Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ashleigh.
1. Will Google call centre staff be replaced by AI?
Earlier this week at Google’s Cloud Next conference, details of a new software, called Contact Center AI, were released that suggest Google is working to replace its human call centre workers with artificial intelligence.
Google Cloud chief scientist, Fei-Fei Li said “we found that customers often have simple transactional or informational requests. For contact center employees, this can mean repetitive work, increased pressure on caller turnover, and less time to solve complex problems. For the callers themselves, it can mean frustrating menus, longer hold times and a diminished experience overall.”
Taking this into consideration Google wants to use Contact Center AI to vett customer calls, and if the virtual representative is not able to successfully handle the call, it can pass the customer over to a human agent.
2. Facebook is going to end advertising discrimination in the US in the next 90 days
Facebook has vowed, and signed a legally binding agreement, that it will stop allowing advertisers to exclude certain minority groups, ie. races, religions, sexual orientations, and other protected classes from seeing their adverts and to do so in the next 3 months.
This first arose back in 2016 and it was announced by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, that the agreement had finally been signed. “Facebook’s advertising platform allowed unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, disability and religion,” said Ferguson in a statement. “That’s wrong, illegal, and unfair.”
3. The girlguiding badges have been revamped after 108-years
After 108 years the girlguiding brands have had a massive overhaul with guidebooks, badges and activities getting a big shake up to bring them up to date with modern day.
The skills covered with girls aged 5-18 will now include coding, money management, survival, DIY and mixology, as well as the traditional badges like camping and outdoor adventures.
The overhaul has taken 4 years to complete, been tested with 44,533 girls and involved 6,169 more girls for additional consultation and hopes to attract lots more girls to become Guides but also volunteers to work as leaders for the groups.
4. Facebook double offices in London
Facebook also announced this week that it will be doubling its office space across two buildings in Kings Cross, which could equate to 6,000 more jobs.
Facebook have not actually confirmed the number of vacancies they’ll be filling in London, it expects to employ 2,300 people by the end of the year, but the new space has potential for 6,000 as it is equipped with as many workstations.
Steve Hatch, managing director for Facebook in Northern Europe said, “Today’s news reflects our commitment to the UK and our desire to grow our business and the UK economy.” This is some great news in a time of such uncertainty here in Britain.
5. Facebook’s stock price takes a nosedive
On the flip side to point 4 it has since been reported that Facebook’s stock price has taken a steep 20% plummet this week.
The latest company figures show that user growth has slowed right down and its costs are rising due to them having to deal with several legal issues around misinformation and privacy etc.
The company’s market value has plummeted by a whopping $118 billion and Zuckberg’s personal wealth is down $16 billion. These latest figures are for Q2 of 2018, the first full quarter post the Cambridge Analytica scandal, so it has clearly hit the company hard!
