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by ghostwreck 1613 days ago
After having spent a few years working on a chatbot, the allure is this: talking to a real human is better than filling out a form. If we can build a Q&A system as good as talking to a human, people would also prefer it to filling out forms. So that's the pursuit.

I understand the hate, because we haven't landed very close that goal yet, and the intermediate product is much worse than a form. But I am surprised that a technical community is not more supportive of the ambition.
4 comments
hooande 1613 days ago
It's so much easier to fill out a form than it is to talk to a human. I read faster than most people speak, and I can scan and review much faster via sight rather than voice. Talking to someone is valuable if I have questions or there is some uncertainty. Assuming that I know what I want and have no questions, it's much easier for me to order food online than to call a restaurant.

Chat bots can only really search a database of documentation and frequently asked questions. Making one that has the benefits of talking to a human might be tantamount to AGI

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bentcorner 1613 days ago
> it's much easier for me to order food online than to call a restaurant.

I feel like this is where bots would do well - you can say "order me a burger with extra mayo and fries for pickup at 5pm" and it should negotiate all the minutiae for you. Doing this all manually requires a bunch of menu navigation. Maybe a phone bot is still a bad fit but doing something like this using your on-phone voice assistant or typing it into a text window feels reasonable.

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nitwit005 1613 days ago
You can go to fast food places and see there are people who will use the touch screens even when there is no line, and similar for self checkout at grocery stores. There is an assumption people enjoy chatting to a friendly customer service person, but that's at least not universally true.
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ed25519FUUU 1613 days ago
Is talking to a human better than filling out a form? I can usually fill out 90-100% of a form with just my browser’s autocomplete feature. There’s also MUCH less chance for errors if I fill things in myself.
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ShamelessC 1613 days ago
Human customer support is a regularly annoying experience, even (particularly?) when done online.

There's probably always going to be some level of animosity towards it.

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