Next time someone says “How can I help you?” over the phone, it just might be a computer. That’s because everyone’s favorite Jeopardy playing supercomputer is being trained to take over sales and customer support positions. It’s advantage over your run-of-the-mill automated customer service? It can understand natural language.
That means no more pressing “1″ or speaking incredibly slowly and clearly to the machine on the other line; people will be able to speak like normal human beings and have Watson respond accordingly. It works so well, in fact, that it can be used to call you and try to sell you something. The fact that it needs no human intervention means companies could have huge teams of computerized salespeople and customer support staff that need no supervisors (or salaries).
While that might not seem so great for future employment prospects, most companies won’t be buying up Watsons in bulk. According to Extreme Tech, installing a single machine and its software could cost around $32 million. Fortunately for IBM, they have some of the best salespeople around–the Watson computers they are installing to sell Watson to other companies.
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Photo: p_a_h, Flickr, CC
