Verizon has turned to Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI to automate phone calls

Try loading a modern web form over 3g. Try loading a modern web form on an Android <6.x device. Try loading a web form on a feature phone. Try loading a modern web form in BFE over a landline. For any transaction where you don't need a human and it's painful to use the internet walking through phone menus is a pretty good alternative. They only make it painful to speak to a human. For routine transactions they're basically like using a slow CLI where they give you the help without you asking.

1. Do I plug in the green wire in the green port or in the red port (They call before they have even tried to connect things).

2. My TV isn't working when they haven't pressed "Source".

3. Something is wrong, restart router.

4. My WiFi is slow when they have one router for 200 m2 in a house of concrete.

5. A few % of the costumers make up the majority of the calls because of how they are.

What kind of democratic solution do you see us humans make in the first three decades of this problem (when it really starts to hurt a lot of people)?

And what kind of realistic solution would be better?

I ask because I don't see many good solutions in my life time that will solve any of this. As you can guess I'm skeptical of UBI where people can live comfortably in the first decades due to culture and I'm from northern Europe.

> You demand a human. The human is told what to say by the bot

This has always been something I've never understood about customer support. In particular, chat support is bad about this, but I've had it happen on phone support too. Prior to getting connected to the human, the bot wants to take down a short description of your problem. That's fine, but the conversation often goes like this:

> Bot: Please write a short description of your problem.

> Me: Problem I am having.

> Bot: One moment while I connect you.

> (a small eternity later)

> Support: Hi. How can I help you?"

> Ctrl+C problem, Ctrl+V problem*

> Support: I see you are . Is that correct?

> Me: :shrug:^W Yes.

… like, why did I ever type that description? Here, a computer (I don't even know if it qualifies as "AI" given how rudimentary of a task it is performing) appears to have failed at the simplest of tasks. And this happens all. the. time.

Phone bots will often "authenticate" me with various credentials, and then connect me to a human who will immediately authenticate me with the same credentials. Whose time was saved?