Remember the CEO who replaced 90% of customer service staff with generative AI and then raved about the system on Twitter? He now says that while not everyone working in customer service should worry about being replaced, the technology will "100%" kill so-called copy-and-paste jobs.
In July, Suumit Shah, CEO and founder of Bangalore-based Dukaan, boasted on Twitter that he had replaced 90% of its customer service staff, or 27 people, with Lina, the company’s in-house customer service chatbot. Trained on company help center content, this ChatGPT-powered bot can answer nearly any customer question.
Much of the anger directed at Shah has less to do with him replacing so many people and more to do with the way he seems to brag about it on social media. The CEO said the "difficult" but "necessary" decision improved response and resolution times while reducing customer support costs by approximately 85%. He also posted a series of tweets praising AI further. He even compared it to Edward Mora, who ran the entire customer support department in the movie "Limitless."
"Replacing an entire team with a robot is a no-brainer for me," Shah told the Washington Post in a recent interview. "The robot is 100 times smarter than me, it can handle issues instantly, and it costs 100% of what I'm used to paying my support team."
India and the Philippines employ millions of people in call center jobs, jobs that are outsourced by big Western brands. Replacing many of these workers with cheaper generative AI has raised concerns that it could disrupt the economies of these countries. Emad Mostaque, CEO of StabilityAI, believes that few industries will be hit as hard as India’s outsourced coders, with most of them set to lose their jobs by 2025.
Shah believes that not every call center job will disappear, but those that involve cutting and pasting responses will be eliminated by generative AI. "That job no longer exists," he said. "hundred percent".
Recently, Americans have softened their views on artificial intelligence taking over jobs. Some studies believe that artificial intelligence technology will add more jobs rather than replace more jobs.
IBM boss Arvind Krishna said recently that the company does not plan to lay off a single programmer because of artificial intelligence. Although some back-end human resources positions are expected to be phased out, IBM is increasing the number of software engineering and sales positions in the next three to four years, adding more positions than eliminating them. "About 8,000 positions will be added and only about 800 positions will be reduced." Krishna said. "The first things that can be automated are repetitive, white-collar jobs."