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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

I think it will revolutionize the service economy by replacing front line workers with chat bots masquerading as human customer service.

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Customer service chatbots are a revolution? Sounds like the most underwhelming thing ever.

After my experience with AT&T front-line support where I tried several times to get my old AT&T iPhone unlocked (which is fully paid for), dealing with confusion and false promises of follow-up which never came, I welcome the relative competence of ChatGPT. My phone is still locked BTW.

You don't know that it would be better. Keep in mind that the same company whose support didn't help you with your phone will be in charge of what the chatbot is allowed to say and do. If AT&T sucks, I don't know if you're gaining much when AT&T replace a person with ChatGPT. The person doing the support was never the problem, the problem was the company who has a crappy process. And even after they deploy a version of ChatGPT that company will be the same.

Right, a bad company with bad processes could definitely stifle the benefit that ChatGPT could provide. I would hope that ChatGPT could summarize and report on process deficiencies in an effort to address them. Data like "in the past 90 days, 3,328 customers requested an iPhone unlock and I was unable to assist them due to lack of process addressing the request."

And then we will need another set of frontline workers when LLMs starts to hallucinate.

I've had a real life customer service chat session (years ago now) where they said their website didn't work on Mac OS while we were using it, and that it would be better if my phone was Android rather than iOS.

Back in the 90s, one of the monthly Mac magazines I read obsessively (because we didn't have internet at home yet) had regular stories of dumb things said by customer services; something like PC World sales clerk standing in front of a bunch of iMacs with Nanosaur running on them saying "yeah iMacs only do web browsing, you can't play any games".

Before I moved to Berlin, the dude in one of the phone shops near me insisted that iPhones couldn't work with those insert-your-phone-here plastic versions of Google Cardboard.

It's not that you're necessarily incorrect — when ChatGPT was new, I saw someone dismiss it as "mansplaining as a service" — but I don't know how much the companies really care.

It's not like customer support is a prestigious role.

and chat bots won't ever "forget" to try and upsell you on the things corporate expects. Every cashier will be advertising.

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