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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

The ever dreaded automated phone systems are more tolerable than the AI driven phone systems. The press 1 for... never tried to make you think someone was actually listening to you, yet the AI services are made to come across like you are talking to a human. Don't try to make people think it's a human.

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> Don't try to make people think it's a human.

Agreed.

A local pizza place (Tribute Pizza) switched its phone over to an AI assistant that goes out of its way to appear human to such a degree that it inserts random "restaurant bustle" sound effects into the call so it sounds like you're talking to someone standing in a crowded restaurant.

The subterfuge of layering in sound effects to make idiots think they were still talking to a human was a bridge too far and I swore off ever giving my business to them again.

Considering the many embarrassing failures huge fast food chains have had trying to get AI order takers in their drive-throughs I'd be very concerned about an AI at some random local pizza place getting my order accurately

Which is why I feel like we peaked years back when we had simple enough web sites where you could just use shared platform to select options and make orders...

And then the VC money ruined it by food delivery intermediaries and acquisitions...

Interesting, this reminds me a bit of TTS models that had poor quality training data inserting commercial jingles or background music into their output, although I would agree that in this case it sounds intentional.

I think the only place so far where I have actually preferred the AI version was when my phone provider switched from a "dumb" chat bot that ostensibly used natural language but rarely parsed anything successfully.

I agree. These days, automated voice response systems are actually less stressful.

with the keyboard typing and call center chatter... give me a break

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