Over the past few years, the USPS has been busily building AI-powered solutions to keep the consumer experience as smooth and efficient as possible. In 2021, ZDNet senior writer Stephanie Condon reported, “[w]ith a new, Nvidia-powered AI program, the USPS has built a way to dramatically reduce the time it takes to find lost packages, down from several days to just two hours.”

Additionally, the USPS has experimented with using AI to help consumers troubleshoot through their many issues with the agency. A website chatbot launched in 2017 gave consumers a status update on their packages along with a customized greeting.

There was plenty of trial and error, though, involved in this initial deployment. The Postal Regulatory Commission notes that, “the pilot unexpectedly impacted the Postal Service’s network traffic … as well as other mission-critical functionalities of the Postal Service’s website.” This hiccup forced the agency to press pause on this early AI application, but the USPS found greater success with other consumer chat features. For example, the USPS’ “Virtual Agent” has been successfully deflecting consumer calls from the agency helpline and managing passport requests/appointments. The agency is also “evaluating the ability to improve the customer experience through a natural language customer interaction,” and a breakthrough seems likely with the rise of bots such as ChatGPT.

(via Instapundit)

[Anyone else getting Skynet vibes? Especially after seeing all the ways in which DHS and FBI insinuated itself into social-media platforms to monitor and censor speech? — Ed]