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ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

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Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#301

Post by runnerup »

nordsieck wrote: post #29
_petronius wrote: post #14

I'm less worried about stuff like ChatGPT killing things off, but more about just making everything noticeably a bit worse. To take an analogy: bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. A world where most marketing copy is written by med…

> bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. This one really puzzles me. Voice recognition replaced phone trees. And from what I can tell, it's just worse. In this particular use case I don't think it really replaced tier 1 support. Eithe…

Pretty sure that it very noticeably results in lower costs. People often literally cannot figure out how to get through the voice recognition system to reach a human customer support person.

So the companies save money by then cutting the size of their call centers.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#302

Post by galleywest200 »

runnerup wrote: post #301
nordsieck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. This one really puzzles me. Voice recognition replaced phone trees. And from what I can tell, it's just worse. In this particular use case I don't think it really replaced tier 1 support. Eithe…

Pretty sure that it very noticeably results in lower costs. People often literally cannot figure out how to get through the voice recognition system to reach a human customer support person. So the companies save money by then cutting the size of their call centers.

Agreed. These days though I tend to just mash 0 repeatedly and say the word "representative".

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#303

Post by runnerup »

jjeaff wrote: post #283
EamonnMR wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone trees are deliberately bad, so I assume voice recognition is deliberately worse. The goal is to frustrate nusance customers so that they give up.

What is so frustrating to me is how they could simply offer email/ticket based support so much easier and cheaper for most issues. And yet so many companies do not even have the option. I've been dealing with a home warranty company and they have an online portal where you can see the status of a claim. But if you click that you need help or to resolve an issue, it just gives you a popup to call their 800 number. The…

> email/ticket based support

This would provide the customer with a written record which could be used against the corporation. Phone is generally favorable to the corporations because the corporation can decide whether/how to retain/destroy records, but the customer will almost never have a transcript or recording to use for their own evidence.

Many corporations have moved to a system where you can either call an automated line which does its best to make you hang up...or you can fill out a browser form which provides the customer no ticket/confirmation number/email/any record that you ever filled it out.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#304

Post by runnerup »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #33
nordsieck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. This one really puzzles me. Voice recognition replaced phone trees. And from what I can tell, it's just worse. In this particular use case I don't think it really replaced tier 1 support. Eithe…

I just keep pressing 0 until a live person answers.

On the latest systems this often results in the automated system hanging up on you.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#305

Post by jredwards »

galleywest200 wrote: post #302
runnerup wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that it very noticeably results in lower costs. People often literally cannot figure out how to get through the voice recognition system to reach a human customer support person. So the companies save money by then cutting the size of their call centers.

Agreed. These days though I tend to just mash 0 repeatedly and say the word "representative".

There've been some attempts at apps which navigate phone trees until they get a person or secure a callback for you. Not sure what the state of those is these days.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#306

Post by chimeracoder »

mixedCase wrote: post #298
chimeracoder wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option. This is extremely incorrect. First of all, fast fashion isn't actually necessarily cheaper. The real difference is that fast fashion exists in an…

I was never talking about fast fashion. There's a huge swath of clothing items between "dirt-cheap, disintegrating crap" and "high quality clothing". Those articles of clothing I'm talking about are almost never worth mending, but they still can last for years.

> I was never talking about fast fashion. There's a huge swath of clothing items between "dirt-cheap, disintegrating crap" and "high quality clothing".

It's all fast fashion, just different points along the line.

Yes, broccoli and kale look different, and one is a fancier class signifier than the other, but at the end of the day they're still the same species.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#307

Post by runnerup »

galleywest200 wrote: post #302
runnerup wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that it very noticeably results in lower costs. People often literally cannot figure out how to get through the voice recognition system to reach a human customer support person. So the companies save money by then cutting the size of their call centers.

Agreed. These days though I tend to just mash 0 repeatedly and say the word "representative".

This is my default as well (although I use "talk to a human") but increasingly it results in the automated phone system hanging up on me if I dont at least navigate halfway through the bullshit first.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#308

Post by elil17 »

christkv wrote: post #5
elil17 wrote: post #3

Strongly agree. We should have "made the work worth doing" before, but it's even more imperative with LLMs on the scene. However, when will they be able to do work that is worth doing? GPT4? GPT5? There will be a point where we have to grapple with that.

So what do we do with all the middle class human bs generators today once a lot of pr, journalism, copy and marketing is replaced?

Hopefully: UBI, retraining, something along those lines

Probably: Let them eat cake

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#309

Post by falcolas »

axiom92 wrote: post #264
falcolas wrote: post #263

Reader attention? ChatGPT output is often so absurdly verbose it becomes tiring to try and make sense of the text (when the text makes sense in the first place). The effort we're willing to put into big swaths of text is already low, and I fear ChatGPT will only make it worse.

You can make the output more/less verbose with the right prompt.

> with the right prompt

Supposedly you can summon Anubis with the right prompt as well.

But nobody does.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#310

Post by jredwards »

_petronius wrote: post #14

I'm less worried about stuff like ChatGPT killing things off, but more about just making everything noticeably a bit worse. To take an analogy: bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. A world where most marketing copy is written by med…

Turn it on its head, then. We can build bots which navigate bad customer service portals on your behalf.
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