this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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[–] Kazumara@feddit.de 118 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For really useless call centers this makes sense.

I have no doubt that a ML chatbot is perfectly capable of being as useless as an untrained human first level supporter with a language barrier.

And the dude in the article basically admits that's what his call center was like:

Suumit Shah never liked his company’s customer service team. His agents gave generic responses to clients’ issues. Faced with difficult problems, they often sounded stumped, he said.

So evidently good support outcomes were never the goal.

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[–] realitista@lemm.ee 47 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've worked in this field for 25 years and don't think that ChatGPT by itself can handle most workloads, even if it's trained on them.

There are usually transactions which must be done and often ad hoc tasks which end up being the most important things because when things break, you aren't trained for them.

If you don't have a feedback loop to solve those issues, your whole business may just break without you knowing.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

I think you're talking about actual support, that knows their tools and can do things.

This article sound more about the generic outsourced call center that will never, ever get something useful done in any case.

[–] RalphFurley@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I ordered Chipotle for delivery and I got the wrong order. I don't eat meat so it's not like I could just say whelp, I'm eating this chicken today I guess.

The only way to report an issue is to chat with their bot. And it is hell. I finally got a voucher for a free entree but what about the delivery fee and the tip back? Impossible.

I felt like Sisyphus.

I waited for the transaction to post and disputed the charge on my card and it credited me back.

There's so many if-and-or-else scenarios that no amount of scraping the world's libraries is AI today able to sort out these scenarios.

[–] realitista@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Yes these kind of transactions really need to be hand coded to be handled well. LLM's are very poorly suited to this kind of thing (though I doubt you were dealing with an LLM at Chipotle just yet).

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[–] just_change_it@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cheaper than outsourcing to poor countries with middling English speaking capability.

Coming to call center lines near you: voiced chatbots to replace the ineffective, useless customer support lines that exist today with the same useless outcomes for consumers but endless juggling back and forth without any real resolutions. Let's make customer service even shittier, again!

[–] Gyrolemmy@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

If you bought the product we don't need to worry about losing money anymore bro

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

On one hand, they're crap jobs. On the other hand, in most economies we have crap jobs not because they're necessary for productivity, but to give us an excuse to pay people to live.

Maybe if enough jobs are lost to automation, we'll start to rethink the structure of a society that only allows people to live if they're useful to a rich person.

Essentially, we're just still doing feudalism with extra steps, and it's high time we cut that nonsense out.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think once workers can be replaced, there will be some virus that wipes out most of humanity. No point keeping billions of people around if they aren't needed.

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[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What if we get it to agree to give us stuff for free? Is it a representative of the company or not?

[–] darthskull@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You also have to have a reasonable belief the company representative is authorized to do whatever they're doing to be entitled to it.

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[–] BobTheBoozer@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I see two inevitable problems;

  1. we outsourced this to you because it was cheaper, if you're using ChatGPT what do we need you for?

  2. companies want people to buy stuff, but if you significantly reduce the workforce you also reduce the availability of funds to buy stuff

[–] HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

1, I assume you mean the business does outsourced customer service, not as an internal department.

2, universal basic income time, or let's put people to work on creative, innovative applications not mind numbing shit

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[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Remember when AI was going to make life better for everyone?

Yeah. That shit’ll be the end of us.

[–] Surreal@programming.dev 20 points 1 year ago

AI will make the life better for the shareholders

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hopefully it'll be the end of capitalism. How is the economical model supposed to function when nobody is working? Where are people supposed to get money from? How is anything going to be taxed?

Realistically though it'll somehow push capitalism into hyperdrive and enslave the global population under the control of the AI owners.

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[–] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like a good way to get the "agent" to agree it's in the wrong, and get 100% refund

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm interested in if the AI agent has the power to disseminate refunds or at least return authorizations.

One of the things fascinating to me is that some of the problems humans are bad at handling (such as social engineering) AI tends to be even worse at.

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[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of jobs are just busy work that does nothing and makes nothing. Talking about automating them misses the point of why the jobs exists in the first place.

"I see that you are throwing a ball at a target that is connected to a platform with a human sitting above a tank of water. Here is a AI generated picture of a random human underwater to sate your needs. Ya! I have made this process 200% more efficient!"

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's crazy how people seem fundamentally incapable of looking at the big picture and ask themselves things like, "what even is the purpose of society? Is this the best society humanity is able to come up with? What if I am not ready to accept society as it is presented to me, what are my alternatives, do I even have any? What are my obligations towards a society that marginalizes me and treats me like a second or third tier human, without any hope of ever improving my lot?"

Ask people if they would rather be free and get everything they want without having to work for it. The answers you'll get will boggle your mind.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

We've been permeated by the idea that "you have to be financially productive to be a decent human" for so long, even people against excessive/useless work still sometimes miss the point of this crazy race toward making more benefit regardless of anything else.

Sometimes, reaching the "it works" point is enough, but higher ups never stops there. It always have to be "better/more".

[–] SnipingNinja 4 points 1 year ago

I'm surprised by the number of workaholics that exist, like why do you want to work so much? Go explore the world, learn things, make things, but people want to work instead?

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You still need to employ some humans as a backup when the AI catastrophically fucks up, but for the most part it makes sense. Not all jobs need to continue to exist.

[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 year ago

Exactly. As the article ends:

Not every customer service employee should worry about being replaced, but those who simply copy and paste responses are no longer safe, according to Shah.

“That job is gone,” he said. “100 per cent.”

[–] xenomor@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Working conditions in this industry are not great. The turnover rate can reach 80% sometimes. It can be a difficult, stressful and low paid job that few people enjoy. At the same time, the demand for this work keeps increasing as more and more of consumer activity shifts online and remote. It seems to me that the technology may be a net benefit in this case. The public and its regulatory authority should, however, keep a close eye on developments to make sure humans are not left behind.

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