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Comment by zerr | Hacker News Reader

It's a horrible tendence. The first thing I ask to such AI customer service chats is to let me speak with a real human.

It's funny because I had my first encounter with one last week and my first reaction when I realised it was a robot was "let me talk to a human".

I am mostly ok talking to a bot for FAQ still queries but I just don't want to interact with a machine when things are going wrong. I want someone with actual empathy even if they refuse to use it.

Empathy is probably part of it, but I guess what matters to me is someone able to think outside of the box at least a little, and try to solve an actual problem - since the problem is likely caused by the shape of the box.

The biggest issue with these systems is they are designed to handle the common case. But if I had a common case, I literally wouldn’t be having an issue!

Humans usually recognize it pretty quickly if you explain it to them, ‘AI’ usually just keeps steering you to the same box.

Though recently I did hit a system that immediately sent me to a human when I described the problem, which was refreshing!

I guess they are made for the common case since a lot of people's first actions is to talk to someone and most cases are common. Since I usually have already gotten through the FAQ, I also rarely am helped by the AI CS.

Let me translate this to Senior Vice President of GenAGI innovation speak:

"omg our AI-interaction KPIs went up so much!!! Customers love to chat with the AIs, they send messages back and forth really rapidly like 10 times in the first 30 seconds!!" (to get to the humans...)

time to lay off everyone!

And then everybody clapped and cheered

I hate AI CS with a passion. It has neither the information or the authority to be effective.

I've known so many people who were destroyed by customer service work in call centres though. Most turned to drugs, some to suicide, the lucky few made it out but still carry the trauma. Timed toilet breaks, eight hours of angry customers, for basically minimum wage with no benefits. It's one of the worst environments for a person to be in and seeing it become automated I'm definitely aware of there being upsides as well.

That's only an upside if there are better alternatives for those people. If there are only worse alternatives, then obviously it's worse

I've worked in call centres a couple of times and found it depressing, but I've also worked in a restaurant washing dishes on sixteen hour shifts. To be honest, call centre was better

Where is the line of what you find acceptable then? As long as there's no a alternative anything is ok?

Like I get what you're saying but some work is just cruel.

Yes, and some work is crueller than others.

What I'm saying is there's no upside to just getting rid of an option

I outlined the upsides.

At least in Canada you can legally demand what it promises you.

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