3 ms·
> People aren't getting fired and 1-1 replaced by an AI agent. Tell that to all the customer service AI chatbots. They don't need as many real CS agents anymor
by LoganDark 2y ago
> People aren't getting fired and 1-1 replaced by an AI agent.
Tell that to all the customer service AI chatbots. They don't need as many real CS agents anymore because one chatbot can reply to hundreds or thousands of tickets with useless garbage copy-pasted from the FAQ. Given that even most real CS agents also only do that nowadays anyway, yeah they've been replaced.
This tends to be incredibly effective at CS's real job, which is to make customers with problems go away from being able to make it to bothering the actual consumer-unfriendly-decision-makers. If you start looking for this you will see it absolutely everywhere. Chatbots are really really good at making people too frustrated and exhausted to pursue other routes.
There are a few companies whose CS actually still is good (like Mila Cares!!!) but in my experience most CS just wants to get rid of the annoying customer.
Also, sort of related (to me, blame my autism), I've heard that the practical effect of a suicide hotline can be annoying the caller enough for them not to do the thing. I've had at least one or two friends told me that this was the effect it had on them. (they're doing better nowadays)
- CamperBob2 2y ago(Shrug) Well, those people can go do something else now. We'll all end up better off. Most anti-AI arguments can be dispensed with by recasting them in terms of the broken-window fallacy. This is certainly one of them.
- LoganDark 2y ago> Most anti-AI arguments can be dispensed with by recasting them in terms of the broken-window fallacy. This is certainly one of them. Could you explain how and what fits the broken-window fallacy here? Is it the AI abolitionists? (I know at least one person who violently hates AI and anything relating to AI and firmly believes that there is absolutely no place for AI or LLMs anywhere in the world and that any usage at all for any reason whatsoever is utterly deplorable. I don't talk to this person since they tend to flame at others for using or talking about AI for any reason.)
- CamperBob2 2y agoThe people working in CS now, as you originally pointed out, are already under strict orders not to say anything an AI chatbot wouldn't say, and are not empowered to do anything the company wouldn't empower an AI chatbot to do. So why are we employing humans to do a chatbot's job? Just to give them something to do? That's where the broken-window fallacy comes in. It's not just a matter of paying someone to break all the glass in town to make work for the glaziers, it's like responding to the invention of cheap shatterproof glass with the same flawed zero-sum reasoning. (I'm rate-limited so can't reply, but my position is basically that 100% unemployment is a good thing, not a bad one. We can't get to a post-scarcity society by doing things the same way we've been doing them, or by retrying the same alternatives that have failed before.)
- LoganDark 2y agoIME, simple labor farms (that you get paid actual money for, anyway...) are hard to find in the US because of like, worker protections. Are there any entry-level jobs besides CS that can be done with essentially no thought or reasoning whatsoever? I'm not asking this to be insulting, I'm saying there is a type of person who could be good at that type of CS but doesn't have the skill, attention, or energy to do much of anything more. Those people still deserve a way to be useful to the world, I think. I keep seeing cashiers replaced by self-checkout machines at stores, fast food jobs might be too complicated for certain people (like me - I couldn't do it), places like say the Apple Genius Bar require you to know what you're doing, etc. Maybe I'm super naive and first-world by missing something super obvious, but if I am then maybe I could learn something today.
- bongodongobob 2y agoOh, yes. Customer service type jobs are fucked. I was talking about dev jobs.