Chatbots spotlight machine learning’s trillion-dollar potential

The global industry potential of artificial intelligence is well-documented, yet the vision of this AI future is uncertain.

AI and automation trends are generating significant debate among economists and governments, particularly around employment impact and uncertain social outcomes. The mainstream attention is warranted. According to PwC, AI “could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030, more than the current output of China and India combined.”

AI is at a crossroads, and its long-term outlook is still hotly debated. Despite social media giants, automotive companies and numerous other industries investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI, many automation technologies are not yet directly generating revenue and instead are forecasted to become profitable in the coming decades. This creates additional uncertainty of AI’s true market potential. The realistic potential value of AI is unknown, yet, as the technology advances, the ultimate impact could be of great consequence to virtually every economy.

There are many reasons to view AI’s future from an optimistic lens, however: chatbots provide significant evidence for AI’s positive impact on both business growth and employment markets. Today, chatbots are increasingly capable of mimicking human interactions and conversations to assist business-to-business, business-to-consumer, business-to-government, advertising audiences and other diverse groups. The evolution of the cognitive computer science behind conversational chatbots is perhaps one of the best examples of AI technologies driving revenue. Further, chatbot technology shows some of the greatest promise for augmenting, rather than replacing human workers.

AI is driving value while augmenting human workers

Chatbots are delivering real revenue today for some of the world’s leading financial services (Bank of America), retail (Levi’s), and technology companies (Zendesk). We’re seeing more consumers taking the next step in a transaction or even making a purchase decision based off conversations with chatbots. Beyond driving sales, chatbots have numerous applications to a wide range of organizations. Nonprofits, NGOs, and even political campaigns find value in deploying chatbots to help handle the influx of inquiries from stakeholders and relevant audiences.

Rather than these chatbots replacing human workers, organizations are finding chatbots to be a helpful and value-creating opportunity that frees employees to focus on more strategic tasks. Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana aren’t replacing executive assistants today, but these technologies are all capable of supporting the executive assistant function in the workplace.

Gartner predicts AI augmentation, defined as a “human-centered partnership model of people and AI working together to enhance cognitive performance,” could generate $2.9 trillion of business value by 2021. Many industries see potential for chatbots to augment functions like sales, customer support and IT, enabling workers to create value in more strategic ways. Bain & Company finds chatbots to be among the most notable examples of artificial intelligence and automation in practice: “Companies use AI applications to understand industry trends, manage their workforce, address problems, power chatbots and personalize content to enable self-service.”

Clearly, the implications of scaled, human-like engagement are stunning in their capacity to carry out tasks. A chatbot’s ability to simultaneously hold tens of thousands of conversations — pulling from many millions of data points — is comparable to what a human customer service rep could accomplish in more than 1,000 years of nonstop work. Scaling customer service via AI allows service professionals to focus on big picture and more complex issues, and it provides rich data on customer interactions. We anticipate seeing more companies look to build better customer service experiences through chatbots, as Google and Salesforce announced in April.

The transformative impact of chatbots across industries

From our research and work with leading global companies, it’s clear that enterprises are finding that chatbots bring about tremendous value while supporting both people employment and long-term business growth opportunities today. Ultimately, chatbots are on track to showcase some of the most optimistic examples of AI augmentation. Consider three examples:

• In the retail banking sector, chatbots are already upselling customers and enabling banks to unlock new value: A chatbot can reduce bank call center workload by 30%. In many instances, customer service representatives spend a great deal of time handling many small and simple requests on behalf of the customer. Rather than spend the bulk of their time answering basic questions, employees can focus on more complex issues and let their chatbot counterparts handle the simple requests for information or direction, providing faster and more consistent responses to customers.
• In cybersecurity, chatbots are helping security analysts identify and respond to threats: The highly scalable approach of enterprise IT chatbots, which help IT workers quickly diagnose issues and work through technological challenges in a conversational manner, is ideal for the current threat landscape. Instead of AI replacing human talent, chatbots in cybersecurity enable security analysts and other IT professionals to quickly manage threat alerts and monitor dashboards, enabling them to better safeguard their organizations from cybersecurity threats.
• For advertisers, chatbots bring about a “human” connection in advertising campaigns: With the ability to carry out increasingly complex human-like interactions, chatbots are better able to showcase brand voice and nuance than static content. The LEGO Group found tremendous success implementing a chatbot on Messenger: 3.4x higher ROI for click-to-Messenger ads compared to ads that linked straight to the LEGO website, 71% lower cost per purchase when clicking through to the Messenger experience compared to ads optimized for clicks, and 1.9x higher value for website purchases made from click-to-Messenger ads.

A brighter, AI-driven future

The directional trends are clear: chatbots are an important component of our AI-driven future, and the C-suite is taking notice.

According to a 2018 study of CIOs and CTOs by Accenture, 56% of executives surveyed agree that conversational bots are driving disruption in their industry, and 43% report their competitors are already implementing the technology. Meanwhile, 70% of large enterprise CIOs predict that within the next two to three years, chatbots will be the primary interface for the customer service desk, according to a 2018 study by Everest Group Research.

The move toward chatbot technology across industries, from B2B (cybersecurity, enterprise IT / SaaS) to B2C (banking, retail) has come about quickly as technology has rapidly advanced in the late 2010s, creating better experiences for diverse audiences. Can today’s chatbots pass the Turing test? Likely not, though the rise of chatbots may support futurist Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that by 2045, a computer costing $1,000 could be significantly more intelligent than the combined brainpower of every human on earth. Chatbots’ current ability to do thousands of hours of work certainly could rival, in an apples-to-oranges manner, the dry administrative work that might take millions of human lifetimes (imagine pulling customer references and cross-referencing complicated indexes, as chatbots regularly do).

The rise of chatbots showcases a positive vision of how AI technology can improve lives while driving real business impact. Chatbots are unlocking tremendous business value and revenue opportunities, while simultaneously augmenting human jobs and making employees more profitable. If chatbots are an indication of our cognitive computing future, there may be a sense of optimism missing from today’s news commentary on the potential impact of AI.