In Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film masterpiece, "2001: A Space Odyssey," a crew of five American astronauts embark on a mission to Jupiter. The half-billion-mile journey takes place on an enormous spacecraft dubbed Discovery 1.
"The sixth crew member" is an advanced AI system, the HAL 9000, which is not a robot per se, but an embedded system described as: "The latest result in machine intelligence, which can reproduce most of the activities of the human brain with incalculably greater speed and reliability."
What's notable about the HAL 9000 system, apart from its pervasive creepy awareness and its ability to watch every move of the crew, is HAL's superior ability to understand and respond to human speech.
Indeed, the entire film is an ode to human speech. A celebration of the tonal qualities and emotional pitch that the human voice conveys.
As it relates to the AI voice capabilities of today, HAL is an appealing vision of future conversational AI. It's also an object lesson in super-advanced AI systems that could end up more intelligent than humans - and fully sentient - with potentially destructive intentions.
HAL's appeal is his/its complete command of language and reasoning. Indeed, he (or it) is curiously seductive in his/its ability to discuss issues, share ideas, and respond to requests.
In one of the most chilling moments in the film, one of the astronauts, Dr. Bowman, sits in a small pod-shaped vehicle outside the ship. He has just retrieved the dead body of his colleague Dr. Poole, who – spoilers incoming - HAL killed while Poole attempted to fix a radar device atop the ship.
Bowman issues a request to HAL.
BOWMAN: Open the pod bay doors, please Hal. Hello Hal, do you read me? Hello Hal, do you read me?
HAL: Affirmative Dave, I read you.
BOWMAN: Open the pod bay doors, please, Hal.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Of course, movies are not a precise blueprint for the future. And today, our ability to converse with computers is limited. But that will not last long.
Eight Words That Changed the World
On 26 March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, famously said to his assistant: "Watson, come here, I want to see you."
One hundred and forty-six years later, the telephone remains the go-to device for human beings.
New research from RingCentral has found that more than 90 percent of business leaders use phones as one of their main communication tools.
Research continues to show that phone usage will increase. Indeed, the phone is still used across all parts of businesses, irrespective of size. Traditional phone systems are the most used.
"Telephony has been a constant in the workplace for decades," said Steven Zachok, Vice President, Product Management at RingCentral. "While digital channels like messaging and video have grown in popularity, the study shows voice is here to stay. It is critical for customer engagement," he explained.
Not only do more than 90 percent consider phones one of their main communication tools, 52 percent said it is their primary communication tool. Furthermore, 95 percent said phones are crucial to customer engagement and generating income.
Of course, digital transformation will replace many tasks. But the phone will continue to be an essential channel for customers, especially if it is a complex topic or laden with emotion.
The advent of smart devices like Google Home and Nest, and voice assistants like Siri and Alexa may further increase traffic to the voice channel. These cloud-based voice assistants, aided by speech recognition and Natural Language Processing (NLP) have become an unexpected mass-market driver of voicebots in contact centres.
The Rise of The Bots
Voicebots are a powerful tool to mitigate increased contact volumes. A voicebot can recognise customer intent and initiate a simple IVR journey so customers enjoy a positive first impression of the business. Their strategic role in the future of contact centres has only just begun.
A McKinsey & Company report indicates that "IVR systems are evolving from dumb menu systems into smart 'voicebots' capable of handling complex customer queries."
Voicebots relieve contact centres of the arduous tasks of creating deep, nested menu structures. Instead, they can design an IVR journey so customers can transfer to the appropriate department in just two or three words.