'AI to wipe out human customer service in five years'

Customer service careers could be wiped out in the next five years by AI-based chatbots and customer service voice assistants. That is the prediction of Gary Blower, a solution architect and senior technical consultant at software and development company Clearvision. Blower, who previously worked as a technical specialist for RBS, said this could become the norm as soon as 2024, with AI powerful enough to pass'the Turing test', in which robots are indistinguishable from humans. "I didn't think this was the case a couple of years ago, but now I look at the widespread adoption of Amazon's Alexa, Siri, and Google Voice that are essentially machine learning, based on algorithms." Blower suggested that there are a number of commercial and banking companies which are already implementing smart tech in the place of human customer service, which makes the public "hard-pressed to get hold of a human being."