ERIN, an artificial intelligence system that can think, reason and problem solve with humans, is poised to revolutionize the business world. The brainchild of Tampa’s Nitro Solutions, ERIN brings to business what Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa assistants have brought to consumers.
“Unlike Siri, you can see her and she can see you,” says Nitro’s CEO Pete Slade.
ERIN, short for Enterprise Ready Intelligent NitroAI, looks like a human and can act as receptionist, greeting customers to your waiting area from a computer screen. “She can read emotion on your face,” Slade explains. “Her responses are based on what she’s observed you doing.”
Available by subscription, ERIN is designed for both small and large businesses. She can announce a client’s arrival, even offer a bottle of water to be delivered by an employee. She’s also a watchdog that keeps track of who is in the waiting area and whether they are employees, ex-employees, repeat visitors or strangers. You can ask her what she saw at 3 p.m., for example.
“You can work with it and train it. You can chat with her,” Slade says. “She can respond to you as you have that information. You can also text her and instant message her.”
Smaller business can be part of beta testing, provide feedback and receive preferred pricing. Fees have not yet been set.
Out of the box, ERIN can be male or female. Larger businesses can have ERIN customized to take on the appearance of a particular ethnicity, and even wear a polo with the company logo.
“She is incredibly smart for where technology stands today. She is not as smart as you and I,” Slade says. “What she has is the ability to listen and understand intent.”
ERIN can connect businesses to databases, facilitating research jobs that are cumbersome for employees because of the sheer volume of information. She can free employees to do other tasks, perhaps more complex, higher-paying tasks. Essentially, she can fill in labor gaps, thinking and talking with people. In some cases, as other technologies do, she may replace human labor.
“It’s not like you install her and everybody’s gone. You install her and she augments your business,” Slade says.
Because of ERIN’s versatility, she can be used in a variety of industries. She can be used to handle simple triage for patients, manage security initiatives, and help businesses make better decisions by mining historical data and forecasted outcomes.
Her core platform has been in development for a number of years.
Visitors to
Nitro’s downtown Tampa office respond favorably when ERIN greets them in the reception area. Relating to her as a person stimulates ideas about how to utilize her in the business world. “The visual layer that is ERIN has been a really great success. People are asking for her,” Slade says.
“We’re very excited to get her out, and to get the beta started, and to get her onboard,” adds COO Molly Slade.
ERIN is unique, beyond Siri, Alexa or even AlphaGo, Google DeepMind’s champion board game player. She's is a potential game
changer. “Their (Google’s) focus was to learn and understand [the game] Go and become the best at it,” he says. “We’ve got our engine and our focus is on business.”
So what’s next for ERIN? “We’re constantly innovating. We’re already working on the next piece of her,” he says. “We’ve got great ideas, things we want to teach her to do.”
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