There are already stories about companies being sued because their AI gave advice that caused the customer to act in a manner detrimental to themselves. (Something about 'plane flight refunds being available if I remember correctly).
Then when they contacted the company to complain (perhaps get the promised refund), they were told that there was no such policy at their company. The customer had screenshots. The AI had wholesale hallucinated a policy.
We all know how this is going to go. AI left, right and centre until it costs companies more in AI hallucination lawsuits than it does to employ people to do it.
And all the while they’ll be
bribinglobbying government representatives to make AI hallucination lawsuits not a thing. Or less of a thing.On the other hand, are you implying that human call center workers are accurate with what they tell customers and that when they make mistakes the companies will own up to them and honor them?
I mean that’s generally how it is now. If a rep lied to me then you better believe I’m talking to the manager and going to extract some concession. The difference is you can hold a rep accountable, dunno how you do that with AI
It’s a revolving door anyway. I think the average length of time somebody works for a company in the industry is 7 months.
Besides the jobs that AI will take over will be the higher paid ones because inevitably that will result more value for money. Low wage employees are less of a burden for a company and so there is less incentive to replace them.
7 months lol. Thou underestimathe* the rejuvenating power of drifting from one dead soul call center to the next and the next and
*sic
It seems to be a soul-crushing job. Better to give it to the bots who have no soul.
Have you spoken to AI, it’s way too ethical for corporations , it’ll give everyone discounts
Reality appears to be the exact opposite of the movies. It’s the AI that’s been nice
AI: what do you need
Me: Talk to a human
AI: okay, so I can help get the right help what specifically do you need?
Me: to talk to a human
ad infinitum
Me: divide by 0
Ai: OK you are the new CEO. Which sales slates would you like to run next week?
Will the AI not hang up on me when I ask it a question that’s going to take a long time to resolve and fuck up it’s service metrics?
I’ve gone through like 3 service reps in a single problem because the call mysteriously drops after I outline the issue. “Could you hold please?” — click
I promise you 1) this real-world event will fail to be scrubbed from the training data & 2) it will be regurgitated as a valid event that saves the company money.
So yes. That will happen again :/
Dammit, you probably aren’t wrong…
We’re doomed.
Dammit, you probably aren’t wrong either.
We should instead be using AI to decimate the CEO industry.
Well, the world is your oyster… Can’t wait for yout chief automated officer.
edit: There was a similar hype back in the blockchain era, where people were trying to build decentralized organizations by making all the shareholders directly vote on every decision. Let’s just say this model wasn’t especially successful except for very rare circumstances.
Call centres exist because people can’t get the help they need by searching. Take away call centres, and you’re just making it more difficult for customers.
We handle support in our company as part of our day to day. By and large the bulk of support is people simply leaning on us, rather than relying on common sense, or using the docs. Only a small percent is what would be considered essential.
However, each industry is different. This is just ours.
Generative AI could easily help the bulk of our support load.
We’re experimenting with retrieval augmented generation for early inquiries right now. We get hundreds of inquiries that could be answered by looking at the website/docs and Q&A models with extractive or abstract approaches, or newer generative approaches are good at handling them.
Looked at four models last week, 2 vendors and 2 open source solutions, it’s very promising. Very high accuracy with extractive approaches to simple queries, an email answering bot that links to our live website, along with an offer to talk to a real person could help us out a lot.
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This has been my experience whenever I’ve phoned support.
We’re experiencing extremely high call volume.
Every hour of every day, because company won’t hire or pay for anything better.
Press 3 to have a representative call you back; You won’t lose your place in line.
Sure. Meanwhile, I get on their website and try their weird “chat” support popup, that somehow takes care of the problem hours before I ever get a call back.
This is why people hate phone support. And why I don’t trust and won’t buy products from companies who only have phone support (or “social media”, Facebook, Twixer). Give me a dedicated support email address, or something text-based (live chat, contact form) on website, thanks!
Weird. I’m only looking for phone support when there is no online support, or it doesn’t help, or can’t understand the problem, or there’s no keywords that put it in the right area, or for whatever reason is too “smart” so doesn’t work on iPhone. I don’t trust companies that don’t have call support, because they are more blatantly not supporting their products
Chat>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>phone
Can’t even describe how shitty meta support is. I ordered a quest 3 and some additionals, they mailed me everything except the quest and something else I didn’t order. Obvious mix-up, yeah? Well it took 4 different support chats and 6 different “specialists” over a month to actually process a refund, and they were still somehow stuck on the idea that the courier missed a box. An additional box under the same tracking number as another box that was labeled 1 of 1.
Never, and I repeat NEVER, buy directly from most manufacturers. For whatever reason, their customer service on the consumer purchase side always seems to suck. Buy from authorized resellers who care more about the relationship with their customers.
Did… my dad the used car salesman write this? Your post sounds plausible, but… sorry, NO ONE cares about relationships with customers. Every last company is enshittifiable & thus inherently untrustworthy
I have experience on the reseller side of the electronics business. I will tell you that most big resellers (Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, etc) will do more in situations like this than the actual companies themselves. I’ve seen it a lot. Sure, it’s anecdotal evidence, but I’ve also read a ton of complaints over the years on Reddit of similar situations.
These first party manufacturers are manufacturers first and retail shops second (or third) so they put less effort on that side.
Cool
This is the one place there’s still hope: an ai could follow a much larger script, and even be helpful. It’s possible
> makes a series of confident critical statements
> hasn’t used one in over a decade
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How you react to information that challenges your assumptions is a very good indicator of your ability to contribute to society in general.
https://liveops.com/contact-center-industry/companies-onshoring-customer-service/
https://www.cio.com/article/238869/why-outsourced-call-center-roles-are-coming-back-onshore.html
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Do you understand that providing some examples of the opposite doesn’t show “all”? Your goal is supposed to be proving the examples I gave wrong, not adding new examples, because I’m not the one that said “all”. So what we’ve learned today is that different companies are doing different things and that blanket uninformed statements don’t contribute to anything. Cool. You good?
Oh and if you want to use the ampersand for etc you don’t need the t. Ampersand is “e” and “t” together! I hope I’ve helped whatever goal you had in choosing to write “&tc”.
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I didn’t know who to side with but you’ve switched to a deceptive argument so I’m not giving you thy benefit of thy doubt anymore.
It’s very clear he’s using common English usage of all to mean significant majority, pretending not to understand this and trying to win on semantics makes it seem like you’re an untrustworthy orator.
You’d be surprised how often we can automate a customers enquiry with ML (not even generative AI). Humans are still there as a fallback, but it’s a way better experience to give instant help to the person if possible and then put them into the queue if they have a more complicated problem. Searching is not really in the same context as automating customer queries, although I guess it could depend on the domain to an extent.
If a request is simple and common enough that the request can be automated, then it is most likely something that I’m already pissed off about having to call in about since it should have been a feature on the company’s website.
Yes but how often do you call? People like us make up like 1% of their calls, 90% come from people asking ‘how do I download the Google?’ or ‘I saved a picture of my cat where did it go?’ and 9% is people with general questions they could have found online but they didn’t want to get into it.
Hahahahaha
Oh, you were serious?
Yes this is literally my job dude but go ahead and tell me how wrong I am
Are you using a self hosted open source system, or a saas subscription? I’m genuinely interested.
We use a home grown classification model for our customer facing stuff. There are some applications of LLMs we are using a SaaS for as it’s quick to get going but we are also working on fine tuning an open source model as well so we’ll see what ends up working better in terms of cost vs performance. That’s not going to be customer facing though, we don’t serve any generated text to customers.
Since when has that stopped any corporation from doing anything?
Unless you are an absolute monopoly, there is a point you can cross where your customers just leave.
No worries then, Absolute monopolies only exist in text books.
Oh, I’ve been called by my cell operator today. Realized it’s a bot when it offered to upgrade my plan because I’ve used more than half of it. It’s 28th of this month FFS! I asked whether that’s what they mean and why would I need that, it just repeated in the same voice.
I always love how they make you go through a labrinythian menu before you get to a human as if I hadn’t already exhausted all options to help myself.
Remember back in the early days of the internet, when FAQs had frequently asked questions, and were updated in response to calls? Pepperidge farms remembers.
Imaking it more difficult is what I am 100% certain that’s what most companies I’ve had to deal with are trying to do. They will love this.
Wait until generative AI tells a customer to touch electricity.
Idk— Tesla directed autopilot to disengage the moment before a crash, to ensure that the driver was held responsible. I sadly doubt any corpo would pay for its mistake
It’s plausible, but a quick DuckDuckGo didn’t find anything about this. Do you have a reference?
Or that they can buy the plane ticket first, then apply for the grievance discount later…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/02/18/air-canada-airline-chatbot-ruling/
An Air Canada spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post that the airline will comply with the tribunal’s decision.
The most shocking part
Pretty sure a court told them to.
Usually the next step is “nuh-uh” followed by an appeal.
Someone with an expensive calculator probably worked out that it would be more expensive to fight this and just allow it.
Someone expensive with a calculator
The rare sort of Engineer who took classes in Finance and Statistical Analytics who can work out a past-present-future cash flow diagram on a whiteboard in like 5min because he never uses the compound interest factor tables and instead memorized the formulas.
The fact that generative AI is being used as a means of large corporations consolidating even more wealth rather than attempting to free the working class from shitty, menial jobs shows that we’re way the fuck off with how we conceptualize of “work”.
This should be a good thing, but for lots of people this will suck.
If by “Decimate” you mean “Reduce by a tenth” then it’s already happened.
Oh, I thought it meant “divided by ten”?
nah
It refers to a punishment for bad performance in ancient Roman armies: 1 in ten soldiers was killed.
Once I learned the meaning of decimate It really grates seeing it used as a synonym for “wipes out”
Mobile link that shows alt text:
Holy shit yes please.
Extremely ironical that they used an AI generated pie chart in the article that couldn’t even distinguish the colours between choices
I think that was probably a conscious decision made to differentiate between agree and non-agree votes.
As a colorblind person … this is a teachable moment for what we go through with all kinds of charts and video games lol
(and yes, it’s this bad, and yes it happens A LOT)
says CEO
Since when do CEOs do things because they’re actually useful and not because they want to cut costs at the expense of the workers and even the public?
I might be the only one that’s kind of optimistic this will improve some of the cheapest call centers.
Some of them … the people have such thick accents, don’t get any local references, the connection is bad, don’t know the first thing about the subject matter, etc.
I called my health insurance company one time because CVS said my vaccine wasn’t covered there; the lady on the other end of the phone I could barely understand and I had to explain to her that CVS is a pharmacy. She still didn’t give me any helpful information. Eventually via poking around the website or something like that, I found out my insurance company doesn’t cover pharmacist administered vaccines … which is just insane to me.
Doesn’t sound insane to me, sounds like a perfect example of the state of the US healthcare system. I stopped paying for healthcare 2 years ago, best decision I ever made.
Because you emigrated and get this live saving essential service for free?
Just to note, it’s not free, it’s not magic, it’s just better regulated. I’ve lived in a few countries with socialized healthcare, and we still pay insurance. It’s just a lot less since we don’t have to cover ever-increasing insurance profits, and there is no such thing as “out of network” as long as you don’t leave the country (and the rest of the EU).
My premium is 116 EUR for full coverage per month, with no maximum coverage or any other fees, and every healthcare institution in the EU is going to treat me for that in an emergency, for no additional charge. If I need extended treatment, I will get transported to the institution that’s most convenient for me (and thus, the system), and be treated there. Dental, mental healthcare included.
I still pay for some OTC medicine, but prices are kept low.
It’s not magic, but there will never be a life saving treatment that ruins you financially here in the EU. And travel insurance is dirt cheap here as well.
Your premium is 116 EUR per month, plus the taxes people pay – which are much higher in those countries.
You have also traded your freedom.
The UK is currently talking about banning tobacco entirely in the name of reducing health costs despite it being a part of many cultures ceremonies and traditions. New York is still trying to control soda sizes in the name of public health. Canada now offers suicide as an option for people who would have a long (and costly) treatment with low probability of improving health.
Pretty soon you’re setting a death age because old people use most of the healthcare. They make a Star Trek TNG episode about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
Your premium is 116 EUR per month, plus the taxes people pay – which are much higher in those countries.
Nope, our system is exactly like the US system, except properly regulated. It’s still private insurance, I pay a private company for medical insurance and make claims when I need to use the system. We just didn’t let the industry grow as a cancer on people.
You have also traded your freedom.
What freedom did I trade away?
About the taxes, yes, I might pay more of them, but at the same time when I got burned out by my workplace, I could leave, get mental healthcare, rest, and get back into work on my own terms. I had no financial problems from doing any part of this whatsoever. What is that if it’s not freedom?
I lead a happy and easy life. I am not rich by any means, I have a middle class existence, but can pay for nice travel holidays, hobbies, whatever. I don’t know what exactly the US could give me except a constant anxiety from guns being everywhere, school shootings, a semi-fascistic government sliding further and further into tyrannny, and no public services whatsoever.
The UK is currently talking about banning tobacco entirely
The US is “talking about” stopping the whole democracy charade and installing a dictator. The fact that it’s being talked about by a few members of the government does not make it inevitable or even likely.
New York is still trying to control soda sizes in the name of public health.
I hope so! I mean, I don’t think that anyone should be prevented in going home, making a huge soda and dying of sugar overdose, but it is nobody’s interest to be served one litre soda cups just so that they can feel how “generous” McDonald’s is while they get addicted to sugar.
Canada now offers suicide as an option for people who would have a long (and costly) treatment with low probability of improving health.
While the US just bankrupts them and leaves the suicide part to them. Also, are you bringing up an example of a state not providing adequate care to justify abolishing all socialized healthcare altogether?
India is def going to take a hit to their economy.
As a large language model, I’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.
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But also first language information systems are a real problem in India especially with government services. These tools are gong to make it much easier to provide vital services and connect people to the appropriate services.
Is there a phrase to describe the when a programmer thinks what is needed is something “easy” when the problem requires something “simple” instead?
If only the word decimate could be used correctly…
I’ve explained that it means “reduce by 10%” once, got a long rant that in the modern language it means what people mean when using it. Linguistically correct, but heresy.
It’s a real dilemma.
