Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Making new friends (especially as an adult) can be challenging. When new birds are introduced to a group, monk parakeets will "test the waters" to avoid getting injured by defensive strangers. The parakeets will gradually approach the new bird, taking some time to get familiar before ramping up to more risky or vulnerable interactions that are needed to form the bonds necessary for survival. "There can be a lot of benefits to being social, but these friendships have to start somewhere," said Claire O'Connell, a study co-author and a doctoral student in the University of Cincinnati, said in a statement .

Tech analyst Gartner predicts that one in 10 interactions with call center agents will be with bots within three years, thanks to advances is conversational artificial intelligence (AI), as well as labor shortages and high people costs. That's potentially bad news for call center workers but could represent savings for enterprises of about $80 billion in labor costs by 2026, according to Gartner. Gartner estimates there are around 17 million contact center agents worldwide today and those human agents can make up 95% of contact center costs. The projected savings in labor costs by 2026 are much larger than Gartner's current forecast that enterprises will spend about $1.99 billion on conversational AI solutions in 2022. Nonetheless, it projects that automated interactions with contact center agents will rise from 1.6% of all interactions today to 10% in 2026.

Replacing human agents with AI chatbots could save the call centre industry up to $80bn in labour costs per year by 2026 and $240bn by 2031, according to a new report by Gartner which also predicts $1.99bn will be spent by the sector on AI this year alone. The report predicts that the number of interactions between customers and a call centre handled by AI will go from 2% in 2022 to more than 15% by 2026, and double to 30% by 2031. About 17 million contact centre agents are working around the world today with 95% of costs associated with a call centre due to staffing. Daniel O'Connell, VP analyst for Gartner and author of the report, says that organisations are both struggling to recruit and needing to reduce those costs. "Conversational AI makes agents more efficient and effective, while also improving the customer experience," he said.

By 2026 the call center industry could save up to $80 billion by replacing humans with AI chatbots, according to analysts at Gartner. Customer service companies are increasingly investing in conversational AI to chase those savings, safe in the knowledge that advances in natural language processing and text-to-speech models make it harder for people to detect whether they're interacting with a bot or not. That said, once humans start chatting to machines – by voice or instant messaging – discrepancies and other signs in the conversation can reveal the unreal nature of the non-person on the other end of the line or chat box. Contact center operators aren't deterred by these limitations and expect the technology will only improve over time. Gartner estimated that there are approximately 17 million contact centers around the world, and together they will spend $2 billion in total on AI software by the end of this year.

A survey carried out by Air Transport IT Insights recently found that almost half of global airlines and 32% of airports are currently looking for partners to further develop their robotic involvement in the next three years. The latest developments see robots staffing airport check-in desks, carrying out security protocols, cleaning and even delivering food to passengers. The airport security segment currently has the highest number of robots according to the Airport robots market – growth, trends, Covid-19 impact, and forecasts 2021-2026 report by Mordor Intelligence. The next most common use of airport robotics is for cleaning, which has seen a rise in demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic. PHL Food and Shops have introduced a new member to their team Philadelphia International Airport, Gita.

After struggling to find staff during the pandemic, businesses in Singapore have increasingly turned to deploying robots to help carry out a range of tasks, from surveying construction sites to scanning library bookshelves. The city-state relies on foreign workers, but their number fell by 235,700 between December 2019 and September 2021, according to the manpower ministry, which notes how COVID-19 curbs have sped up « the pace of technology adoption and automation » by companies. At a Singapore construction site, a four-legged robot called « Spot », built by U.S. company Boston Dynamics, scans sections of mud and gravel to check on work progress, with data fed back to construction company Gammon's control room. Gammon's general manager, Michael O'Connell, said using Spot required only one human employee instead of the two previously needed to do the job manually.

As it comes to an end, it's hard not to acknowledge 2021 was only a minor improvement over 2020. Covid-19, worldwide political turmoil, climate catastrophes--all the stresses of the previous year rolled over into the new one. The result was another 12 months that taxed everyone's mental health and led many of them to seek refuge wherever they could find it, often in video games. To be sure, I am definitely in this camp. Over the past year, my relationship with gaming changed a lot, morphing from a pastime into something I do to cope.

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death (Mark O'Connell). "Flesh is a dead format," writes Mark O'Connell in To Be a Machine, his new nonfiction book about the contemporary transhumanist movement. It's an alarming statement, but don't kill the messenger: As he's eager to explain early in the book, the author is not a transhumanist himself. Instead, he's used To Be a Machine as a vehicle to dive into this loosely knit movement, which he sums up as "a rebellion against human existence as it has been given." In other words, transhumanists believe that technology -- specifically, a direct interface between humans and machines -- is the only way our species can progress from its current, far-than-ideal state.

Billie Eilish dropped behind-the-scenes footage from her special concert, "Happier than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles," detailing how she made an animated segment for the event. The concert premiered on Disney Plus on Sept. 3. The 19-year-old singer took to Instagram Story on Sunday to share an impressive video that she recorded on June 25. During the special concert, there were animated sequences shown for a brief period to convey images like bleeding and driving a car. In the video, the singer could be seen wearing a black and red motion capture suit and taking a selfie video to flaunt the entire setup.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The future is now – at least at the Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). On Monday, the airport launched a robotic food delivery program using gita robots developed by Piaggio Fast Forward. Each gita robot can hold up to 40 pounds in its cargo bin, where customers' orders are kept.