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Grim? There's a company out there using AI voice modification to make south Asian call center workers sound American on the phone. It's just depressing any way

Grim? There's a company out there using AI voice modification to make south Asian call center workers sound American on the phone. It's just depressing any way you look at it.

rpastuszak 4y ago
think of the brain power, and the human potential we’re wasting on solving such shitty problems.
- beaker52 4y ago
  Instead of just providing good services, we create new services to enable the original services to exist with the deficiencies they have, now you’ve got n services that enable 0.5 of the services you originally wanted. Sounds like a familiar problem to me. shudders
- samdcbu 4y ago
  If this is depressing let me tell you about quants and consultants, the true black holes of human capital.
- m00dy 4y ago
  Current capitalistic system defines what is valuable or what is not. As long as your solution to a problem generates a profit, the thing you are doing is valuable....
  - throwanem 4y ago
    Sounds like an alignment problem.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    You're conflating two very different meanings for the word "valuable" - one that means "to have monetary value", and another that means "has use for society", and so your comment doesn't make sense.
    - drewcoo 4y ago
      > You're conflating two very different meanings for the word The term you want is "equivocation." I don't think the gp is equivocating. Also, "has use for society" is not a meaning of "value." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/value https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/value
- Larrikin 4y ago
  I'd rather the brain power be used on creating art/empowering artists and intelligently answering prompts as opposed to creating a surveillance state to show ads, thinking of ways to lock down computers so they are no longer general computing devices and just corporate app delivery devices, refactoring a website again to use a different JavaScript framework, figuring out how to insert middleman payments at scale into food delivery, etc.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    That's what most people would rather have, too. The issue is that the financial capital required to action these things rests in the hands of people who would much rather have this technology used for more profitable ad delivery services.
dylan604 4y ago
If they were really good at their job, they wouldn't need Asian employees. They'd just use the AI chat to handle everything. Why does an AI need a human to feed it what to say? That's not a very good AI. That's just voice modification, and that's been done for so long it's not even close to impressive. Have the AI hear the human voice, decide what to say that is relevant and useful, then generate a voice to deliver that information, then I'd almost be impressed. What you described is pretty much how I feel all AI/ML is at this point. A decent website with a large humans operating in the background. Not impressed. At. All.
- jkestner 4y ago
  > If they were really good at their job, they wouldn't need Asian employees. They'd just use the AI chat to handle everything. Well, sure, the software is training on the human conversations it mediates to do that next. Now I’ll just need my own chatbot representative optimized for solving my problems instead of the company I’m calling.
  - have_faith 4y ago
    > Now I’ll just need my own chatbot representative optimized for solving my problems instead of the company I’m calling More likely, you instruct your chat bot to call their chat bot to figure out the problem. Because they're bots, they can communicate at a much higher speed, thus bringing in a new era of High Frequency Support Calls. Companies will build data centers close to the call centers, connected to them by line of sight satellite dishes, such that you can host your bot close to the support bot and shave off some ms connecting to them. This gets you closer to the front of the queue. This will be sold as a Good Thing, because it increases call frequency and allows calls to be priced by the market instead of the pesky phone companies.
    - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      This is hilarious and the future I imagined when Google announced Duplex: AI assistant to AI voice chat bot over POTS. Clearly the most efficient and robust API interface ever conceived.
bradleykingz 4y ago
Imagine using the same tech to make deaf speech properly intelligible.
nilespotter 4y ago
Why is that bad? I can't understand a thing they say. I would rather the call centers were in America, but I welcome this development.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  Most people are able to adjust their ears to an unfamiliar accent if they exert a bit of effort. It might be a little clumsy, and you might have to ask them to repeat themselves a few times, but that's just life for the millions of Americans who live in diverse cities, and those work for companies that employ non-native English speakers. MegaCorp isn't buying this tech to reduce this friction, though - they're buying it to appease the outright racist callers who verbally attack the employees and outright refuse to even try talking to them. That said, I don't think forcing older rural folks to wrangle with a southeast Asian accent is going to solve any societal problems, and I imagine the call center workers in Asia would be big fans this tech if it reduces irate interactions and actually works well.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    It's not really about the accent. It's just that companies that outsource to Asia do so because they value the cost over quality. Because obviously in-house and in-region support is much better because the agents are more up to speed on the company and to the user's environment. This expresses itself in other aspects than just location, and often the people working there have no product knowledge and just follow scripts. Because knowledgeable workers cost more. Works ok for 80% of the interactions but it really sucks if you're the 20% not covered by a script. This gives Asian callcenters and the associated accent a bad name and leads to a kneejerk reaction from customers as the accent brings up memories of previous frustrating experiences. Of course companies try to avoid this already with the mentioned software and also by moving to regions with more American-sounding people like the Philippines. I worked in contact center management before and I've seen this effect a lot. I'm sure there's excellent contact centers in the region too, but they have an uphill battle to prove themselves as most simply aren't.
- aiisjustanif 4y ago

Grim? There's a company out there using AI voice modification to make south Asian call center workers sound American on the phone. It's just depressing any way you look at it.

rpastuszak 4y ago

think of the brain power, and the human potential we’re wasting on solving such shitty problems.

beaker52 4y ago
Instead of just providing good services, we create new services to enable the original services to exist with the deficiencies they have, now you’ve got n services that enable 0.5 of the services you originally wanted. Sounds like a familiar problem to me. shudders
samdcbu 4y ago
If this is depressing let me tell you about quants and consultants, the true black holes of human capital.
m00dy 4y ago
Current capitalistic system defines what is valuable or what is not. As long as your solution to a problem generates a profit, the thing you are doing is valuable....
- throwanem 4y ago
  Sounds like an alignment problem.
- throw10920 4y ago
  You're conflating two very different meanings for the word "valuable" - one that means "to have monetary value", and another that means "has use for society", and so your comment doesn't make sense.
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    > You're conflating two very different meanings for the word The term you want is "equivocation." I don't think the gp is equivocating. Also, "has use for society" is not a meaning of "value." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/value https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/value
Larrikin 4y ago
I'd rather the brain power be used on creating art/empowering artists and intelligently answering prompts as opposed to creating a surveillance state to show ads, thinking of ways to lock down computers so they are no longer general computing devices and just corporate app delivery devices, refactoring a website again to use a different JavaScript framework, figuring out how to insert middleman payments at scale into food delivery, etc.
- rchaud 4y ago
  That's what most people would rather have, too. The issue is that the financial capital required to action these things rests in the hands of people who would much rather have this technology used for more profitable ad delivery services.

dylan604 4y ago

If they were really good at their job, they wouldn't need Asian employees. They'd just use the AI chat to handle everything. Why does an AI need a human to feed it what to say? That's not a very good AI. That's just voice modification, and that's been done for so long it's not even close to impressive. Have the AI hear the human voice, decide what to say that is relevant and useful, then generate a voice to deliver that information, then I'd almost be impressed. What you described is pretty much how I feel all AI/ML is at this point. A decent website with a large humans operating in the background. Not impressed. At. All.

jkestner 4y ago
> If they were really good at their job, they wouldn't need Asian employees. They'd just use the AI chat to handle everything. Well, sure, the software is training on the human conversations it mediates to do that next. Now I’ll just need my own chatbot representative optimized for solving my problems instead of the company I’m calling.
- have_faith 4y ago
  > Now I’ll just need my own chatbot representative optimized for solving my problems instead of the company I’m calling More likely, you instruct your chat bot to call their chat bot to figure out the problem. Because they're bots, they can communicate at a much higher speed, thus bringing in a new era of High Frequency Support Calls. Companies will build data centers close to the call centers, connected to them by line of sight satellite dishes, such that you can host your bot close to the support bot and shave off some ms connecting to them. This gets you closer to the front of the queue. This will be sold as a Good Thing, because it increases call frequency and allows calls to be priced by the market instead of the pesky phone companies.
  - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
    This is hilarious and the future I imagined when Google announced Duplex: AI assistant to AI voice chat bot over POTS. Clearly the most efficient and robust API interface ever conceived.

bradleykingz 4y ago

Imagine using the same tech to make deaf speech properly intelligible.

nilespotter 4y ago

Why is that bad? I can't understand a thing they say. I would rather the call centers were in America, but I welcome this development.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
Most people are able to adjust their ears to an unfamiliar accent if they exert a bit of effort. It might be a little clumsy, and you might have to ask them to repeat themselves a few times, but that's just life for the millions of Americans who live in diverse cities, and those work for companies that employ non-native English speakers. MegaCorp isn't buying this tech to reduce this friction, though - they're buying it to appease the outright racist callers who verbally attack the employees and outright refuse to even try talking to them. That said, I don't think forcing older rural folks to wrangle with a southeast Asian accent is going to solve any societal problems, and I imagine the call center workers in Asia would be big fans this tech if it reduces irate interactions and actually works well.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  It's not really about the accent. It's just that companies that outsource to Asia do so because they value the cost over quality. Because obviously in-house and in-region support is much better because the agents are more up to speed on the company and to the user's environment. This expresses itself in other aspects than just location, and often the people working there have no product knowledge and just follow scripts. Because knowledgeable workers cost more. Works ok for 80% of the interactions but it really sucks if you're the 20% not covered by a script. This gives Asian callcenters and the associated accent a bad name and leads to a kneejerk reaction from customers as the accent brings up memories of previous frustrating experiences. Of course companies try to avoid this already with the mentioned software and also by moving to regions with more American-sounding people like the Philippines. I worked in contact center management before and I've seen this effect a lot. I'm sure there's excellent contact centers in the region too, but they have an uphill battle to prove themselves as most simply aren't.
aiisjustanif 4y ago