I will note that AI customer service could be an improvement. Customer service helpline jobs are one of the worst jobs to get paid peanuts to do.
Of course, my preference is to upgrade the crap voice recognition system with an AI voice recognition system, which is way better at understanding words. The help desk jockeys can stay, as they do the real work.
Yeah, it could be, but these guys aren’t looking to replace human workers with a robust, well-trained, and properly-deployed AI, they’re looking to slash and burn their labor costs with whatever they think will squeak by.
I’ve used Amazon’s AI live chat bots a fair bit over the years and I have to say they’re actually pretty good. 90% of the time they can resolve the issue themselves (at least in my experience) and faster than it would take to connect to a person. But most people don’t have Amazon’s budget or customer service-oriented business model.
AGI will destroy us before replacing us
Goood thing there is no AGI
It’s looking like less than 2 yrs from some reputable accounts. May not need to worry about climate change and global autocracy 🤷
[Citation Needed]
Shrinking AGI timelines: a review of expert forecasts - 80,000 Hours https://share.google/ODVAbqrMWHA4l2jss
Here you go! Draw your own conclusions- curious what you think. I’m in sales. I don’t enjoy convincing people to change their minds in my personal life lol
We don’t have any way of knowing what makes human consciousness, the best we’ve got is to just call it an emergent phenomenon, which is as close to a Science version of “God of the Gaps” as you can get.
And you think we can make ChatGPT a real person with good intentions and duct tape?
Naw, sorry but I’ll believe AGI when I see it.
And if Roger Penrose is right, there never will be
You’ve heard of Early Adopters
Now get ready for Early Abandoners.
I spent 25 years on this planet without the need for an actual Ai, I’ve used Siri when she was dumb to make quick phone calls or to turn lights off but other than that I really don’t need to know the last digit to Pi.
It’s just a tool, like a search engine or a guillotine
That’s good because they can’t do math anyway
Well yeah, when ai started to give people info so wrong it cost the companies money this was going to happen.
They fought him over ~700CAD. Thats wild.
It wasn’t the $700 dude you have to know that.
I’m aware. The idea is it had to escalate for him to get to the point of suing them. If they’d just eaten the cost, it most likely wouldn’t have gone to court or come to light. Was my comment reductive? Sure… but that was the point.
Yes it’s very circular.
You know it had nothing to do with the $700, it had to do with not opening precedent to a flood of future lawsuits.
I probably would not have replied the way I initially did, but you framed it a $700, and it has nothing to do with it.
They did the same for me when my mother passed (no AI, just assholes though).
Very true. Air Canada doesn’t need AI to be terrible.
Fun fact: AI doesn’t know what is or isn’t true. They only know what is most likely to seem true. You can’t make it stop lying. You just can’t, because it fundamentally doesn’t understand the difference between a lie and truth.
Now picture the people saying “We can replace our trainable, knowledgeable people with this”. lol ok.
…and the other half insists on learning the hard way.
The other half is too deep in the shit and too proud to admit they are wrong
from what I’ve seen so far i think i can safely the only thing AI can truly replace is CEOs.
I was thinking about this the other day and don’t think it would happen any time soon. The people who put the CEO in charge (usually the board members) want someone who will make decisions (that the board has a say in) but also someone to hold accountable for when those decisions don’t realize profits.
AI is unaccountable in any real sense of the word.
AI is unaccountable in any real sense of the word.
Doesn’t stop companies from trying to deflect accountability onto AI. Citations Needed recently did an episode all about this: https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-217-a-i-mysticism-as-responsibility-evasion-pr-tactic-7bd7f56eeaaa
I suppose that makes perfect sense. A corporation is an accountability sink for owners, board members and executives, so why not also make AI accountable?
I was thinking more along the lines of the “human in the loop” model for AI where one human is responsible for all the stuff that AI gets wrong despite it physically not being possible to review every line of code an AI produces.
Surprised pikachu face
I hope they all go under. I’ve no sympathy for them and I wish nothing but the worst for them.
My company gets a lot of incoming chats from customers (and potential customers)
The challenge of this side of the business is 98% of the questions asked over chat are already answered on the very website that person started the chat from. Like it’s all written right there!
So real human chat agents are reduced to copy paste monkeys in most interactions.
But here’s the rub. The people asking the questions fit into one of two groups: not smart or patient enough to read (unfortunate waste of our resources) or they are checking whether our business has real humans and is responsive before they buy.
It’s that latter group for whom we must keep red blooded, educated and service minded humans on the job to respond, and this is where small companies can really kick ass next to behemoths like google who bring in over $1m per employee but still can’t seem to afford a phone line to support your account with them.
Replace all the customer facing employees with chimpanzees with webcams that say in sign language: read what’s on the website. Whenever someone calls in or opens a chat, they’re connected with a chimp. Be sure to also include a guide to ASL on the company website. I guarantee sales will go up
Yeah, I always found it weird how chatbots were basically a less efficient and less reliable way to access data that’s already on the website but all the companies were racing to get one. People kept telling me that I’m in the minority in being able to find information on a webpage, but I suspect the sort of people who are too dumb to do that aren’t going to have much better luck dealing with the quirks and eccentricies of a chatbot either.
Most of the time when I talk to a chat bot it’s because I need to contact support for an issue only support can help me with, but unfortunately the company in question is Id.me and they apparently don’t have support of any kind and all these tickets I’ve been writing have been going into a paper shredder
all these tickets I’ve been writing have been going into a paper shredder
Try submitting tickets online. Physical mail is slower and more expensive.
It was an expression, online is the only way you can submit tickets.
It’s always funny how companies who want to adopt some new flashy tech never listen to specialists who understand if something is even worth a single cent, and they always fell on their stupid face.
how many bags of popcorn can we eat before the other half panic, pivot hard or go out of business?
that is to say they did it and its not working.
Theyll use it as an excuse to say they cant find workers now because of ai and need to oursouce to a cheaper country
So providing NO assistance to customers turned out to be a bad idea?
THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE OUTCOME IN THE HISTORY OF CUSTOMER SERVICE!
