The curious case of Samantha West, the telemarketing operator.

Would you call this a robot?
And would you find this practice disturbing? IBM is prepping Watson to handle customer service calls, after all.
I doubt there is actually much (or any?) AI involved here, but I particularly liked the comments of real telemarketers saying they get these questions all the time. At least… I think they are comments by real people..

That’s interesting Don.  I have found myself asking people if they are bots on those online help/chat apps, but as yet I have not encountered anything like this.

There is zero AI here. To me it is obvious that this is a guy in India with a soundboard clicking on the responses. It couldn’t say “I am a robot” as that wasn’t one of the clips loaded. Speech recognition just isn’t as good as the story makes out.

There seems to be a stigma in the UK about Indian cold calling (telemarketing). This is a clever way round it to make it appear as though it is someone more local.

A human puppetmaster would indeed be the most probable explanation. It would give all the telemarketers the advantage of a compelling English voice and ensures they stick to their script. And yet if speech recognition were good enough, all a chatbot would have to do is run through a pretty linear script and recognise the keywords yes, no, okay, robot, 42, and say “I don’t understand” to everything else.

What interests me personally is the public response, and how to avoid it.
With as little to go on as this, people assume that it must be a “robot”. Moreover, because it can handle this particularly brainless task (even the telemarketers say they have to stick to a script), people assume that it is therefore more advanced than anything we know, with the usual “the Skynet is falling!” comments closely following the “Creepy Freakish Robot!” headlines. This raises so many questions.

- Would it matter if this were a chatbot? Does it not provide the same service?
- Are chatbots even suitable for telemarketing? Wouldn’t people just hang up and/or toy with it once they know?
- What is it that causes this backlash? Is it just the lie? Would all have been fine if it had said “I am the Knight Industries Two Thousand, KITT if you prefer”?

I think it might be less about how we perceive the robots and more about how the company using them perceives it’s customers. In other words, they don’t respect their customers enough to give them a real person to talk to, they would rather do it on the cheap.

But is that any different than doing it on the cheap by farming the work out to India?

It’s quite different but that was exactly what was in the back of my mind. With the Indian call centres you usually get someone that know’s what they are talking about. But in the end it’s all about the money, that’s the bottom line. What the wrongs and rights are, well we all have to decide that for ourselves.

Hmhm, I guess that also makes a difference. Automaton calls suggest that not only are you a number to them, but you are an automated number that isn’t worth more effort than having a server run on cruise control in a corner of the office.
But still, if I put this in the row of every recent development in robotics, it fits the bill of some Uncanny Valley mass hysteria towards robots.

This is how it starts, people. First we get our chatbots to sound and act realistic — and then we get them to convince everyone they’re actually human.

Steve Worswick - Dec 15, 2013:

There is zero AI here. To me it is obvious that this is a guy in India with a soundboard clicking on the responses. It couldn’t say “I am a robot” as that wasn’t one of the clips loaded. Speech recognition just isn’t as good as the story makes out.

There seems to be a stigma in the UK about Indian cold calling (telemarketing). This is a clever way round it to make it appear as though it is someone more local.

I am thinking in the same direction: pre-recorded sound clips.

I think it is artificial intelligence.

I genuinely don’t think speech recognition technology is at the stage that would be required for those sound clips on the website. It’s just a clever marketing ploy to use a voice that appears more local.

Also the speech output is too good. They have to be pre-recorded. If not, I would like to know the voice technology in use, as it is far more natural than any I have come across.

The Artificial Intelligence I think may in use here is called, “Chinese room”.
Wow! Don certainly started a really good A.I. discussion thread here.

The Chinese Room says that the person inside has no knowledge of the input and merely follows rules. The person doing the telemarketing here is listening to the input, understanding it perfectly and trying to find a suitable sound clip from a range of 50 or so. This is different, as he has no rule book to say if the user says X, you say Y.

∞Pla•Net - Dec 17, 2013:

Wow! Don certainly started a really good A.I. discussion thread here.

I agree.

Here’s the technical side on why it’s actually unlikely to be voice recognition: Poor quality audio.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-only-thing-weirder-than-a-telemarketing-robot/282282/
On one hand I say it is quite conceivable that voice recognition could at least pick up “yes” and “no” at anticipated points along the script, on the other hand it would surely fall flat as soon as someone says “twohundredfortyfive” or speaks with a regional accent.
I recall a company that was developing CG animated avatars capable of emotional intonation though, last time I looked into speech synthesis. It wasn’t half bad.

It’s kindof an inverted Chinese Room, isn’t it? There’s (likely) a real intelligent person inside the room but people think it’s a machine.

Loquendo have some voices which can convey some emotion, but they don’t sound as good as this. Usually there is some ‘tell’ that it is TTS. Who knows though, maybe things have advanced behind the scenes.

I can’t see it myself. If I had a company who made voices as good as these, I would be shouting it from the rooftops. Sorry but as much as people may wish this to be a program, I am 100% certain it is a guy pushing buttons activating recordings made by an actress.