44 ms·

Sorry for the acidity, just training my patience while waiting for the mythical FB/AI call center.

by wslh 2y ago

Maxion 2y ago
As someone who has been involved with customer support (on the in-house tech side) the very vast majority of contacts to a CS team will be very inane or extremely inane. If you can automate away the lowest tier of support with LLMs you'll improve response times for not just the simple questions but also for the hard ones.
- wslh 2y ago
  I agree with that common pattern but even without [current] AI there were ways to automate/improve the lowest tier: very often I don't find my basic questions in the typical corporation's FAQ.
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    I usually assume, that it is, because they do not want to answer those basic questions or want to hide the answers. For example some shop. No answer found in the FAQ how refunds work. Instant sus.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  I have had the problem with customer support that about 90% of the calls/chats I have placed should have been automated (on their side), and the remaining 10% needed escalation beyond the "customer service" escalation ladder. In America, sadly, that means one of two things: (1) you call a friend who works there or (2) you have your lawyer send a demand letter requesting something rather inane.
Balgair 2y ago
Yeah, I was a little credulous about what Zuck said there too. Like, if AI is so good, then it'll just eat away at those jobs and get asymptotically close to 100% of the calls. If it's not that good, then you've got to loop in the product people and figure out why everyone is having a hard time with whatever it is. Generally, I'd say that calls are just another feedback channel for the product. One that FB has thus far been fine without consulting, so I can't imagine its contribution can be all that high. (Zuck also goes on to talk about the experiments they run on people with FB/Insta/WA, and woah, it is crazy unethical stuff he casually throws out there to Dwarkesh) Still, to the point here: I'm still seeing Ai mostly as a tool/tech, not something that takes on an agency of it's own. We, the humans, are still the thing that says 'go/do/start', the prime movers (to borrow a long held and false bit of ancient physics). The AIs aren't initiating things, and it seems to a large extent, we're not going to want them to do so. Not out of a sense of doom or lack-of-greed, but simply as we're more interested in working at the edge of the fractal.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  Not to discredit anything you wrote, but: "I'm still seeing Ai mostly as a tool/tech, not something that takes on an agency of it's own." I find that to be a highly ironic thing. It basically says AI is not AI. Which we all know it is not yet, but then we can simply say it: The current crop of "AI" is not actually AI. It is not intelligence. It is a kind of huge encoded, non-transparent dictionary.

Sorry for the acidity, just training my patience while waiting for the mythical FB/AI call center.

by wslh 2y ago

Sorry for the acidity, just training my patience while waiting for the mythical FB/AI call center.

As someone who has been involved with customer support (on the in-house tech side) the very vast majority of contacts to a CS team will be very inane or extremely inane. If you can automate away the lowest tier of support with LLMs you'll improve response times for not just the simple questions but also for the hard ones.

wslh 2y ago
I agree with that common pattern but even without [current] AI there were ways to automate/improve the lowest tier: very often I don't find my basic questions in the typical corporation's FAQ.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  I usually assume, that it is, because they do not want to answer those basic questions or want to hide the answers. For example some shop. No answer found in the FAQ how refunds work. Instant sus.
pclmulqdq 2y ago
I have had the problem with customer support that about 90% of the calls/chats I have placed should have been automated (on their side), and the remaining 10% needed escalation beyond the "customer service" escalation ladder. In America, sadly, that means one of two things: (1) you call a friend who works there or (2) you have your lawyer send a demand letter requesting something rather inane.

Balgair 2y ago

Yeah, I was a little credulous about what Zuck said there too. Like, if AI is so good, then it'll just eat away at those jobs and get asymptotically close to 100% of the calls. If it's not that good, then you've got to loop in the product people and figure out why everyone is having a hard time with whatever it is. Generally, I'd say that calls are just another feedback channel for the product. One that FB has thus far been fine without consulting, so I can't imagine its contribution can be all that high. (Zuck also goes on to talk about the experiments they run on people with FB/Insta/WA, and woah, it is crazy unethical stuff he casually throws out there to Dwarkesh) Still, to the point here: I'm still seeing Ai mostly as a tool/tech, not something that takes on an agency of it's own. We, the humans, are still the thing that says 'go/do/start', the prime movers (to borrow a long held and false bit of ancient physics). The AIs aren't initiating things, and it seems to a large extent, we're not going to want them to do so. Not out of a sense of doom or lack-of-greed, but simply as we're more interested in working at the edge of the fractal.

zelphirkalt 2y ago
Not to discredit anything you wrote, but: "I'm still seeing Ai mostly as a tool/tech, not something that takes on an agency of it's own." I find that to be a highly ironic thing. It basically says AI is not AI. Which we all know it is not yet, but then we can simply say it: The current crop of "AI" is not actually AI. It is not intelligence. It is a kind of huge encoded, non-transparent dictionary.