AI Is Taking Over The World’s Most Cursed Job

He explained himself like Eve, but Ben knew immediately that the voice on the other end of the line was a bot. Eve knew his name. They also know the money owed to the previous landlord ($266). He seemed unaware that he had settled with a collection agency five months ago. Eva said she was an AI agent from ProCollect and was calling to collect a loan. “Do you want to settle today by card or bank transfer?” he asked.

Ben had gone outside on a dark April afternoon in Portland, Oregon, to make a phone call. (He asked that WIRED use a pseudonym so he could talk freely about the financial issue.) As he stood in the sun, he wondered what he could say to get Eve to stop calling someone. He said: “I thought it would just push me to someone else when I asked about refunds or other technical things. But Eva stayed on the line, and so did Ben. He decided—why?—to screw up the bot a little bit.

Ben says he asked the bot to do a role play, where he was a “little boy” and his debt was like a giant stomping on him. He wanted to see how amazing Eve could be. The boat played for a few minutes, he says, but suddenly shot a call center worker. The publicist did not reveal whether he overheard Ben’s conversation with the AI. They did, however, quickly clear up the confusion: “They looked at me in the system,” he recalls. “He found that the money was zero.”

Ben’s experiences are increasing. As inflation and stagnant wages squeeze pocketbooks, mortgage fraud in the United States and swelling. “Right now, we have the most debt collection in the courts that I’ve ever seen,” says debt recovery expert Michael Bovee.

As more and more people struggle to pay off their debts, debt relief companies are turning to technology to augment their efforts. Many phone calls, emails, texts, and letters that people receive asking for money are now handled by AI agents. Their tone is confused, even sycophantic, but they never fly. He also doesn’t sleep. Their side comes from perseverance and growth. An analysis and investment firm Kaplan Group estimates that AI debt collectors will be an industry worth about $16 billion within the next decade.

AI advocates often emphasize that, as machines become more complex, humans will have less chance of eliminating the world’s worst gigs. Working in a call center is already difficult. Working at a call center especially harassing people for money adds to the problem. A similar service platform CareerExplorer groups debt collection under 1 percent of satisfactory service. Just as debt collectors hate their jobs, people hate debt collectors. When the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau began accepting complaints about debt collection, it said received 11,000 in six months, putting it behind the mortgage industry as the most vexed financial activity.

If there’s any part of the job that can be badass without a lot of stress over termination, it might be this one. For a bot like Eve, what does it take to beat the most unpopular people on Earth?

That a Taking good care of Eva, I decided to call her myself.

But when I tried the number Ben gave me, a ProCollect human operator answered. I identified myself as a journalist. He told me that no one could answer my questions and told me to come back the next day. When I did, someone told me that the company doesn’t use AI and that I should talk to people. HR told me to email my questions, which I did. One of my questions: Where did Eve come from?