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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

#361

Post by smeej »

sharts wrote: post #340

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid. I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet. How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

Anyone who has ever interacted with a tier 1 customer service agent in an outsourced support farm knows the difference between that and a chat bot is negligible.

True technical support can't be replaced yet, but thousands upon thousands of tier 1 human drones can be.

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

#362

Post by lucb1e »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #357
sharts wrote: post #340

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid. I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet. How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

It doesn't have to replace all people, just good enough to replace the more common cases.

Or frustrate people enough so they go and figure out the solution by themselves, or not file that complaint, or whatever it was they wanted to do but did not actually necessarily need assistance with, while giving the semblance of trying to be helpful

Not saying this is a good thing, but then I'm not an upper manager with dollar symbols in their eyes

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

#363

Post by bobthepanda »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #357
sharts wrote: post #340

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid. I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet. How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

It doesn't have to replace all people, just good enough to replace the more common cases.

In practice, places will ignore that it doesn't work for everything, cut off any sort of physical call centers, and then people just end up fed up with their services.

I absolutely hate places aggressively adopting chatbots and phone bots.

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

#364

Post by tennisflyi »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #347

"The drastic changes in Shopify’s approach have led both employees and customers to question the company’s integrity and commitment to its original mission of empowering small businesses. Many see the company as straying from its roots, becoming more akin to the corporate giants it once aimed to oppose." This seems to me like most start ups or companies as they grow and get big, they start out by disrupting and fight…

Dark Knigt meme, yeah.

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

#365

Post by ghaff »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #356
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your examples also highlight the issue at hand - the automated systems are great when they work, but when they don't work it means that there are now a lot fewer real humans that can solve your problem. Take travel bookings. When I know where I'm going and have relatively firm dates, I'd much prefer the ease of online booking. However, when I'm more in the mood of "I want to go on vacation to country X, but I…

Time was, that travel agent was pretty much your only option, unless you happened to have extremely well-traveled friends or family who could make an itinerary with you. Even finding a list of which airlines fly from where to where and the visa processes was a major hassle. Let alone making a connection at the other end. How would you even get a regional Italian train timetable without the internet? At least it would…

And most of those travel agents, like the one at my office in my company in the 90s, knew how to book pretty cookie-cutter plane flights and cruises.

I used "adventure travel" companies in that period for other stuff and my dad had a specialty travel agent who mostly worked with other private adventure agents.

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

#366

Post by 8note »

ghaff wrote: post #243
hooverd wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self checkout shoppers should be timed just like cashiers. I swear everyone else using the self chicken are moving in slow motion.

Charging self-checkout shoppers will go over really well I'm sure. Let us know how it goes.

You make it look like a discount for going fast

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

#367

Post by smeej »

version_five wrote: post #345
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, would actually have preferred if I could have just completed the change online. It's so interesting to me how generational this is, and how it changed so quickly. I used to work in something tangentially related to real estate. The sellers/landlords tended to all be older (50+, this was about 10 years ago), while the renters/some buyers tended to be millennials and younger. The older folks went apoplecti…

Communication preference is one thing. But what a lot of modern "online" support is really about is preventing people from getting support and forcing them into a dark pattern doing what the company wants and not what they want. If I could unsubscribe, deal with billing errors, resolve complaints, etc online I'd love it. But most support systems try and trap you in some Kafkaesque faq hell that never lets you get nea…

It's ironic, but at the company where I provide support (50-ish employees), one of the most common things I have to tell people is that they actually have to sign in and cancel their memberships themselves. They just fire off an email rather that investing even four seconds into typing the same message into the Support Center or just looking at their Account page and doing it themselves.

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

#368

Post by bobthepanda »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #292
ghaff wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Could you give an example of "transactions happening easily and reliably through a computer system"? Sure. A random travel booking. A stock purchase. Checking my account balance anywhere. These are all things that took visiting travel agents, brokers, and waiting for delayed monthly statements previously. We made a lot of phone calls and went into offices for multiple hours to handle things.

I think your examples also highlight the issue at hand - the automated systems are great when they work, but when they don't work it means that there are now a lot fewer real humans that can solve your problem. Take travel bookings. When I know where I'm going and have relatively firm dates, I'd much prefer the ease of online booking. However, when I'm more in the mood of "I want to go on vacation to country X, but I…

There is also the 'emergency' case where your room is double booked, your flight is cancelled, etc. For the most part, humans are the best at navigating edge cases (as opposed to a phone tree or an 'ai' that's hardly intelligent, and 90% in an emergency you're just tapping your foot to get to the person anyways).

Want to get to your destination that day? A travel agent is often 'in the know' about what myriad of connection options is most likely to get you there, particularly if the nonstops are all gone.

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

#369

Post by robryan »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #213
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.

in practise: have you ever used any automated customer support for anything? I've used it to cancel orders, cancel subscriptions, change a broadband package, arrange a return/refund for faulty goods. Do you prefer to talk to a human for things like this?

All things that would be more efficient if they just had a proper UI for them.

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

#370

Post by bobthepanda »

techsupporter wrote: post #169
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-service checkout at the store exit is such a wasted opportunity. In my (non-USA) grocery store I can scan product with my phone while I'm walking through the store and putting them in the cart; afterwards I only have to pay. Not having to take everything from my cart, scan it and put it back saves quite some time, even compared to cashiers scanning. There's also a handheld scanner for people that can't or don't…

We used to have that, at QFC/Kroger funny enough. They got rid of it because few people used it (I tried it and it was very clunky) and replaced it with more self checkout lanes.

Right, but the issue there seems to be execution, which admittedly non-tech firms dislike investing in.
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