AI

You used to call me on your cell phone...

Sorry to do this, but...close your eyes and think about being stuck on hold: the repetitive music, the periodic sales pitches, the reminders to visit the company’s website.

• And 78% of US contact centers plan to deploy AI in the next three years. 

But that’s not all: VC money is eyeing AI for sales reps, too. “Sales intelligence” tools use AI to listen to salespeoples’ conversations with customers, then compile insights that can help drive future revenue. Two of the hottest companies in this space are Chorus.ai and Gong.io. 

• Chorus was acquired by ZoomInfo last week for $575 million. It’s known for analyzing sales conversations to find “smart themes,” then steering salespeople toward conversation types and vocal tones that lead to more $$. 
• Gong has raised over $500 million total, and its customers include Shopify, Zillow, and SurveyMonkey. 

All talked out

Beyond the dystopian nature of this practice, there's one hiccup in these plans: AI isn’t great at analyzing human emotions. Some conversations are just too complex for it to boil down into a set of ones and zeros. 

Case study: Cogito is an AI tool for customer service reps that analyzes calls in real time and scores interactions, displaying pop-up alerts when it deems a rep should apply more empathy or increase vocal energy. Clients include MetLife and Humana. 

• Reps reported receiving too many “empathy” alerts, and at least once, the AI flagged a customer and a rep sharing a laugh as the two interrupting each other. 

Bottom line: AI for call centers can help lighten the load for workers, especially at a time when reps are inundated with incoming calls. But it’s worth keeping in mind that human interaction is complex and constantly evolving, and AI can’t always parse that.—HF 

SEMICONDUCTORS

Chipping away

Beijing has wanted China to become self-sufficient in semiconductor manufacturing since before it was cool a global imperative driven by shortages. The government has invested $50 billion in the industry over the last 20 years. And the country has a lot of growth to show for it: 

• China’s semiconductor output hit a record high in June, in which it produced 30.8 billion chips—a 44% increase from last June. 
• And in H1 2021, China produced 171.2 billion units, up 48% year over year. 

But, but, but: This record output still isn’t enough to meet demand. The country imported 51.9 billion chips in June alone, and 310 billion chips in H1 2021, a 29% annual increase. 

Elsewhere in the world, governments are investing in their own onshore chipmaking capacities. In the US, a $52 billion semiconductor subsidy got through the Senate (TBD on the House). The EU has pledged $150 billion by the end of this decade, and South Korea plans to spend a whopping $450 billion through 2030. 

Looking ahead: Self-sufficiency is a long and bumpy road, and one that might wind up being a dead end. For China, ASML’s extreme ultraviolet machine—a massive, $150 million chip-etching machine necessary for producing the most advanced chips—presents a major pothole. ASML, a Dutch company, has a near monopoly on the machines, and the US has asked it not to sell to China.—DM

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AV

Autonomy aficionado

Last week we published my (Ryan’s) deep dive on what it’s like to ride in Waymo‘s fully driverless robotaxis, which are publicly available in the Phoenix, Arizona, suburbs. And while I took 10 rides during my two-day trip, I wanted to compare notes with someone else.

So...I called up Joel “JJ” Ricks, a seasoned Waymo rider. The Chandler-based college student has taken 160+ rides in Waymos across ~1,200 miles, and he’s detailed everything on his website. 

Here are three of his observations on how the service has changed since its public rollout in October 2020: 

• Waymo “used to wait and be a lot more hesitant” with unprotected left turns, Ricks said, which are “pretty much flawless now. ...If there’s a gap, and [the vehicle] knows it’s safe and can calculate everything, it will just go for it.” 
• Navigating busy parking lots used to mean “lots of whiplash, braking, and in some cases, disengagements. ...Now, there’s a lot more smoothing out and it feels a lot more confident.” 
• The in-vehicle experience has stayed fairly consistent, with the exception of a plastic visor installed during Covid.

For more: His YouTube channel contains plenty of diamonds in the rough, such as a Waymo interacting with a traffic cop and a video from May, in which his Waymo glitched in a construction zone and blocked traffic. 

Click here to read the full piece.—RD

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Japanese engineers blew past the previous world record for internet speed, achieving a data transfer rate of 319 terabits per second (Tbps), compared to the old record of 178 Tbps. For context, the connection allowing you to read this is most likely in the range of 100-200 megabits per second. 

Quote: “If you continue to build out infrastructure, which is certainly welcome and necessary, but you keep the same retail price, you haven’t solved anything in terms of getting more people online.”—Clayton Banks, head of Silicon Harlem, a company focused on broadband access in Harlem 

Read: An adtech company that claims to clean up the web is profiting off of its most toxic corners.

Fantasy stock market: When you play MarketWatch’s Virtual Stock Exchange, you build a portfolio and compete against your friends or coworkers while you’re at it. Earn bragging rights when you get started with MarketWatch today.*

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Full speed ahead with hybrid work. Nobody knows more about high-powered performance than McLaren, which is why they use Webex for virtual, real-time communication. Whether they’re meeting across the globe, communicating from the track, or hosting virtual events, the Webex Suite powers the McLaren F1 team—and it can do the same for yours. Get to hybrid work with Webex here.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Zoom bought Five9, a cloud-based call center company, for $14.7 billion. 
• The US, NATO, and other allies accused China of spearheading a March cyberattack that affected 30,000 organizations.
• OpenAI has shuttered its robotics team after several years of research and breakthroughs, including teaching a robot to solve a Rubik’s Cube.  
• Apple has enlisted Kevin Lynch, its wearables chief, to work on its autonomous vehicle project.
• Jeff Bezos will go to space tomorrow. 

THREE THINGS WE’RE WATCHING

All week: Virtual GDC. We’ll be on the lookout for big news on the future of gaming from the likes of Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Blizzard.

Thursday: Intel reports earnings. The company is on an all-out blitz with respect to semiconductors: It’s reportedly in talks to buy GlobalFoundries, one of the biggest contract chipmakers in the world, for $30 billion. And earlier this year it pledged more than $20 billion in investments to expand its US chipmaking capacity. 

Friday: The Tokyo Olympics begin. Maybe some form of emerging tech will factor into the opening ceremony (a drone light show, perhaps?)...

BLACK MIRROR IRL

Surveillance firm NSO Group named 180 journalists to a watchlist for potential surveillance by government clients, The Guardian reports. 

Journalists at organizations including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, the Financial Times, the Associated Press, and Reuters were on the list. India, Mexico, the UAE, Hungary, and Saudia Arabia are among the countries who used the service.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• What it’s like to take a fully driverless robotaxi
• How lawyers embraced the robots
• Biden turns up the heat on Big Tech and ISPs with exec order