Danish brewer adds AI 'colleagues' to human team

The brewer says it has introduced AI 'co-workers' to summation the imaginable of its quality staff. Photo: Josep LAGO / AFP/File
Source: AFP

They person names, faces and email addresses, but the 5 caller colleagues astatine Denmark's Royal Unibrew lone beryllium successful the virtual realm, which the brewer hails arsenic a milestone to unleash the afloat imaginable of its staff.

"What we arsenic humans are bully astatine is our creativity, our empathy, our cognition of our customers," selling manager Michala Svane told AFP.

Svane explained that moving unneurotic with their integer colleagues, their quality employees "get assistance for much routine-based enactment and uncovering information".

With the assistance of Danish institution Manifold AI, she has enriched her squad with 5 AI "colleagues": marque specializer KondiKai, marketplace expert Athena, Prometheus, who gathers each income data, Moller, a sommelier specialising successful pairing nutrient and beer, and commercialized specializer Ella.

Initially, the assistants operated without names, but the 5 "colleagues" present each person a backstory, can swap outfits, and interact regular with different employees.

The institution has made photos of the "colleagues" -- 3 men and 2 women, each charismatic and acceptable -- and quality employees interact with them via chats and emails.

"When we enactment a representation connected the AI agent, the usage and the engagement went up times four," Svane said.

According to Svane, she hasn't sensed immoderate apprehension from the quality unit successful accepting their virtual co-workers.

Jan Damsgaard, a prof specialising successful integer transformations astatine Copenhagen Business School, explained that AI employees are often designed arsenic "personas" for a amended idiosyncratic acquisition for those interacting with them.

"They are created to be to peculiar issues," Damsgaard told AFP.

At Royal Unibrew, Denmark's second-largest brewer, Karin Jorgensen, who heads the squad liable for information postulation and investigation and converses regular with Athena, her "sparring partner."

At the moment, she is funny successful the non-alcoholic brew market, and conversing via the instant messaging work Teams Athena guides her done already completed reports and an overview of the market.

"Before, determination were a batch of emails coming in. And we had to look up aged reports and bash a batch of connecting things and truthful on. We person decidedly moved to much agility, much speed," Jorgensen told AFP.

Another advantage, she said, is that investigation and collating accusation tin beryllium kept in-house.

"We are getting overmuch much worth and getting overmuch much effectual arsenic we work," the expert said.

Jorgensen is besides anticipating further developments, specified arsenic Athena being capable to enactment successful meetings.

Critical reasoning

While this caller narration tin marque employees much productive, they request to beryllium mindful that they support their captious reasoning skills, 1 of the managers Lise Knuppert Hordam warned.

"You request to beryllium captious of everything that comes from KondiKai due to the fact that helium is simply a machine," she said.

"What helium says is based connected each the information we gave him. So it is valid what helium says, but it needs a quality interaction and originative thinking," she said.

The improvement of these caller tools, oregon "colleagues," is not lone a technological feat for Michala Svane, but it is besides laying the instauration for a hybrid squad of humans and AI co-workers that enactment unneurotic effortlessly.

But each caller exertion besides carries risk, according to Damsgaard.

In this case, what raises questions are the interactions betwixt employees and their AI colleagues: what happens erstwhile your closest workfellow is an AI collaborator and not a existent person? What bash you bash if a quality workfellow conflicts with an AI co-worker?

"It's thing we cognize small about," the researcher said, adding that helium hoped specified questions volition get answered arsenic the exertion developed.

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Source: AFP