CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Tuesday pinpointed why he thinks artificial intelligence is useful across the business world, saying its value stems from customer service potential across industries.
“It has time for you. It acknowledges you. It has a brain. It’s polite. It can almost always answer your question, because there’s only so many questions that get asked with any regularity, and it has the data to answer the question,” he said. “It’s the perfect way to run customer interactions rather than using humans who can speak unclearly, don’t really understand you, are impatient and are just plain exhausted.”
Cramer acknowledged that much of the AI hype on Wall Street hasn’t translated to real-life use cases or resulted in economic changes just yet. To many businesses, it’s a necessary expense, he said, something they must invest in to keep up with peers, but it hasn’t garnered returns — except, perhaps, for those that manufacture the hardware. He also noted that numerous CEOs with whom he speaks tout AI strategies that can feel “boilerplate.” But he said he’s come to learn that AI is not a strategy, nor does it make products to sell.
Instead, it speeds up processes for vast swaths of customers in the enterprise and consumer spheres, giving clients “something better than we already have” and reducing the number of employees businesses need to hire.
Cramer gave examples of how AI customer service capabilities could change workflows in several fields, including retail, food service, law and healthcare. He suggested AI agents could answer patients’ questions and free up doctors’ time to engage in other pursuits. He also proposed that AI could help baristas make coffee orders faster or conduct simple retail functions like processing returns.
“AI makes things go faster — everything. It makes things more rational — everything,” he said. “And it can make machines behave like humans.”