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We need a hard social stigma against allowing your AI agent to contact another human being on your behalf.
by simonw 22d ago
We need a hard social stigma against allowing your AI agent to contact another human being on your behalf.
- avgDev 22d agoI'm looking for a contractor to do my concrete. 2 companies had AI agents. Instant no thank you, I'm just going to go with a guy that still answers his phone.
- m463 21d agoThere are some businesses I don't want to contact anyone. when finding an emergency plumber or a tow truck, it seems all the companies you can contact are just scummy intermediaries that call a normal business and take a cut. I added emergency road service to my car insurance just so I wouldn't have to search for a tow company myself.
- cube00 22d agoI try to warn my small business clients who ask for this. You know those annoying AI bots the big companies use? Well yours will be worse because you don't have their budget and it will drive what few customers who stumble upon your site away instantly. Your own authentic voice answering a customer query directly is one of the few advantages a small business has over the big guys. Not to mention liability if the agent says something misleading. You won't be able to afford the lawyers the big guys can to get yourself off the hook.
- bsoqk 22d agoMost of those contractors have so much work that scaring away customers is a feature.
- ragequittah 22d agoThis is something I've thought about as people complain about things like restaurant photos being AI and such. You know what kind of customer this pushes away? The kind that complain about minor details that don't really matter. Might be a net good for many businesses.
- zanecodes 22d agoIf you can't be bothered to get the minor details right, how can I be confident that you'll get the major ones right?
- ragequittah 22d agoAlternatively: if you're wasting a bunch of your time on the minor details how do you have enough time for the major ones? I'd much rather my restaurant owner worry about sourcing ingredients, keeping the kitchen clean, improving the taste of the food than anything else.
- zanecodes 22d agoIf you don't have the time or money to have actual menu photos taken, what are the odds you have the time and money to source high quality ingredients, keep the kitchen clean, or improve the taste of the food? The minor details are precisely the ones that require the least time and money to handle, so if those are being skimped on, it's likely that the major details are too, in my experience.
- usewik 22d agoIt depends, probably. If we are talking about high end, off the beaten path places, marketing is important. For the $1.50 slice pizza at the hole in the wall in Times Square? I doubt those places are cleaned and no one is checking the reviews, people just line up because others are, and because the smell and taste is right.
- notarobot123 22d ago...so lack of attention to detail as evidence of a focus on meaningful quality?
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- jrflowers 22d ago
- pavel_lishin 22d agoThen they can simply not pick up the phone.
- folkrav 22d agoDo they really? Are there any numbers available to support this? Sample size of one, but my brother is in that field, and it's been their and their subcontractors' slowest year in a long while.
- skyberrys 22d agoI recently went contractor hunting and everyone was too busy and ignoring me. I did find one eventually but it took 5 days of calling 5-10 shops a day. How is your brother not also swamped with work? Maybe tell him to get a sticker for the back of his truck and make sure he has a Google map listing with 2 photos of his work and a very basic website?
- robocat 21d agoYou're being extremely dismissive and you're denying somebody else's reality. Demand varies a lot by location, type of contracting, price, etc.
- folkrav 21d agoBoth you and I are, like I said, a sample size of one. You're drawing conclusions generalizing your 5 day experience looking for one type of work to an entire industry. He may not be in the same field you were looking for, or a different geographic reality. I also didn't say they weren't swamped with work, their schedule is full regardless, but that it's the lowest demand they've seen in a while.
- pryelluw 22d agoAre you a contractor? In the current economy, it’s very hard to imagine this being true.
- toss1 22d agoWhere are you located? In the Northeast US, we're finding getting a contractor who is both good and has availability is quite an ordeal, involving significant delays.
- xboxnolifes 22d agoThe advise to do things that don't scale is more pertinent than ever.
- nkrisc 22d agoNo kidding. If they won’t pick up the phone to take my business, imagine when I’m calling after they already have my money.
- trvz 22d agoCue both of them sending you a weekly newsletter from now on, from which you can't unsubscribe from, for the next 30 years.
- cortesoft 22d agoOn the other hand, I am also looking for a contractor to do my concrete. I hate the whole process, I hate calling people only to spend 5 minutes trying to explain what I want and then they don’t provide that service or try to convince me to do something else, and then seeing bids and not really understanding what things are important and if I am getting a good price. I would love for an agent to just be able to handle all this for me. Find me a good, fair price from a reliable contractor who understands what I want. I don’t want to have to call a bunch of people, just do it for me. I tried seeing if an agent could help me with this, but it isn’t quite there yet. It did a good job helping me figure out what I really wanted, but not the rest of it.
- avgDev 22d agoI got quotes first which was the wrong approach. I ended up taking photos and detailing what I want on plat of survey. I also consulted a structural engineer(for garage cracks) and researched using rebar, fiber mesh, and metal mesh. So, basically I know what I want and it is easier to get quotes this way. I just send the docs and dimensions.
- cortesoft 21d ago> I also consulted a structural engineer Well, now I have the same problem I had before, how do I find a good structural engineer, and what is a fair price to pay them? Do I have to call a bunch and do the same thing I hated doing for the contractors?
- avgDev 21d agoFair point! I would call 4 local structural engineers to you. Ask about price. Inspection and report is about $700-$2000. You just go with someone who feels right for you. Still cheaper than $40k concrete job, so not as much of a deal.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- rurp 22d agoYep. I had a recurring contract with a local service company that got bought out by a larger one. Old company had an email that I could message and immediately get a useful reply back from a human. New ownership got rid of that, and their website messaging didn't work. The only way to contact them was to call on the phone. Who is the phone answered by? A crappy AI voice bot. Getting past that wasted a bunch of my time, followed by talking to person who was useless. Then I finally got through to someone who could actually do something for me. At that point the only help I wanted was to immediately close my account and never do business with them again.
- AuthAuth 22d agoIts annoying because thats what people want from small business but as a contractor you're usually working so you have to do your trade and be available to take calls like a receptionist. Better if they'd just send an email or use the online booking form.
- negura 21d agoI've posted several reviews recently on Google, rating the company 1 star and warning that they're customer support is using AI agents that are unhelpful and try to waste your time. The other crazy thing is restaurants who use AI generated pictures in their marketing. Instant yuck.
- empath75 22d agoJust have your agent answer their agent.
- powvans 22d agoMaybe. There are legitimate use cases. For example, data on what insurance a healthcare provider accepts is notoriously unreliable. There are startups that are using voice AI agents to call providers and ask them "hey are you still accepting these insurance plans?" Obviously it would be great if the was a, ahem, legal consequence for not keeping this data up to date and available. But you know, if a frog had wings right?
- frumplestlatz 22d agoThat sounds like a terrible use-case unless there’s already a pre-existing relationship with the provider, and it seems questionable even then.
- unrented7977 22d agoClearly you've never had shitty insurance and a need for a doctor. I've spent multiple hours on the phone trying to find someone that takes my insurance. It's an actual problem.
- frumplestlatz 22d agoIt will be more of a problem if 100 idiotic startups are cold-calling doctors offices via their AI agents. It’s already often difficult to get a human on the phone.
- phoghed 22d agoSounds like the doc office should just list what they accept on their website then, god forbid.
- crisnoble 22d agoIt is absolutely a problem. One that will not be solved with LLMs.
- kurttheviking 22d agoI don't think the parent comment disagrees with it being a problem. I read it as more: the use of an agent doesn't resolve the ambiguity in the underlying problem but instead injects another variable that could further misrepresent whether the person has valid insurance coverage (e.g. hallucinating or misunderstanding the nature or extent of coverage).
- bryanrasmussen 22d agosocial stigmas work locally, AI agents contact globally, there are only two ways social stigma is going to really work: 1. If an AI agent contacting people becomes big enough news that everybody the operator know reads about it. So AI agents asking people to send it child porn seems an unlikely edge case, but sure if that happens the person whose agent it is will get the social stigma. 2. If the AI agent accesses the owner's contacts list and starts asking for people to send it money so it can complete its task.
- simonwsimonwsim 22d ago[dead]
- sicktriple 22d agoI already practice this. If you can't be bothered to construct a coherent sentence as a form of interpersonal communication, you can also go fuck yourself. Its beyond degrading. Before anyone hits me with the "oh what about people who don't speak English" -- I legitimately don't care. I'd rather do the extremely human and now seemingly endearing ritual of trying to figure out what you're trying to say in our respectively broken interpretation of human language than read one sentence of Claudeisms.
- jasonlotito 22d agoI mean, I get your point, but at the same time, I'll happily send my AI agent to talk to support in trying to get them to honor their warranty. I shouldn't have to know case law and jurisdictional responsibility for them to do what they agreed they were going to do. And if I can have my AI agent do the brunt of that work and that heavy lifting, and I get what's owed to me, fine.
- simonw 22d agoIn that case the social stigma won't matter. Do you care if the support agents at faceless companies are annoyed with you? A stigma should affect you when dealing with friends, business contacts, or anyone for whom the quality of your relationship is important going forward.
- unified101 21d agoThat's like saying don't agent your mom and dad. is anyone? A reprot for your boss? or code? we're past that.
- serf 22d agohard social stigmas just produce defiance and cheaters. so, in other words, that seems like the way to breed more realistic acting agents rather than getting rid of them.
- vzmax 22d agoSo what, just broadly accept less realistic acting agents and lower the cost for bad actors?
- bryan0 22d agoWhat does "contacting another human" actually mean when all of these messages are being answered by agents first? If I'm texting my friends and family I expect that to be answered by a human, but beyond that I am partially expecting it to be answered by an agent, and possibly routed to a human eventually.
- simonw 22d agoI mean sending messages to someone who you know is a human being - a friend, a coworker, a subject-expert, a journalist. If you know that you're messaging a non-human (or likely-non-human) then the social stigma shouldn't apply.
- carlosjobim 22d agoAs long as they pay me, I have no problems with clients writing to me through any kind of third party agent, whether human or machine.
- jumploops 22d agoThe rise in clearly agentic inbound spam hitting my inbox is insane. It will mention some obscure internship fact from my LinkedIn, and then tie it to some perceived deficit with the product I'm working on. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the old automated spam.
- duxup 22d agoAre social stigmas as far as the internet goes doing any good? I feel like they’re very much not.
- Oscalemor 21d agoIsn't that the ANTI AI SLOP policy? Don't see it as any worse then copy paste outreach honeslty, just glad if people have more context on me before pursuiting