First hour: Is artificial intelligence the future of customer service?
Second hour: How games can be used to help people learn about different religions and cultures
Frontier Airlines has dropped its customer service line in favor of a chat bot, social media, and other text-based methods of communicating. As reported by NPR on Saturday, a company spokesperson said that "the airline found that most customers preferred communicating through online channels." As a consumer, what do you prefer? The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to handle customer service issues is on the rise. What are the benefits and drawbacks? And what does it mean for the future of the industry? We discuss these questions and more with our guests:
- Sean McKay, president of Site Hub
- Rajendran Murthy, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Management Information Systems (MIS), Marketing, and Analytics in the Saunders College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology
- Rich Pulvino, vice president and director of corporate communications at ESL Federal Credit Union
- Sevin Yeltekin, Ph.D., dean of the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester
Then in our second hour, how can we use games and other interactive activities to better understand how our neighbors and friends celebrate different cultural and religious holidays? Local religion experts and game designers are using games as a way to teach people about religious legal codes and philosophies. How does it work? We explore it with our guests:
- Owen Gottlieb, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Interactive Games and Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology, founder and director of RIT's Interaction, Media and Learning Lab, and founder and director of the Initiative in Religion, Culture and Policy at the RIT MAGIC Center
- Muhammad Shafiq, Ph.D., professor of religious studies at Nazareth College, and Muslim clergy member
- Hanif Rahbari, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at RIT
