July 6, 2022 New AI Patent Awarded to Roots Automation

Novel human-in-the-loop AI interacts with humans in real-time to manage exceptions and complete business processes.

NEW YORK – The U.S Patent Office has awarded Roots Automation a new patent based on their unique, novel human-in-the-loop artificial intelligence technology.

This novel human-in-the-loop technology enables Roots Automation’s AI-powered Digital Coworkers to interact with human employees in real-time to raise and manage exceptions such as missing data, poor quality documents or a myriad of other exceptions that commonly occur within automated processes.

The ‘bot-to-human’ hand-off is a critical weak-point for traditional automation technology – in which, as a path to completing a process becomes blocked (i.e. an exception occurs), the bot will simply back-log the item for a human to review and process manually. Depending on the complexity of the process and the volume of exceptions, this can range from a day’s work for a process owner to complete to many days, dramatically disrupting an employee’s productivity.

Leveraging the human-in-the-loop artificial intelligence, Roots Automation’s Digital Coworkers interact with people via a simple user unified interface that uses Natural Language to ask a series of questions to extract the missing data, then re-process the item automatically.

“The technology is designed with the human in mind,” said CTO and co-founder John Cottongim. “The AI will effectively articulate its question, either prompting the user to answer from a selection of choices or even asking an open-ended question. The style and types of questions vary depending on the process, the outcomes and even the industry the Digital Coworker is operating within,” he continued. “Finally, Customers can opt to extend the medium of communication beyond the unified platform out into tools such as web-based apps or business communication tools, like Slack and Teams. The end-result is a tailored solution for each individual customer and/or process.”

Critically, after each successful interaction with a human, Digital Coworkers will update their knowledge with the newly acquired data from the interaction to ensure the exception is handled appropriately next time around. Further, this knowledge is also shared across the entire Root’s customer base for all customers to benefit from this learning.

The new human-in-the-loop AI technology is already in use for many Roots Automation Customers. One specialty risk transfer and care coordination entity realized over $600,000 in cost-savings after deploying human-in-the-loop AI-powered Digital Coworkers to process health claim forms. Today, Digital Coworkers process up to 30,000 claims each month while learning continuously from every interaction.

If the Digital Coworkers are unable to read part of a document while processing these claims, they will take a screen-grab of the document, send the image to a human coworker and ask for guidance on specific areas in question. Then, once the human employee provides guidance, the Digital Coworkers will re-read the entire document, apply the new knowledge and finish the task.

“The AI isn’t just sending you a link to a document – it’s extracting relevant information and leveraging that context to improve its ability to read and understand,” said Chaz Perera, CEO and co-founder. “The AI is able to utilize knowledge and context in other situations, and with other documents. Ultimately, our Digital Coworkers are replicating what humans are doing when they are unsure about something – they are raising their hand, asking a colleague, applying the new learning and retaining this knowledge for next time,” Perera finished.

“The ability to have a single, consistent human-in-the-loop experience that cuts across all of your processes is what really sets this technology apart. And that’s actually why we were able to get the patent on this,” said Cottongim. “By focusing on advancements that deliver more natural, more human-like experiences is key to delivering on our mission: to make work more human,” Cottongim concluded.

For comments or quotes, please contact Chris Gayner, VP Marketing at chris@rootsautomation.com.

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