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I don't see how this would work in practice. I had a conversation with Uber's criminally bad customer support yesterday. I know it starts with a bot, but claims

by andy99 3y ago

I don't see how this would work in practice. I had a conversation with Uber's criminally bad customer support yesterday. I know it starts with a bot, but claims at some point to escalate you to a person, with a name. I still couldn't establish if it was or wasn't a person. I asked repeatedly if I was talking to a person or not and was just ignored. But I know at the best of times the real people just paste a bunch of boilerplate crap instead of actually helping you, so it could easily have been a person doing it. At the end of the day it doesn't matter much, awful support is awful support.

101008 3y ago
Well, then you are not talking to a human. You are talking to an interface handled by a human. I think it's a small difference but an important one.
- SamBam 3y ago
  Maybe. That said, those chat centers where you get 90% copypasta from the human, plus 10% human smarts for when to step in, are a real thing. But do they allow their workers -- who are probably juggling 10 different conversations at once -- to click on a random link (that looks like some phishing scam) and solve a Captcha during that time?
- Karellen 3y ago
  It's a reverse centaur: > AI researchers talk about "centaurs" – machine-human collaborative teams that outperform either computers or people. The greatest chess players in the world are collaborations between chess-masters and chess software. > But not all centaurs are created equal. A "reverse centaur" is what happens when a human is made to assist a machine, rather than the other way around. https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex
petesergeant 3y ago
Quite. If support can't escalate anyway and can't do anything, doesn't matter if there's a human there. I have a pet theory that 95% of why people think overseas call centers are so terrible is that the operators don't trust the staff to do anything, so if you get transferred to one, they have no real ability to actually help you beyond what an LLM would do -- which is apologise, and read you scripted answers.
bentcorner 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the humans have a system prompt that they should not reveal if they are a human or a bot.
toss1 3y ago
For quite a while, when calling into a call center with the automated voice prompt system, swearing emphatically would get the system to cut to the chase and give you to a human (someone finally figured out that when you get your customers swearing mad, you tend to lose them). It seems that swearing at the bot/person might work in the same way; "you worthless piece of $#&! bot, let me talk to a human" might provoke a human to respond off-script (and we can then apologize), or provoke the bot to escalate as did the answering systems. Of course, then they'll get the bots to act like we hurt their feelings and ask for apologies, and it's back to square one. Maybe, ask where they are from, with details?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  I have spammed chatbot customer service “I want a human” probably three dozen times in a row to get an actual named agent onto the session, who I am guessing was an actual human based on the typos and punctuation errors.

by andy99 3y ago

101008 3y ago

Well, then you are not talking to a human. You are talking to an interface handled by a human. I think it's a small difference but an important one.

SamBam 3y ago
Maybe. That said, those chat centers where you get 90% copypasta from the human, plus 10% human smarts for when to step in, are a real thing. But do they allow their workers -- who are probably juggling 10 different conversations at once -- to click on a random link (that looks like some phishing scam) and solve a Captcha during that time?
Karellen 3y ago
It's a reverse centaur: > AI researchers talk about "centaurs" – machine-human collaborative teams that outperform either computers or people. The greatest chess players in the world are collaborations between chess-masters and chess software. > But not all centaurs are created equal. A "reverse centaur" is what happens when a human is made to assist a machine, rather than the other way around. https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

petesergeant 3y ago

Quite. If support can't escalate anyway and can't do anything, doesn't matter if there's a human there. I have a pet theory that 95% of why people think overseas call centers are so terrible is that the operators don't trust the staff to do anything, so if you get transferred to one, they have no real ability to actually help you beyond what an LLM would do -- which is apologise, and read you scripted answers.

bentcorner 3y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the humans have a system prompt that they should not reveal if they are a human or a bot.

toss1 3y ago

For quite a while, when calling into a call center with the automated voice prompt system, swearing emphatically would get the system to cut to the chase and give you to a human (someone finally figured out that when you get your customers swearing mad, you tend to lose them). It seems that swearing at the bot/person might work in the same way; "you worthless piece of $#&! bot, let me talk to a human" might provoke a human to respond off-script (and we can then apologize), or provoke the bot to escalate as did the answering systems. Of course, then they'll get the bots to act like we hurt their feelings and ask for apologies, and it's back to square one. Maybe, ask where they are from, with details?

kjkjadksj 3y ago
I have spammed chatbot customer service “I want a human” probably three dozen times in a row to get an actual named agent onto the session, who I am guessing was an actual human based on the typos and punctuation errors.