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Comment by awongh | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with the luddite-esque AI views like using ChatGPT makes you dumber and it thinks for you, but- this is a real case of why people are angry and why they should be concerned about deployment of AI.

The article says it's basically to handle high call volumes maybe during some kind of widespread incident. But in those cases why would AI even be needed- if calls are flooding in for something and people need to be put on hold why do you need AI to ask them if they are calling about incident x? Just automate a voice for that and ask them that while they're on hold / when the system first picks up.

This smells like a bandaid over an underfunded system, and a way to sneak in further cost-cutting in the future where the real calls will be actually answered by AI.

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> I don't agree with the luddite-esque AI views like using ChatGPT makes you dumber and it thinks for you

I believe there are studies that indicate this to be true, however.

My $0.000002: You dont need a study to know delegating task X can make you worse at task X, nor do you need one to know its vacuously true and avoidable.

Pretty much. I don't know the vast majority of phone numbers of family and friends because my phone remembers it for me.

When you delegate demands, you reallocate your resources.

The world is more complex, though: maybe people delegate thinking in some areas to be able to have more resources to think about other areas that are more relevant to them?

Maybe, sure, in the sense that it’s possible. Is it plausible though?

This is not necessarily true if you spend more than 2 seconds thinking about it.

If I'm raking leaves all day I eventually reach diminishing returns. My arms might even start to get tired and actually make me lose skill. Now I got a leaf raking robot which is not perfect but does 50% of the job and gives me free time to recover my hands and research new leaf raking techniques, maybe even invest into a leaf blower. Did I not become better at raking leaves?

People are not calculators - all these simplistic takes are frankly insulting to human capability.

You don’t need to go to irrelevant analogies such as removing leaves. Humans develop expertise by overcoming their struggles. When you delegate thinking and engaging with source material to a software you’re skipping the actual thing that makes us improve intellectually speaking.

Have you never had to learn a new language or a music instrument? AI can just translate a text into your native language, or tell you how the sentence should be built, but you have to actually actively engage with the low level process of trying to do yourself all the little boring things, a lot, for a long time, to develop the intuition and expertise

You're missing my point entirely. To counter you music example - grinding the same chord over and over does not make you a better musician more than watching youtube videos of other people playing. Skill growth is not as simple as it is in video games - you need variety and rest to actually grow your skill rather than mindless task repetition. This is where AI tools, when used correctly, can result to great growth.

You need both, the task repetition and the resting. Even better if the task repetition isn’t mindless, I don’t know why you added that qualifier.

And actually, grinding the exact same chord over and over can improve your music. You won’t become a grandiose composer, and even unlikely to become a descent musician from that alone, but you will definitely evolve from a messy play to something more comfortable over time. And likely get ideas and motivation for what to do next.

I really don’t think AI tools are good to use as a non expert, they nudge you away from meaningful engagement

> To counter you music example - grinding the same chord over and over does not make you a better musician more than watching youtube videos of other people playing.

It does if you are still learning fingerings. Repetition absolutely helps build skill.

Would you argue an athlete standing on a mark and practicing the same shot over and over is not improving their skill?

> Did I not become better at raking leaves?

Only in a sense which is obviously not at all what's being discussed. If you hire a personal chef, have you gotten better at cooking? What about a nanny, have you gotten better at raising your children?

Of course automating some cognitive processes can free your time for other, more fulfilling aspects. But there's certainly no guarantee that that's the case.

> People are not calculators - all these simplistic takes are frankly insulting to human capability.

Funny example. Which do you think is more common, people who are innumerate because they believe using a calculator is sufficient, or people who are highly numerate and believe learning arithmetic was a waste of time?

> If you hire a personal chef, have you gotten better at cooking

Likely yes, as you learn cooking now only by repeatedly cutting carrots the same way you always did but expanding your horizons to new cooking techniques and socializing in the niche will yield much bigger growth.

This Bruce Lee level misconception of "practice the same kick for a thousand times" is extremely outdated perspective on how people actually progress effectively.

So how best to develop a kick with good form? YouTube is a better way? I really cannot relate to what you are trying to express. I practiced music by drills, it is not doing the same thing repeatedly, you get a little better each time.

> So how best to develop a kick with good form?

Same way you learn anything well - with balance and diversity. You kick, go for a walk, rest, watch youtube, get kicked by other people, talk about kicking on a kicking fans forum.

The point is that you can learn faster and be better with AI tools as you can choose when to kick and when you have space for all of those other activities that will still train your kick.

Not only that, but this clearly seems like superior human condition where we get to choose our actions rather than be pigeon-held into kicking 8 hours a day. I'm a better programmer now that I can choose not to refactor python for 3 days even though after that I'd surely learn all library APIs by heart. Instead, I can spend 1 day working on initial refactor somewhat learning the APIs and have LLMs take over the rest while I spend other 2 days on other new tasks.

I think the confusion here is people assuming that if option of not doing thing exists then people will stop doing it and regress which is a real danger but it's one that can be solved for rather easily. I'd be willing to wager that in 5–20 years we'll have more domain experts than fewer.

> Likely yes, as you learn cooking now only by repeatedly cutting carrots the same way you always did but expanding your horizons to new cooking techniques and socializing in the niche will yield much bigger growth.

You are not engaging in good faith. Obviously the point of the argument is that if you hire a personal chef, you are outsourcing the actual cooking and investing little to no time yourself on improving at cooking. Interpreting it as having more freedom to cook, and your contractor providing a service being your friend/teacher, is absurd.

And even in your contrived hypothetical, there's two basic issues. First, mastery can be highly specialized. Second, if you only ever did the trivial and repetitive to begin with, you never intended to improve.

> This Bruce Lee level misconception of "practice the same kick for a thousand times" is extremely outdated perspective on how people actually progress effectively.

This is another straw man. Nobody is promoting this meme that the only thing you need for self-improvement is mindless repetition. That doesn't even make sense, considering the actual topic is thinking for yourself instead of only using AI. The point is you can't get better at something without actually practicing, and "difficult" or "tedious" doesn't equate to "unimportant."

For the people who believe this, I think it deeply reflects how they think about all knowledge and the kinds of things they would use this technology for- "finding the answers to things without having to think about them"- that's only one way to use it, and the least compelling way, in my opinion.

Struggling with things is important for understanding and thinking about things, and AI gives you a way to bypass that struggle. People will take that bypass, because to resist it takes willpower. It makes it harder to follow the path you need to.

It's sort of like exercise: it used to be required and unavoidable (you had to walk to get anywhere), now it's optional so most people don't do it with anywhere near enough regularity or intensity.

Can't be dumber if you're already dumbmaxxed.

Knowing the way in which bureaucracies work, I suspect there is zero (or likely negative) money available for new humans or old-school systems, but heaps available for anything with AI in the title. A manager who increases human staff will be blamed for causing bloat, but any manager who manages to replace humans with AI is an efficiency guru and promising future leader (even if the AI sucks and winds up costing more than what it replaces).

> This smells like a bandaid over an underfunded system, and a way to sneak in further cost-cutting in the future where the real calls will be actually answered by AI.

I think there’s also an aspect of accountability-washing: when regular 911 makes mistakes, managers and politicians get hauled into the spotlight to explain the failure (my city has that now due to the outgoing mayor’s decision to put an unqualified crony in charge). I will bet that the first time this fails badly it’ll be blame shifting and assurances that some huge tech company has fixed the problem and it’ll never happen again, with as little talk about oversight responsibility as they can get away with.

The other thing with the AI debate is that it's nothing new- these kinds of failures are the same kind that have been going on for a long time, for the exact same reasons.

Any time a local government fails people these same kinds of incentive misalignments are at the real heart of it.

The fact that it has the word AI in it just gives it that cool cyberpunk dystopian sheen, where you call 911 and the AI says something about mechahitler instead of trying to help you.

What about cases where e.g. there's an earthquake with thousands of incidents and you need to triage help to the worst? It's not common, but there are absolutely cases where small amounts of intelligence applied in parallel is a genuine advantage.

> Just automate a voice for that and ask them that while they're on hold / when the system first picks up.

Is this criteria satisfied if we swap the titular “AI” with our inoffensive “automating the voice”?

If they are using a true agentic TTS / LLM setup then this is just a first pass for them to implement fully AI answered 911 calls.

Otherwise I can code this state machine condition for you in 10 minutes.

Im a bit daft today, getting over strep throat, and this went over my head: is an equivalent to this “Yes, but it’s scary because it might turn from automating voice to no more humans answering ever?”

Having someone answer and provide updates or screen for new information is valuable. For instance someone calling can know exactly where the shooter is. Or it could be something related. Information is valuable. What's the alternative? Not have someone pick up the phones? No matter how much you over staff there will be times where peak volume will be more than you can support

This assumes that LLMs can do those things. Given day to day experience with "chat bots", they can't. The LLM eii be circular do nothing of value then route your call to a number where nobody picks up.

All party in the deal understands this. They are just convinced they will no longer be around when things go wrong, hence won't be held accountable for this particular decision.

several things: AI won't make it cheaper, an automated voice system will invariably lead to frustration.

conclusion: have emergency protocols where you can staff your call centers appropriately

> This smells like a bandaid over an underfunded system, and a way to sneak in further cost-cutting in the future where the real calls will be actually answered by AI.

I don't get why are people so against cost cutting and use of AI in government services?

So much of my tax money is already wasted on bullshit. If you are in Europe - it's majority of your work, being set on fire by bureaucrats.

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