This week Tommy and Adam discuss customer service systems—both human and robotic—and how knowing the rules of these systems leads to predictable results. And this, in a strange way, leads to questions of consciousness in a system.

Next week the discussion continues with an unusual application of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and an unconventional, eight month-long conversation with the machine we know as Google.

Links for this episode:

• ILoveCurtainsThe Amazon store with which Tommy had an odd experience.
• USPS TrackingHow USPS tracking works!
• AI-Powered Customer Service Needs The Human TouchHuffington Post: "Artificial Intelligence is the definitive technology of the 21st century. All businesses of every size, in every industry will be impacted by AI. In the age of the connected customer, every 1 in 5 U.S. adults are almost never offline, customer experience is the battleground for true differentiation. Today, every successful consumer application is powered by AI. Tomorrow, every successful business will be powered by AI. The line-of-business that is most likely to embrace AI first will be the customer service – typically the most process oriented and technology savvy organization within most companies."
• How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Enterprise Customer ServiceForbes: "As AI technology matures, businesses are jumping to include artificial intelligence in their strategic investment roadmaps. Forward-looking enterprises are especially keen to leverage AI for customer service, a cost center that traditionally scales linearly with revenue. AI-augmented customer service promises attractive efficiency gains, and have generated widespread attention. According to a study by Oracle, nearly 8 out of 10 businesses have already implemented or are planning to adopt AI as a customer service solution by 2020."
• what-is-a-photocopier.html" class="link">‘Verbatim: What Is a Photocopier?’New York Times: "In 2012, on my Facebook feed, I stumbled across a hilarious excerpt from a legal transcript. In a deposition in Ohio, a lawyer became embroiled in an absurd argument about the definition of a photocopier."
• What happened at Vidcon with Feminist frequency?Redditor J233779: "I was on twitter and the people that I follow were talking about a incident with feminist frequency's panel. What happened?"
• VidCon apologizes for panelist clash involving activist Anita SarkeesianVidCon prides itself on being a convention about “the love of online video,” but many are wondering how this seemingly progressive gathering dropped the ball and let a YouTuber’s harasser into the front row.
• On VidCon, Harassment & Garbage HumansAnita Sarkeesian responds to the VidCon controversy.
• LukaLuka: "Meet Luka, a messenger for bots and humans. Talk to bots and your friends in the same place: make weekend plans, play games, find restaurants and more."
• ReplikaLuka's Replika: "Replika is your AI friend that you teach and grow in conversations."

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