RSM Open Lecture “Challenges and opportunities of AI” featuring professor Ting Li and the guest speaker from Deloitte Stefan van Duin left me pleasantly surprised about the positivity these experts share regarding the future of AI*. While I recommend watching the whole lecture, one idea particularly struck my mind: professor Li predicted the AI career advisors who would help you choose your career path, or at least stir your choice away from the one not suitable for you. Indeed, in the world where social media algorithms can predict your actions better than you can yourself, where better to turn to for help when making such a decision. AIs are already used by some companies to help screen the CVs, so why not optimize your chances with the help of another AI? A quick Google search revealed that such options already exist [see e.g. 1, 2]. And hereunder, I would like to share with you an article that proves that the future is closer than we might have expected.

In 2019, Kern, McCarthy, Chakrabarty & Rizoiu used Twitter posts to analyze how the personality traits relate to people’s professions [3, 4]. First of all, they used the information to create the “digital fingerprints”: determine people’s Big 5 personality traits and 5 other core values. They then crossed this information with their profession stated in their profiles and created a 10-dimensional map according to these 10 traits. For clarity, this model was converted into a 2D space [3] (please find the vocational map below). You can see that these professions have been arranged into clusters according to their resemblance; I highly encourage to follow a link and check out the professions under these clusters (see [5]). Then, they checked how accurately they could predict the profession based on these traits [3] (please find the bar chart below). The accuracy is astonishing, especially taken into account that some of the most prevalent mix-ups refer to the professions very similar to each other, e.g. school principals would be mixed up for teachers (which has indeed been their past profession), or data scientists for software engineers [3] (please find the chart below).
Therefore, based on the personality traits, the AI is actually able to predict the current profession; now, with the first generations growing up with their life fully recorded, we might have enough data to build models to train AIs to predict our future personalities, and consequently the best careers for us. But one problem remains: people are generally not happy with their choice [3]; how to train the AI to lead us to a happy future?

* Note: the recording of the lecture, dated 7 October 2020, might later be posted on the RSM Youtube channel, but sadly is not available at the time of the writing).

[1] https://trustifyai.com/career-robo-advisor/
[2] https://skillroads.com/
[3] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/52/26459
[4] https://theconversation.com/robot-career-advisor-ai-may-soon-be-able-to-analyse-your-tweets-to-match-you-to-a-job-128777
[5] https://www.rizoiu.eu/documents/research/resources/Vocation_Map_Interactive.html

Companies increasingly invest in the expansive troubleshooting guides and bots to substitute the physical employees. However, this creates an illusion that physical contact is redundant, as everything is available online. From the company side, human service means paying rent for the stores and salaries of shop assistants and call center employees, as well as hiring and training costs [1]. To save these costs, big firms such as Amazon limit the means of communication for non-users. But what if the online guide does not help you? How do you call Google if the search engine misinterprets your search words? How do you e-mail Facebook if your account doesn’t work?

According to the authors of “The Effortless Experience”, more than 2 out of 3 people are ready to switch to a competitor after just one unpleasant service experience [2]. One thing that consumers value the most appears to be effortless service experience. Users want to be able to choose the communication median best suiting their preferences and needs, be it live, via call, email or social media, online and in-store. One of the strongest factors of customer loyalty is how well the customer can be served without any effort from their side [2]. Therefore, limiting human interaction, which is much more flexible than the bots, can have dare consequences.

But what is the preferred way of communication? Accenture 83% of the people surveyed prefer real-life communication to automated service, as it feels more personalized. Around half the sample gave more credibility to the new goods bought in-store rather than online [3]. But physical experience is not always better: process automation allows faster and quicker service for standard operation, the internet ensures that the service is available everywhere and thus, better customer experience. I myself sincerely detest calling the companies. It is frustrating to keep repeating my name, date of birth, email and home address for identification purposes. But if other communication channels fail or are unavailable, I more often than not end up with that being the only option. How should the companies balance the costs with the customer experience? And is there one best solution?

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/why-you-cant-get-in-touch-with-big-companies-2012-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T

[2] https://www.glia.com/digital-customer-service-defined

[3] https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/us-companies-losing-customers-as-consumers-demand-more-human-interaction-accenture-strategy-study-finds.htm