She introduced herself as Eve, but Ben knew immediately that the voice on the other end of the line was a bot. Eve knew his name. She also knew how much money he owed the former owner ($266). She seemed unaware that he had entered into an agreement with a debt collection agency five months earlier. Eve said she was an AI agent from ProCollect and was calling to collect a debt. “Do you want to solve your problem today by card or bank transfer?” she asked.
Ben stepped outside on a heated April afternoon in Portland, Oregon to answer the phone. (He asked WIRED to operate a pseudonym so he could speak freely about financial matters.) Standing in the sun, he wondered what he would have to say to get Eve to hand over the phone to the human. “I thought if I asked about the repayment structure or something more technical, I would just get fired,” he says. But Eve stayed on the line, so Ben did the same. He decided – why not? – mess around with the bot a bit.
Ben claims that he asked the bot to take part in a role-play where he was “just a little boy” and his debt resembled a giantess willing to trample him. He wanted to see how weird Eve would become. He says the bot reluctantly played for a few minutes, but then suddenly directed him to a call center employee. The human agent did not reveal whether he heard Ben’s strange conversation with the artificial intelligence. However, they quickly cleared up the confusion: “They checked me in the system,” he recalls. “The balance was found to be zero.”
Ben’s experiences are becoming more common. As inflation and stagnant wages squeeze wallets, the United States is piling up on debt swells. “Right now we have the highest number of debt collections in court that I have ever seen,” says debt settlement expert Michael Bovee.
As unprecedented numbers of people struggle to pay off debt, debt-chasing companies are turning to technology to boost their efforts. Many of the calls, emails, texts and letters that people receive asking for money are now processed by AI agents. Their tone may be respectful, even flattering, but it never throws them off balance. They also never sleep. Their advantage comes from persistence and scale. Some analysis by debt collection agency Kaplan Group estimates that AI-based debt collectors will be an industry worth almost $16 billion over the next decade.
Artificial intelligence advocates often point out that as automation becomes more sophisticated, humanity has a uncommon chance to rid itself of the world’s worst performances. Working in a call center already sucks. Working in a call center specifically to harass people for money adds to the misery. CareerExplorer career matching platform ranks debt collection in the bottom 1 percent professions in order to obtain job satisfaction. Just like debt collectors hate their jobs, people hate debt collectors too. When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau first started accepting debt collection complaints, it received in six months, putting it just behind the mortgage industry as the financial service that has caused the most outrage.
If there is any sector of employment where you can fail without much fuss about losing your job, it might be this one. What does it take for a bot like Eve to defeat the least favorite people on Earth?
To get to better cope with Ewa’s capabilities, I decided to call her myself.
However, when I tried the number Ben gave me, a ProCollect employee answered. I introduced myself as a journalist. They told me there was no one around to answer my questions and suggested I call the next day. When I did this, another person told me that the company didn’t operate AI, but also that I should talk to HR. HR told me to email my questions, which I did. One of my questions: Where did Eve come from?