By bizn_fun 
Joe Inzerillo, chief digital officer at software giant Salesforce, tells the BBC that call centres provide fertile training grounds for AIs, particularly ones that have been moved to low-cost areas such as the Philippines and India.
This is because a lot of staff training will have been done, which the AI can also learn from.
“You have a huge amount of documentation, and that’s all really great stuff for the AI to have when it is going to take over that first line of defence,” he says.
Salesforce’s AI-powered customer service platform, AgentForce, is currently being used by a range of customers from Formula 1, to insurance firm Prudential, restaurant-booking website Open Table, and social media site Reddit.
Mr Inzerillo says that when Salesforce first put the platform through its paces it learned some valuable lessons about how to make the AI seem more human-like.
“While a human might say ‘sorry to hear that’, the agent just opened a ticket,” says Mr Inzerillo.
So the AI was trained to show more sympathy, especially when a customer has a problem.
Salesforce also found that not allowing the agent to talk about competitors proved problematic.
“This backfired when customers asked legitimate questions about integrating Microsoft Teams with Salesforce,” says Mr Inzerillo. “The agent refused to help because Microsoft appeared on our competitor list.”
The firm subsequently replaced that rigid rule.