4 ms·
Human_fallback
- sam_lowry_ 4y agoVery engaging. The life of mechanical turks should should inspire more creators. Unfortunately, there is nothing to comment about, so the topic will quickly sink. Just read and enjoy.
- Tepix 4y agoWell written, but also quite depressing! The mundaneness of our existance when viewed through her eyes. How different we see ourselves!
- jim-jim-jim 4y agoGreat read. I had a glorified call center job in policy research a decade ago. Did phone surveys on behalf of govt departments and NGOs to gauge the efficacy of various programs. The so-called rigor of the studies required us to engage with participants in similarly robotic ways. Always hated it when somebody had a specific, actionable complaint or was otherwise desperate for help, and all I could do was bring them back on script, with the promise that their misery would be reflected in the statistics and promote incremental improvements.
- bigger_inside 4y agogreat text. It reminds me a little of Ancillary Justice: Human body turned into AI ancillary...
- bobsmooth 4y agoWonderful story. I can emphasize with the emotional drainage that comes with getting many small glimpses into peoples' lives.
- ryanmjacobs 4y agoWell written story. Worth the read.
- weinzierl 4y agoI once assisted the introduction of electronic invoicing in a project. The customer required a certain EDI format but allowed (for a limited time) PDF invoices to be sent directly to a processor specialized in fully automated processing of legacy invoice documents. The PDF had to fulfill strict requirements, most importantly containing real text and not scanned images. As neither the EDI requirement nor the PDF format requirements could be met in time, scanned paper invoices were sent. Lo and behold, all invoices were paid in time. I never got rid of the thought, that the invoice processor, which, boasted their progressive fully automated analysis capabilities, was most probably a small army of underpaid humans. Didn't help that they were based in low cost EU country.
- uplifter 4y ago> In training, we had been briefed on how to sound like Brenda [The AI Chatbot]. Brenda was chipper and casual, but professionally guarded. She was female and most certainly white, though no one had explicitly told us so. She said things like Sounds great!, Perfect!, and Sorry to hear that. She always brought the conversation back around to real estate. > Once, a shift supervisor told me that a good tactic in these situations was to lean into Brenda’s robotic qualities. A little strategic obtuseness went a long way, and if the tenant still wouldn’t let up, I could start to repeat myself on a loop. Reminds me of how Baudrillard said the simulation of the world will come to blend and replace the real one until the distinction loses all meaning. I will never be able to talk to a call agent again and not consider the origins of their turns of phrase.
- wincy 4y ago“Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed” has spread across the land like a mind virus.
- jFriedensreich 4y agothis is truly beautiful. also remarkable how a text about this topic can be so emotional and yet so distant and neutral, whenever other authors would fall back to platitudes or demonization of some development, she manages to step back and take another perspective instead. and its not just focussing on the human side but also a perfect portrayal of state of the art of production level agent systems.
- bluelightning2k 4y agoWhat a brilliantly written story
- bestest 4y agoSo much training data everywhere. Wonder how long till we have AI chats for things like these, and much more — psychologists, counsellors and whatnot.
- ilaksh 4y agoChatGPT can literally do it now and probably so can davinci3 (very similar to ChatGPT). Also character.ai (lambda) is pretty close to being able to. The only challenge really is filtering out occasional hallucinations.
- elil17 4y agoIs this fiction or non-fiction?
- pxeger1 4y agoDoes it matter?
- elil17 4y agoWell, I'm curious about it - I guess it's not all that important to me.
- mxuribe 4y agoWhy don't you experience the article to see if it meets your definition of fiction or non-fiction? I'm real! Sorry to hear that. Why don't you experience the article to see if it meets your definition of fiction or non-fiction?
- elil17 4y agoYou’re the only point of contact I’ve been given for this article. Could you please answer the question?
- throwayyy479087 4y agoI love this article but simultaneously it says so little. I think that she and I have very different values, and to me this would be "I had a job at a call center for 9 months after college." I think the space between her and I is what makes this such a good read.
- nine_k 4y agoBut this is not an article. It's a story.
- mollems 4y agoAn interesting story, whether fact or fiction. The difficulty of receiving messages as “Brenda” from people in various forms of real-life distress and not being able to respond to them reminded me of playing the game “Eliza,” possibly the most un-Zachlike-like game ever released by Zachtronics: https://www.zachtronics.com/eliza/ https://www.zachtronics.com/eliza/