Fascinating reading on Sunday, reading the Financial Times (honestly, I am so highbrow!)
Lots of the talk, though, in the section I was reading was around the development of AI and customer service, and how Lloyds Bank and Centrica and other huge organisations are selling the advantages of AI to their shareholders.
They've changed the narrative and changed the language on this, as if it isn't going to slash thousands and thousands of jobs, but it's OK because it adds to ‘shareholder value’.
I remember all of this type of language previously when they moved their call centres out of the United Kingdom.
I remember all the language previously when the automated aspects of the call centres were introduced, so that they could use fewer people in the call centre.
It was bad enough that we took a generation of young people and stuck them on their phones in a warehouse with no windows, but it was worse when we started to get rid of them, and they have no way of making a living anymore.
The further Lloyd's go down the route of AI customer service, the more I go far away from Lloyd's.
Same for Centrica.
Apparently, I'm weird.
Apparently what people want is speed and access without a human.
They did want that, for a while, and then dating apps got found out.
People found out that friends on Facebook weren't actually friends.
They'll soon find out that non-human customer service is not customer service.
I wonder whether you've got long enough to wait until that washes out.
I wonder whether you can be brave enough to use the technology to make you more human, and to put more human people in front of human people so that they can trust you more.
It may be quick with the AI, but there is no trust.
Without trust, there's nothing.
Blog Post Number - 4622