Are there really companies losing right now for using less AI?
Think - would you rather your telecom company’s customer support be AI-forward? Would you pay an extra $5 per month to ensure that you get humans solving your problems immediately when you call with an issue?
What about your backup software? Would you rather choose the company that comes out with new innovations in backing up your data and tons of features, but occasionally breaks everything? Or would you want to choose a company for backup software that is slow at adding anything new and reliable? Isn’t it good if this is deterministic?
What about even a fitness tracking watch. Are there really that many missing features that need to be released way faster? Or is it better if it just tracks your heart rate and workouts well and then gets out of your way? Same here, don’t you want the features to be reliable and deterministic?
I'd be fine with an LLM for customer support, as long as it's empowered to solve my problem. There's nothing a low-level CS representative does that couldn't be handled by an LLM. In both cases, the limiting factor is the authority granted to them by their employer.
Nobody uses an LLM for watches or data backup AFAIK so those seem like moot points.
>There's nothing a low-level CS representative does that couldn't be handled by an LLM.
This kind of reductionist take is an immediate tell that one has no experience in that kind of role. More worryingly, it hints of something antisocial and misanthropic. Do you not enjoy talking with other people during your day? Have you never experienced the resolution of complexity or ambiguity from a person that is intimately familiar with a product, its documentation, or internal processes?
Do you not enjoy talking with other people during your day?
CS reps? No. You must be very lonely, yourself, if your mind went there in the context of this conversation.
Have you never experienced the resolution of complexity or ambiguity from a person that is intimately familiar with a product, its documentation, or internal processes?
Yes, and it's universally something that should have been possible online without talking to anyone, AI or human. That's my real hope.
Stage 1: Corporations replace impotent CS reps with AI.
Stage 2: Corporations gradually empower the AI to interface with their existing internal systems in order to get the customer off the phone faster and avoid social-media brouhahas. Yes, they could have empowered the people in stage 1 to do that, but they didn't.
Stage 3: Corporations realize the AI is just another unnecessary middleman on their payroll, and empower customers to check status, report and escalate issues, handle SLA and billing problems, and obtain RMAs directly via their websites. Which should have been how it worked all along.
No, not lonely, I simply choose to not dehumanize those who work in that role.
> it's universally something that should have been possible online without talking to anyone
why do you think it is the case that quite literally zero medium+ sized companies have no customer support? do you think it’s possible that not every single iota of knowledge or edge case is immediately digitized and ready for consumption by an LLM?
is it also possible that customers that pay serious money for a service don’t want to click about on a website to solve a problem they didn’t cause? wasting someone’s time like that when you already fucked up is a very quick way to lose a customer; one throat to choke, as they say.
but since you’ve drawn the rest of the owl with those stages, I can only assume you’re raking in mad consultant fees for companies like Meta - they certainly haven’t had any issues replacing their humans with AI recently!
Are you shocked that techbros (and especially their CEO leaders) are misanthropists? We have probably empowered the most society adverse group of people in human history. Ones that didn't even need to speak to other humans to become rich.
no, not shocked; just willing to check that perspective more publicly than most.
the vonnegut quote is hitting hard today -
“why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”
Think - would you rather your telecom company’s customer support be AI-forward? Would you pay an extra $5 per month to ensure that you get humans solving your problems immediately when you call with an issue?
What about your backup software? Would you rather choose the company that comes out with new innovations in backing up your data and tons of features, but occasionally breaks everything? Or would you want to choose a company for backup software that is slow at adding anything new and reliable? Isn’t it good if this is deterministic?
What about even a fitness tracking watch. Are there really that many missing features that need to be released way faster? Or is it better if it just tracks your heart rate and workouts well and then gets out of your way? Same here, don’t you want the features to be reliable and deterministic?