NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IPsoft today announced a new artificial intelligence platform named “Amelia” that makes it possible to automate knowledge work across a broad range of functions. Exposed to the same information as any new hire, she can quickly apply her knowledge to solve queries in a wide range of business processes. With Amelia able to shoulder the burden of tedious, often laborious tasks, she partners with human coworkers to achieve new levels of productivity and service quality.
Whereas many other technologies demand that humans adapt their behavior in order to interact with ‘smart machines’, Amelia is intelligent enough to interact like a human herself. This equips her to deliver a top quality customer experience for any of the businesses in which she is deployed.
Amelia learns using the same natural language manuals as her colleagues but in a matter of seconds. She understands the full meaning of what she reads rather than simply recognizing individual words. This involves understanding context, applying logic and inferring implications. Independently, rather than through time intensive programming, Amelia creates her own process map of the information she is given so that she can work out for herself what actions to take depending on the problem she is solving. Just like any smart worker she learns from her colleagues and by observing their work, she continually builds her knowledge.
In a fraction of the time it takes traditionally to train someone in a new role, Amelia is able to perform at a high level. What is more, as she already speaks more than 20 languages she is able to support international operations with ease. Her core knowledge of a process needs only to be learned once for her to be able to communicate with customers in their language.
“When investigating smart solutions, we must first analyze what it means to be intelligent. Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. If a system claims to be intelligent, it must be able to read and understand documents, and answer questions on the basis of that. It must be able to understand processes that it observes. It must be able to solve problems based on the knowledge it has acquired. And when it cannot solve a problem, it must be capable of learning the solution through noticing how a human did it. Amelia is that mensa kid, who personifies a major breakthrough in cognitive technologies,” said Chetan Dube, Chief Executive Officer, IPsoft. “Amelia will allow people to indulge in more creative forms of expression, as opposed to doing routine business process tasks. This platform will free us from the mundane, disrupting industries in the way that machines have previously transformed manufacturing and agriculture. We’re going to have to rethink work by redefining existing roles and identifying new ones.”
Much like machines transformed agriculture and manufacturing, cognitive technologies will drive the next evolution of the global workforce. In the future, companies will compete in the digital economy with a digital workforce that comprises a balance of human and virtual employees. Gartner predicts that by 2017, managed services offerings leveraging autonomics and cognitive platforms like Amelia will drive a 60 percent reduction in the cost of services1. That’s because Amelia is uniquely positioned to be an extension of the existing workforce, enabling organizations to apply human talent to higher level tasks requiring creativity, curiosity and innovation. The technology is already being piloted within a number of Fortune 1000 companies and IPsoft expects to announce new customers and prominent industry partners before the end of the year.
Why Amelia?
Named after American aviator and pioneer Amelia Earhart, IPsoft has been working on this technology for 15 years with the goal to build a platform that doesn’t simply mimic human thought processes but can comprehend the underlying meaning of what is communicated just like a human. In much the same way we learned to fly by studying the science of flight rather than building something that flaps its wings like a bird, Amelia can think in a human way rather than simply mimic human thought processes, marking a major breakthrough in cognitive technology. Amelia builds a mind map that grasps concepts and the relationships between them. As a result she appreciates the context and implications of what is being communicated.
Real World Applications for Amelia’s Technology
Because Amelia learns just as a new employee would, she can be deployed in any business scenario. Currently, she is being piloted in the areas including: technology help desks, procurement processing, financial trading operations support and expert advisor for field engineers. In each of these environments, she learns not only from reading existing manuals and situational context but also by observing and working with her human colleagues and discerning for herself a map of the business processes being followed. She can provide valuable, smart recommendations and solutions to her human coworkers and customers.
In a help desk situation, Amelia can understand what a caller is looking for, ask questions to clarify the issue, find and access needed information and determine which steps to follow in order to solve the problem. As a knowledge management advisor, she can help engineers working in remote locations and unable to carry with them detailed manuals. By exchanging information with Amelia, she can diagnose the cause of failed machinery and guide them towards the best steps to rectifying the problem.
For more information about Amelia, including a video demonstration, please visit http://www.ipsoft.com/amelia.
About IPsoft
IPsoft automates IT and business processes for enterprises across a wide range of industries. Through its portfolio of world leading autonomic and cognitive solutions it provides services that allow its clients to secure competitive advantage. Headquartered in New York City, IPsoft has offices in ten countries across the world and serves more than 500 of the world’s leading brands directly as well as more than half of the world’s largest IT services providers. For more information please visit www.ipsoft.com.
1 “Predicts 2014: Business and IT Services Are Facing the End of Outsourcing as We Know It,” Gartner, 24 January 2014
