Hello, This Is Artificial Intelligence. How Can I Help You? Eye on A.I.

People who call companies to ask questions about their cable bills or complain about their Internet service being out are increasingly talking to artificial intelligence. Natural language processing, a subset of A.I. that helps computers understand speech, has become good enough that it's being used to listen and respond to basic customer questions. Over the past year, Google, Amazon and business software firm Twilio have all ramped up their marketing of A.I.-powered software for call centers. Their sales pitch is that the technology can answer basic customer questions, leaving more complicated questions and complaints to human agents. The tech firms say this A.I. software can also help existing call center staff quickly retrieve relevant customer information when they are chatting with customers, but it should be noted that the technology will likely result in companies eliminating human workers as they look for ways to automate customer service.