Some patients in the UK are skipping going to the doctor because their office’s AI “receptionist” can’t understand what they’re saying.
The health and social watchdog Healthwatch Rotherham said that the troublesome AI receptionist in question, called “Emma,” is being used at a number of clinics in South Yorkshire — and is struggling with locals’ distinct way of speaking.
“One of the issues is this system can’t always understand what people’s inquiry is about due to their broad Yorkshire accent,” Kym Gleeson, manager at Healthwatch Rotherham, told the BBC. “Across South Yorkshire, accents do vary quite a lot. There are different twangs so there’s a lot of variation. It seems the system isn’t always able to understand, so that causes frustration.”
Frustration may be an understatement. One patient who couldn’t be arsed to negotiate with a malfunctioning AI complained to Healthwatch, via The Guardian: “I could never get it to understand me,” saying that “I ended up just hanging up and not bothering to try and book an appointment.”
It’s another point of friction arising from AI’s deployment across the health sector. Using AI to take calls and book appointments is becoming a common practice at many doctor’s offices and hospitals, with some even using AI to triage patients. Doctors and nurses frequently use AI tools for taking clinical notes and looking up symptoms.
As real world applications often do, these can backfire; an AI-powered transcription tool by hospitals, for example, was caught hallucinating details about patients and referring to non-existent drugs.
Clinics argue that using AI receptionists like Emma, which is built by QuantumLoopAI, allows them to take more calls simultaneously and eliminate wait times on the phone.
Not everyone is finding the tradeoff to be worth it.
“Some of the people were so frustrated at not being able to understand how to navigate this AI system, it was forcing them to travel back to their GP surgery in person,” Gleeson told The Guardian. “The usual route of using a telephone was no longer a comfortable process for them.”
In response, QuantumLoopAI bragged that its AI is designed to understand 17 languages in addition to English and is “trained to understand a wide range of accents and dialects.”
“Where she is unable to understand or deal with a patient’s request,” a spokesperson said — note the personfifying pronoun — the “call is transferred to the reception team.”
“No caller is required to continue speaking with Emma,” they added, “and anyone can ask to speak to a member of staff at any time.”
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