'They lacked empathy': Businesses rehire humans after AI chatbots fail to deliver customer service

702's Gugs Mhlungu spoke to Dr Mark Nasila, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at First National Bank Risk and author of 'African Artificial Intelligence'. 

Listen to their conversation in the audio clip below.

Since the inception of Artificial Intelligence (AI), concerns about its impact on jobs have arisen. 

Some companies have replaced human workers with AI, but this approach hasn't always been successful.

Recently, companies like Swedish fintech firm Klarna and IBM re-hired humans due to poor customer experiences.

"Klarna, a global payments and shopping service company, announced that they were rehiring humans...a few years ago, they invested in a chatbot that could automate 75% of customer interactions...because of this, they let go of 700 employees, which reduced the staff complement by 22%. But I think they were misled by what those chatbots could do, because down the line, they realised that two-thirds of their customers had a poor customer experience. The chatbots were going round and round without providing resolutions. They lacked empathy." 

- Dr Mark Nasila, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at First National Bank Risk

"IBM as well, who invested in an AI system called AskHR to automate some of the human resource functions like holiday requests, payroll processing, and employee documentation.Then they ended up rehiring. But IBM's case actually turned out very positive because they actually employed more people because they realised the 6% of some of those tasks could only be handled by people." 

- Dr Mark Nasila, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at First National Bank Risk

"I think what we're realising globally, there's been AI adoption strategies that lack a balance between the artificial side of the intelligence as well as the human side of the intelligence."

 - Dr Mark Nasila, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at First National Bank Risk

Nasila says 42% of companies have abandoned their AI strategies, and 70% to 80% of organisations that invested in generative AI are now seeing their strategies fail.

He believes that by rushing into the technology, you end up costing your company so much other than benefiting from the value AI could bring to the organisation.

For economies like South Africa, where the unemployment rates are very high, Nasila emphasises that we need to think of the types of AI that augment what people do rather than AI that takes away tasks.

"If you adopt strategies that fail to explore what human beings are good at, like critical thinking, being empathetic, problem solving, you're likely to end up increasing unemployment because of a lack of strategic approach to AI." 

- Dr Mark Nasila, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at First National Bank Risk

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