tailcoat

Years ago, if you were walking down the street in Spain and saw a man dressed in a tailcoat and top hat following someone, it could only mean one thing: that someone was a defaulter. Although the Frac Collector is still activeToday, the usual thing if you have an unpaid bill is to be bombarded with calls and notifications. Well, the last thing is that those dreaded calls are not made by people, but by AI agents. The AI ​​wants you to pay your debts. In a report in Wired They tell the story of Ben (not his real name), who received a call from ‘Eve, an AI agent for the collection company Pro Collect. In a very kind way, he asked him to pay a debt. The problem is that Ben had already paid her months ago and no matter how much he asked, he couldn’t get Eve to put him through to a human agent, so he decided to troll her a little, after all he has a language model behind him. Ben told him that he felt like “a little guy” facing a debt that was like a giant that wanted to trample him. After a few minutes of fiddling, he was finally able to speak to a person, who confirmed that his debt was indeed settled. Automating defaulters. In the United States delinquency figures are skyrocketing and debt collection companies have more work than ever, so they are starting to turn to technology to automate the task. There are many startups that offer “call center without humans” services, such as the Mexican Altur, Domu or Moveo. This allows them to handle the volume of active cases. These AIs not only send text notifications to debtors, they also make calls and even adapt their tone depending on each case. Female voice and kindness. Most AI agents dedicated to debt collection have a female voice and name such as Eve, Emily or Taylor. Speaking to Wired, the CEO of one of these companies (FloatBoat) states that “female voices are more accepted.” Another thing they have in common is that they are designed to sound calm and show empathy, so that the debtor does not feel attacked. However, the tone is adjusted based on the transcripts of previous calls, so if a customer resists paying, the AI ​​agent shows a harsher tone. The collections industry. Given the rise in defaults, AI agents are sold as the perfect solution to multiply calls and notifications to defaulters at almost zero cost. According to data from the Kaplan agencyby 2034 the AI ​​debt collection market is expected to reach $15.9 billion, quadrupling productivity and cutting costs in half. However, it is not clear that these agents are more effective than a human in getting debts paid. According to Yale researcher James Choi, many people feel less obligated to pay if they talk to an AI than to a human. Even so, for collection agencies it makes up for the fact that a bot is somewhat less convincing than its ability to operate 24/7 and manage thousands of simultaneous conversations. Legal and ethical limits. Consumer advocates warn of risks with the use of this technology. An AI agent is capable of making hundreds of calls simultaneously, at any time, which can turn an already predatory sector into something even more aggressive. On the other hand there is the issue of privacy. We have already seen in Ben’s story that AI agents make mistakes, if the mistake ends up revealing information, it can be a serious problem because they handle sensitive financial data. Image | Monstera Production In Xataka | An experiment with AI agents began to treat them badly. So AI Agents Became Marxists