Willingly - because one cannot stay behind for ever, be it for bending to the God of ´data protection´ - and unwillingly - due to efficiency and cost-relatedissues, AI is getting more and more used in Germany.´More and more´ in local terms means less than 10% of what is achieved in other countries but this is for another time.
Since summer, big doctor´s offices or postal services are intensively using AI for making appointments or answering various organisatorical - not medical - aspects. It may save time from waiting on the line, for long minutes or even close to one hour. It can also allow a swift assignment of tasks either to an online AI-generated service or to the department in charge with your request.
But...but there are some small details that I will definitely love to research into more depth in the following weeks and months. The system, as far as I had the chance to personally test until now, it is operational in German, it is trained to cater to the German-speaking audience, speaking professional - hoch - German by individuals bearing German names.
Today, I´ve tested for several occasions such a system, using various accents and non-German sounding names and every time I failed to achieve the aimed results: the bot couldn´t understand what was the request, could not reproduce the sound of the name correctly etc.
Imagine then the difficulties a non-German, speaking correctly although not free of accent would have while using the system. How disadvantaged this person will be and how frustrated they may be because unable to secure a ´holy´ appointment or to be transferred to the right ´human´ operator.
An issue that definitely deserves more attention and probably extended institutional answers.
