EXPRESS: Blame the Bot: Anthropomorphism and Anger in Customer-Chatbot Interactions

Chatbots have become common in digital customer service contexts across many industries. While many companies choose to humanize their customer service chatbots (e.g., giving them names and avatars), little is known about how anthropomorphism influences customer responses to chatbots in service settings. Across five studies, including an analysis of a large real-world dataset from an international telecommunications company and four experiments, the authors find that when customers enter a chatbot-led service interaction in an angry emotional state, chatbot anthropomorphism has a negative effect on customer satisfaction, overall firm evaluation, and subsequent purchase intentions. However, this is not the case for customers in non-angry emotional states. The authors uncover the underlying mechanism driving this negative effect (expectancy violations caused by inflated pre-encounter expectations of chatbot efficacy) and offer practical implications for managers. These findings suggest it is important to both carefully design chatbots and consider the emotional context in which they are used, particularly in customer service interactions that involve resolving problems or handling complaints.

Evolving Ethical and Regulatory Framework for Artificial Intelligence for Health

International Telecommunications Union (ITU) / World Health Organization (WHO) / Focus Group (FG) on artificial intelligence for health (FG-AI4H) works in partnership with the (WHO) to establish a standardized assessment framework for the evaluation of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based methods for health, diagnosis, triage or treatment decisions. This working group of ITU/WHO "Regulatory considerations for AI" is helping to guide the FG in navigating the regulatory landscape; facilitating contacts, information exchange, and collaborative opportunities of the FG with regulatory bodies. This paper has outlined the key regulatory considerations that are relevant to regulatory agencies for AI development and to define ways to successfully benchmark the AI for health algorithms.

A compact double-band planar printed slot antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G wireless applications

A planar rectangular slot antenna with dual-band operation and realized higher peak gain is proposed, designed, and fabricated for sub-6 GHz 5G applications. The antenna possesses a rectangular radiating slot with the inverted stub on its upper edge excited simultaneously by a micro-strip feed line having a double folded T-shaped structure. The fabricated design is of compact size with the radiating portion of 0.3 λ0 × 0.17 λ0 (λ0 represents free-space wavelength) and profile of 0.009 λ0. The measured results show the operating frequency bands of 3.29–3.63 GHz and 4.3–5.2 GHz, with a peak gain of around 7.17 dBi. The higher frequency band is generated by the feed patch and the slot whereas lower resonant frequency band is generated by the stub loaded on the slot. The measured results are in a good agreement with the simulated results. The proposed design is suitable for the International Telecommunications Union sub 6 GHz applications.

Digital Cloud Environment: Present Challenges and Future Forecast

This article addresses the challenges of a digital cloud environment when it comes to global scalability with a large number of remote servers and an unsecure public cloud, such as Amazon. The goal of the study was to work out an approach for evaluating the reasonable system capacity under heavy workload. For that purpose, Zabbix monitoring solution is used and business metrics are applied in relation to existing system ones. A prediction data model is proposed to compute the future forecast of the user activity based on the collected historical statistics and to verify whether capacity adjustment is possible or not. The results of capacity planning are implemented at Genesys International Telecommunications Company. System analysis of the production environment indicates the possibility to downscale the capacity of certain virtual servers, which allowed savings to the annual operational costs of $3500 (50%) for each affected server.

Análisis del impacto del intervalo de tiempo de transmisión sobre la latencia en la red de acceso radio de sistemas 5G

Los Sistemas de Comunicaciones Móviles de Quinta Generación (5G, Fifth Generation) soportarán servicios de Comunicación Ultra Confiable de Baja Latencia (URLLC, Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication), que imponen requerimientos exigentes en términos de latencia y confiabilidad. La Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones (ITU, International Telecommunications Union) ha considerado reestructurar la trama de datos de nivel físico en Sistemas 5G para adaptar el Tiempo de Intervalo de Transmisión (TTI, Time Transmission Interval) y cumplir con los requerimientos definidos para los servicios URRLC. El presente artículo analiza el impacto del TTI sobre la latencia de la Red de Acceso Radio (RAN, Radio Access Network) de Sistemas 5G. Para esto, se estudia la estructura de trama de nivel físico de Sistemas 5G y se diseñan escenarios de simulación teniendo en cuenta la latencia en el nivel físico. Estos escenarios son implementados en la herramienta software ns3, utilizando el módulo mmWave para sistemas 5G. Los resultados muestran que el TTI influye significativamente sobre la latencia en la RAN, sin embargo, es necesario considerar las características de la red y los servicios a desplegar.