Are there any two words that strike more hopeful excitement and visceral fear into the hearts of men and women than "Artificial Intelligence"? We revel in the prospect of robots and software that can shoulder difficult tasks for organizations and human beings as individuals, while being fearful that robots could get smarter than we are as human beings. Artificial Intelligence (or more commonly just "AI") is already here. It's in the iRobot that cleans your floors. It's in the autopilot features of commercial airlines that do most of the work in guiding a aircraft from one location to another.

Recently, I stumbled upon a very interesting video by one of my favorite music composers -Hans Zimmer. It was an introductory clipping of his online music tutorial -MasterClass, where he was trying to explain to his prospective students how composing music is a fairly simple journey (a modest claim indeed). He described how each musical note is a question and the one that follows it, is the answer. Effectively, the entire composition is nothing else but a seamless conversation turning into a beautiful symphony. Although, on several occasions art does imitate life or perhaps life imitates art? There is no doubt about the fact that we are at the cusp of a revolutionary change in the field of technology.

Whenever people get asked to come up with their vision of the future, a few themes crop up again and again. Flying cars, hoverboards (the real kind, not the wheeled, self-righting ones that don't hover and occasionally burst into flames) and virtual reality are all popular ideas. But what people really seem to want is functioning robots. We've had a fascination with artificial intelligence since the earliest days of computing, which shows no sign of going away any time soon, if HBO's new big-budget show Westworld is any indication. But in fact, this future may be a lot closer than many people realise.

In late 2015, our Chief Customer Officer, Joe Gagnon, and I, met with the IT Director, and the COO of Radisson Blu Edwardian in London. A long-term customer of Aspect's, we were there to share what we have been so diligently working on over the past year: our vision for re-imagining customer service that would combine the best of all forms of consumer interaction types, and the best of what we and the industry have been able to develop in next generation CX technology. In essence, the vision for re-imagining customer service has at its core how to use Interactive Text Response (ITR), or what is also known as "bots" to provide the ability to let customers self-serve on text channels at blazing-fast speeds with a User Interface that resembles that of a natural conversation with a person. Needless to say, it didn't require much convincing that this approach would provide an opportunity to "surprise and delight" in their prestigious hotel chain. With over 2 billion people using texting and messaging solutions extensively today, offering service over these channels just makes sense. Furthermore, it has the promise of saving cost through smart automation while providing a state-of-the-art customer experience, or in the words of the COO: "I want this by Monday."