Meet The AI Designed To Help Humans, Not Replace Them

ASAPP founder Gustavo Sapoznik developed software that trains customer-service reps to be "radically" more productive, winning the young startup an $800 million valuation. If you've ever felt your blood boil after sitting on hold for 40 minutes before reaching an agent . . . A customer-service representative for JetBlue, for instance, might have to flip rapidly among a dozen or more computer programs just to link your frequent-flier number to a specific itinerary. "Imagine that cognitive load, while you have someone screaming at you or complaining about some serious problem, and you're swiveling between 20 screens to see which one you need to be able to help this person," says Gustavo Sapoznik, 34, the founder and CEO of ASAPP, a New York City–based developer of AI-powered customer-service software. Sapoznik remembers just such a scene while shadowing a call-center agent at a "very large" company (he won't name names), watching the worker navigate a "Frankenstack" patchwork of software, entering a caller's information into six different billing systems before locating it.