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Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

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Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#81

Post by krainboltgreene »

avery17 wrote: post #58
RugnirViking wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in theory: customer support automation frees up support workers from focusing on repetetive customer issues to being able to devote more time to those difficult issues, providing better service at lower cost in practise: have you ever used any automated customer support for anything? it speaks for itself - it's literally worse than nothing.

We've never had a gpt powered customer support though. It will be fine tuned on all of their recorded customer interactions ever. I could see this being way better than typical customer support where you have minimally trained, low wage employees who barely know how to use a computer just reading a script.

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Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#82

Post by frereubu »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #23

It's nothing new - Outlook / Exchange and counterparts replaced secretaries. Intelligent IDES let me do the job of many. The list goes on. The rate of replacement may be great or greatly exaggerated. Taxing profits is the key. I'm not holding my breath.

Do you mean taxing revenues?

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#83

Post by ghaff »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #75
ghaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery stores and others absolutely still need cashier checkout. If I have a handful of items I can barcode swipe and even a couple pieces of produce that's fine. But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Ditto with home repair stores. Scan a new smoke detector? Sure. Check out a bunch of lumber etc. That would be no. In my experience, most stores are findin…

> But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Huh. Everything at my grocery store either has a barcode or is produce that needs to be weighed, so there's no speed advantage for a cashier. And they've gone through different sizes of self-checkout, some of which actually had more room than the cashier checkouts.

I'm going to have to squint to read the number on the vegetable which is sometimes there. Might have to do a lookup. It doesn't have a barcode. There's no real place to put a shopping cart. I'm having to take out items, find their price, and bag them. Something will probably go wrong which means the person watching over the self-checkout will have to come over and do something.

I can do it. But it's a pain for a large order.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#84

Post by smt88 »

gnufied wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #2

There's been a pretty steady trend towards automation, chatbots, self-service, etc. replacing getting an empowered human on the line. Given labor costs and labor shortages, expect even more. Had an airline thing that the website (and app) wouldn't let me complete online. Spent ages on hold but then was able to get hold of their premium account number and was fixed right away. (Of course, would actually have preferred…

Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them. I don't kno…

So far, I've never seen a Publix with even a single self-checkout. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're rolling them out much more slowly than the other stores.

This is likely because Publix is 80% employee-owned[1].

1. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-publix/#:~:text=Key%20takea....

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#85

Post by codetrotter »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #75
ghaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery stores and others absolutely still need cashier checkout. If I have a handful of items I can barcode swipe and even a couple pieces of produce that's fine. But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Ditto with home repair stores. Scan a new smoke detector? Sure. Check out a bunch of lumber etc. That would be no. In my experience, most stores are findin…

> But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Huh. Everything at my grocery store either has a barcode or is produce that needs to be weighed, so there's no speed advantage for a cashier. And they've gone through different sizes of self-checkout, some of which actually had more room than the cashier checkouts.

> produce that needs to be weighed

In Spain and France (and probably other countries too) they’ve been doing something that’s pretty neat in regards to the fruits and vegetables since long before self-checkout even became a thing, but which helps a lot now with self-checkout as well.

When you go to the fruits and vegetables section of the store, a lot of these stores have a scale there with a printer.

So when you pick the fruits and vegetables, you weigh and print a label for them there and then.

And then when you get to the checkout, you just scan the item.

You kind of have to experience this in person to see why that works well, but it does :)

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#86

Post by radicalbyte »

gnufied wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #2

There's been a pretty steady trend towards automation, chatbots, self-service, etc. replacing getting an empowered human on the line. Given labor costs and labor shortages, expect even more. Had an airline thing that the website (and app) wouldn't let me complete online. Spent ages on hold but then was able to get hold of their premium account number and was fixed right away. (Of course, would actually have preferred…

Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them. I don't kno…

Here in The Netherlands we don't have that thing where they weigh your bag to make sure you haven't stolen something. They instead have two people for 8-10 checkouts and do random inspections where they scan your bags.

Works great and also gave me a huge shock when I went back to the UK and Sainsbury's treated me like a criminal.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#87

Post by jarjoura »

BigBalli wrote: post #56

I don't understand why everyone (excluding people who were replaced) is so "outraged".

What is the response you expect from everyone?

Americans were replaced with off-shore call centers last decade. Now they're replaced with AI. Both are equally shitty because there's a very real human cost here. I certainly don't feel good about building technology that puts anyone out of a job like that. Maybe that person was working there as a means to pay for school to get a better job, and now has to find other work.

Meanwhile, the leadership of Shopify gets to horde more wealth making it also feel pretty greedy to me.

So I can see how, at least some significant share of people, would be "outraged" by that.

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