headlines portray AI as frightening. It’s going to take out jobs, bring robocop to the streets and take over our lives. It’s going to be Ex Machina, The Terminator or worse. Very few give context of the positive future with AI, but a headline caught my eye today:
Meet the ‘AI receptionist’ picking up the phone for 1,000,000 GP patients
As a UK citizen, I know how hard it can be to get a doctor’s appointment. Unless you get to the front of the receptionist’s queue at 07:59:59, you are stuffed. That’s because 1,000s of other people are calling at that time to try and get an appointment.
The result?
Only four in 10 patients see their doctor on the same day they booked, and one in ten have to wait up to 28 days.
So, the Conisbrough Group Practice in Doncaster created an AI receptionist called EMMA, which stands for ‘Enhanced Medical Management Assistant’.
The AI assistant handles thousands of calls and deals with them by prioritising those that sound serious versus general enquiries. This means that some calls, such as 70 year old Joan’s about her son, get dealt with within an hour.
‘As a senior, technology can be scary,’ Joan said, ‘I’m not used to robots. I just want to go to the doctor. After my experience with EMMA, if this is the future, then it’s all going to be exceptional.’
What intrigued me is a particular quote by Ben Cottey, a business manager at Joan’s doctor’s surgery. In designing Emma, he says:
‘We were concerned about creating a further frustrating system akin to calling your bank, where the bot can’t understand what you are asking for, or misunderstands and directs you somewhere you don’t want to be’.
Interesting that he picks on a bank chatbot as the example of deploying AI incorrectly, but that’s because most bank bots are not that great. You get into a loop of confusion. Here is a good example. A customer is interacting online and asks:
Customer: I have two ISAs with Virgin Money; how do I merge them?
Chatbot: Please don't use words like that. I won't be able to continue our chat if you use this language.
Don’t You Call Me a Virgin, Says Virgin Money’s Chatbot
It just shows how much we are in early days with artificial intelligence. It’s a little like when I asked ChatGPT to draw a picture of an eggplant (aubergine) and I got this …
Obviously, all of this is improving at a rapid pace. For example, I just read WorldPay’s Agentic AI report. Worldpay's survey reveals a significant gap between consumers' willingness to use AI for browsing (40%) versus autonomous purchasing (6%), highlighting the need for collaborative AI agents with built-in approval workflows and robust trust infrastructure to capture the £29 billion agentic commerce opportunity.
Key Takeaways:
- Adoption Key: Consumer approval is crucial, not a hurdle, for AI shopping agent adoption.
- Trust Barriers: Incorrect purchases, financial control, and human support are key trust barriers.
- Market Variance: Trust requirements for AI agents differ significantly across markets.
- Orchestration Matters: Integrating fraud protection, identity verification, and approval workflows is essential.
- Collaborative Agents: Focus on AI that collaborates smoothly with users, not full autonomy.
In conclusion, what this means is don’t believe all the hype about AI. It’s going to take time and there will be bumps in the road. But my vision of where we will be within a decade is a world where we can just talk to technology and get answers, solutions, advice, help and results.
Imagine your children will be living in a world where all of their clothing, accessories, glasses or whatever will be interacting with the world around them digitally. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
Minority Report: 6 predictions that came true, 15 years on
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...