6 ms·

No it's not. Everyone has obligations. You cannot un-invent this stuff. That's like trying to stop air planes, rockets, photography, combustion engine, calculat

No it's not. Everyone has obligations. You cannot un-invent this stuff. That's like trying to stop air planes, rockets, photography, combustion engine, calculators, the personal pc, etc. It's the next phase of technology and it will be developed regardless if you like it or not. It's here to stay and thinking otherwise does everyone a disservice. We should be trying to figure out how to leverage this and ride the next wave. Honestly, this might even make support much easier to interact with. If you can filter this stuff you could probably have a much better support experience. ChatGPT has proved this to be true. I cannot tell you how many times I've used support and the person is some entry level tech who has no idea.

misnome 3y ago
Wait, you actually think that AI will improve any of this?
- WestCoastJustin 3y ago
  Have you been using ChatGPT to solve work problems? I have. It's amazing. This technology can do amazing things and companies should be using it to solve problems. Of course I think it can improve things. Think about what happens when companies start to build corporate LLM's trained on their docs, code, knowledge base, support tickets, etc. You're going to have super human support. Sure, this might assist the current staff but they are going to be so much better equipped to solve problems. Imagine for a second, that there is actually a LLM agent that can not only understand what you want but actually do things too. Like, why not have these systems reset passwords, check on the status of a refund, update a mailing address, change billing info, cancel your account, email me some documents, etc. This frees up people to actually work on more important things. The hardest part of all this pre-ChatGPT was understanding fully what the person wanted. That's petty much solved now. I think we're headed to a future where you'll actually want an LLM agent vs a human in that they will know everything and can solve your issue in seconds. It's like when you win the lottery and get the support person who's been at the company 15 years and knows everything in and out. That's what these LLM's can be.
  - misnome 3y ago
    What do you mean by “work problems”. Writing regex? SQL? Exclusively software development? Outside of this, even using for “summarizing” documents, you are lucky if it doesn’t distort or twist meanings such that it isn’t useful, except now you have spent as much or more time checking it’s work than just doing it yourself. Checking others’ work is much harder than writing it. Every time I’ve attempted to ask it something I can’t answer myself or through immediate googling it has been completely useless. I’m unconvinced that it isn’t just developers with a poor eye for nuance who aren’t realising how much information they are giving in the questions who rave about it. Horses can count, if you give enough context. It seems to be generally good at novelty style transfers. > It's like when you win the lottery and get the support person who's been at the company 15 years and knows everything in and out. That's what these LLM's can be. This is pure fantasy, extrapolating what you want to see into an arbitrary future where it’s true. More likely it gaslights the customer onto thinking problems are their fault until they give up, but this scenario is mildly cheaper for the companies who don’t need to pay humans to do the runaround.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - foobiekr 3y ago
      It's also pretty terrible at non-generic-webcrap coding.
    - TheCleric 3y ago
      I recently gave a code review to a colleague where the regex they had was obviously unfit for its purpose and I politely informed them of such. They responded "Then why would ChatGPT have told me to use it?" I trust exactly 0 output from any LLM. The problem with any of this sort of generative AI is that there's nothing that stops it from hallucinating facts and spewing those with a confident tone. Until we can figure out the trust and validation step, none of it is truly helpful. I'm not a luddite, I just find these tools to be woefully lacking. Anything they can do takes me more time to validate than just doing it myself.
- muskmusk 3y ago
  Massively if the companies are willing to let AI actually help. If the companies are just trying to delay you from unsubscribing by using lame tactics then no, but nothing fixes those companies. Massive upside for some things, neutral for other things. That's net positive.
xp84 3y ago
> many times I've used support and the person is some entry level tech who has no idea. Yes, roughly all the times. every single time. As far as I can tell, most “first line of support” reps are empowered to read you FAQs, and to maybe perform actions you are better able to do yourself online. If like me, the caller is only calling as a last resort after figuring out the task is impossible online, they just repeat a FAQ or tell them misleading garbage information, blame a third party, or transfer them in circles. Oddly, the “social media support” reps that cell phone companies have that you can message on Messenger or Twitter DMs are 10x as competent as the phone people, with the bonus that you can work through the problem asynchronously, which is a godsend for busy people.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yeah, every now and then I directly get an L2 person who either just had a phone queue open or really needs a promotion. But, unless I've just been an idiot (which does happen), L1 is mostly useless. I've found social media a mix. There are people who seem really interested in making stuff happen and there are people who are surprised you expect anything more than sympathetic cooing noises.

misnome 3y ago

Wait, you actually think that AI will improve any of this?

WestCoastJustin 3y ago
Have you been using ChatGPT to solve work problems? I have. It's amazing. This technology can do amazing things and companies should be using it to solve problems. Of course I think it can improve things. Think about what happens when companies start to build corporate LLM's trained on their docs, code, knowledge base, support tickets, etc. You're going to have super human support. Sure, this might assist the current staff but they are going to be so much better equipped to solve problems. Imagine for a second, that there is actually a LLM agent that can not only understand what you want but actually do things too. Like, why not have these systems reset passwords, check on the status of a refund, update a mailing address, change billing info, cancel your account, email me some documents, etc. This frees up people to actually work on more important things. The hardest part of all this pre-ChatGPT was understanding fully what the person wanted. That's petty much solved now. I think we're headed to a future where you'll actually want an LLM agent vs a human in that they will know everything and can solve your issue in seconds. It's like when you win the lottery and get the support person who's been at the company 15 years and knows everything in and out. That's what these LLM's can be.
- misnome 3y ago
  What do you mean by “work problems”. Writing regex? SQL? Exclusively software development? Outside of this, even using for “summarizing” documents, you are lucky if it doesn’t distort or twist meanings such that it isn’t useful, except now you have spent as much or more time checking it’s work than just doing it yourself. Checking others’ work is much harder than writing it. Every time I’ve attempted to ask it something I can’t answer myself or through immediate googling it has been completely useless. I’m unconvinced that it isn’t just developers with a poor eye for nuance who aren’t realising how much information they are giving in the questions who rave about it. Horses can count, if you give enough context. It seems to be generally good at novelty style transfers. > It's like when you win the lottery and get the support person who's been at the company 15 years and knows everything in and out. That's what these LLM's can be. This is pure fantasy, extrapolating what you want to see into an arbitrary future where it’s true. More likely it gaslights the customer onto thinking problems are their fault until they give up, but this scenario is mildly cheaper for the companies who don’t need to pay humans to do the runaround.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - foobiekr 3y ago
    It's also pretty terrible at non-generic-webcrap coding.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    I recently gave a code review to a colleague where the regex they had was obviously unfit for its purpose and I politely informed them of such. They responded "Then why would ChatGPT have told me to use it?" I trust exactly 0 output from any LLM. The problem with any of this sort of generative AI is that there's nothing that stops it from hallucinating facts and spewing those with a confident tone. Until we can figure out the trust and validation step, none of it is truly helpful. I'm not a luddite, I just find these tools to be woefully lacking. Anything they can do takes me more time to validate than just doing it myself.
muskmusk 3y ago
Massively if the companies are willing to let AI actually help. If the companies are just trying to delay you from unsubscribing by using lame tactics then no, but nothing fixes those companies. Massive upside for some things, neutral for other things. That's net positive.

xp84 3y ago

> many times I've used support and the person is some entry level tech who has no idea. Yes, roughly all the times. every single time. As far as I can tell, most “first line of support” reps are empowered to read you FAQs, and to maybe perform actions you are better able to do yourself online. If like me, the caller is only calling as a last resort after figuring out the task is impossible online, they just repeat a FAQ or tell them misleading garbage information, blame a third party, or transfer them in circles. Oddly, the “social media support” reps that cell phone companies have that you can message on Messenger or Twitter DMs are 10x as competent as the phone people, with the bonus that you can work through the problem asynchronously, which is a godsend for busy people.

ghaff 3y ago
Yeah, every now and then I directly get an L2 person who either just had a phone queue open or really needs a promotion. But, unless I've just been an idiot (which does happen), L1 is mostly useless. I've found social media a mix. There are people who seem really interested in making stuff happen and there are people who are surprised you expect anything more than sympathetic cooing noises.