Meet WattBot, or Watt, as we affectionately like to call him* at our recently launched renewable energy company, Pure Planet
*Or maybe it’s a her? Or an it? We’re not too sure…
Watt is an artificial intelligence marvel, a little bot, which lives in our app and answers customer queries about energy and how our service works. Just tap in your question (she doesn’t do voice just yet) and, hey presto, you get your answer.
Pure Planet offers 100% renewable energy from sunshine, wind and water – for less cost than fossil-fired power. It’s a new, sustainable company that I’ve been working on with my friends and colleagues for the past couple of years. And being entirely app-based – a first for Britain – it’s important Watt represents the nascent Pure Planet brand well. It can’t get things wrong.
But, of course, he does – every now and again.
Watt, like all computer whizzery needs programming. She does ‘learn’ too and has some clever natural language logic to draw on. But behind the scenes it has a database, and a minder – Niall, in our member services team. Niall is busily building that database to make sure Watt is equipped with the knowledge to answer customers’ questions.
As Pure Planet is still only a few weeks old, Watt is still pretty limited. He can answer simple questions about your energy bill, your direct debit – that kind of thing. It was important to get the basics sorted first. But the other day Niall grabbed me and said: “Steven, what if someone asks Watt about sustainability? What should she say?”
What? We need to teach Watt the robot about sustainability? “Of course we do!” insisted Niall. “It’s bound to get questions on climate change, and carbon parts per million and all that stuff. What do we get him to say?”
So that’s how my personal challenge (part 2) took an unexpected twist. My original aim was to do my best to share my enthusiasm and sustainability knowledge among my colleagues at Pure Planet. And I was beginning to think I was doing ok: as a team we enjoy our office exchanges on Trump and the Paris Agreement; on ocean plastic and what we’re going to do about it; on meat versus veg, and all sorts of things…
But I never expected to have to have chat with a sexless robot about sustainability too.
That’s what we’re working on now. WattBot’s sustainability knowledge base is currently under construction. But where to start? I confess Tony Juniper’s marvellously accessible book What’s Really happening to our Planet? has been a helpful inspiration. It covers so many topics in a very understandable way. I keep hearing Niall pipe up from the book: “Well, I never knew that!” or “You won’t believe this!” as he plots his programming of Watt.
Watt has to keep things simple, short and snappy, of course. She* certainly won’t be able to take on any Cambridge academic in debate when we switch its* sustainability database on. But hopefully he* will be able to spread a little of the sustainability word to our customers over time.
(*I told you we weren’t sure: He, She or It – you decide!)
Sustainability Education 
Hi Steven,
“I never expected to have to have chat with a sexless robot about sustainability”.
This line in your personal leadership blog really stood out, particularly as we have had many conversations and I have enjoyed them all. You are a natural talker – engaging, persuasive, enthusiastic and very personable. And it is these qualities, which I find so appealing, which I believe have the most impact in communication. I was going to say, in “inter-personal” communication. But your issue here is specifically the non-personal. And this is where I think WattBot (and all nascent AI at the moment) is doomed to failure.
I know I’m at risk of sounding like an anti-technology old fogey, so I should declare my interests (or lack of them). I do email, but no social media – I’m not on facebook or twitter; I have snapchat and whatsapp, but can’t really be bothered. I don’t use Cortana or Siri or have one of those intelligent speaker things lurking in my kitchen, so I’m probably not the best person to comment. But never mind.
And in five or ten years I’m sure AI and chatbots will have developed beyond our current wildest dreams and I’ll be a convert (or completely offline).
However, what is it that you hope to get out of your new goal to learn how to talk with a sexless robot? Might I suggest that what you learn from it be invested not in changing how you behave/think, but rather in changing your bot. Others won’t have your patience, curiosity or commitment, and will simply walk away. The serious impact will be that your bot will have failed to serve mankind by getting people to switch to your renewable energy products.
Perhaps there are hints in the opening line: “sexless” and “robot”. These are clearly the focal points of your frustration or reticence about the bot. Do you therefore need to give WattBot a sex (perhaps one the user can select, much like you can choose which voice accompanies your sat-nav instructions)? Do you need to hide, or make less obvious, the fact that it is a robot? This might be part of your sales pitch, to appeal to the tech-minded? Alternatively, give the device a human appearance, or a name (Niall?) to personalise it/him/her.
I’m sure there is literature out there about communication with AI. Here’s a research paper http://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2055/science/article/pii/S0747563217303667 that compared interest levels in human and chatbot partner interactions, in the foreign language learning domain. Chatbots had an initial novelty effect, but thereafter there was no benefit. Perhaps this initial novelty effect is all Pure Planet (nice plug in the blog, by the way!), is after. But if you are trying to get people to engage in deeper learning about sustainability…
Let us know how WattBot gets on.
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Hi Steven,
As always, very insightful and enjoyable reading. Thank you for that. I am so very pleased for you and your colleagues to see how far you have already come, and can’t wait to see what is coming next.
I get the fact that you and your team are thinking about how to expand your service offering by providing information about sustainability. I get that, but am not sure that the WattBot is the best way to do it (please don’t think I am not all for technology and AI and all of that, great believer and all). Why not create a separate tab specifically for sustainability and the team can respond and provide good information and so play the very important role of getting the message out there. I think of the website of Patagonia, you ask a question, and within minutes you get a response – i like that.
On a different note, I want to share another success story – The Sun Exchange. This company was created recently by Abraham Cambridge and provides a leasing platform to investors who want to invest in clean energy. They have crowdsourced funding to install rooftop solar PV on Waldorf School in Stellenbosch, South Africa as their first project, and through the platform run by blockchain, match investors, who buy the solar panels and then rent out the panels to the end users on the back of a 20 year lease agreement. Total transparent investment in clean energy.
They have since completed another project successfully and is busy with their third project. They are also either in the process, or have already introduced smart contracts on the blockchain technology to facilitate the rental payments automatically. If you want to read more, visit their website http://www.thesunexchange.co.za.
Very inspirational in the face of so many nay Sayers and people who go to great trouble to explain why it could never work.
I say, just do it!
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Hi Steven-
I read your blog right after you posted it, and didn’t respond earlier– my apologies.
Niall was right, in my opinion. As a perspective customer, seeing that your company is framing its raison d’être around sustainable energy sources, I would probably test Wattbots depth on the subject.
It would be nice to see it link to sources of information regarding pertinent sustainability topics. I’d probably get a kick out of it, if it linked to a competitor (I am sure you wouldn’t like that though!).
As an Energy Manager, whenever I talk to customers, their eyes roll to the back of their heads, and froth accumulates in the corner of their mouths– and I have a captured audience! When it comes to anything about doing math in public– even if it would save money– people shut down like a drive-in movie in a snowstorm.
On a serious note, my understanding of your business is that it would greatly benefit from a well- crafted customer interface. If you want it to be easy for a customer to say yes to your product in a competitive space, your user interface could make or break you, as I am sure you have realized.
Thankfully, there are many experts in UX (user experience) that can help you with this. In fact, it is one of the fastest growing areas of expertise in business. Dr. Soussan Djamasbi is leading a team of researchers and students who were recently working on the user experience and decision making with customers using mobile devices. These folks are found at
http://uxdm.wpi.edu/
and are doing ground-breaking research in UX that you might find interesting. Your company could even sponsor part of their work AND perhaps get something as an output from them (like an improved Wattbot!) by sponsoring a project. Or, you could get lost in the sea of academic papers….
You see, it is more than what people perceive, it is also about how they react, and even more precisely, what they react to first or more intensely. Then, the follow on question is, of course, how does the company create the desire for further interaction with your content? The decision making is endless, it seems.
So, while you are busy refining your new business, leaning more about sustainability, and generally taking care to save the world, your can add one more item to the checklist: UX.
Good luck!
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Hi.
I love the idea of Watt. What a great marketing tool and company representative. Given that its getting harder and harder to speak with an actual person at an business, Watt seems like a creative way to achieve that very important interaction with the customer.
But I also wouldn’t mind if Watt was kept limited to answering questions more related to the business itself. I think maybe customer expectations of more theoretical or philosophical responses from Watt might be unrealistic given what the business actually is. It does appear, however, that Watt is already on its way to getting smarter and smarter on the topic.
If you are still deciding on whether Watt is a he, she, or it. I vote for it.
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