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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

#421

Post by el_benhameen »

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…

I just bought some snacks at an airport store that was “fully” self-directed—swipe your card, walk through the gate, grab your stuff, and walk out. Except it required _more_ human assistants than a typical airport convenience store in order to handle the volume of confused and suspicious shoppers. “Wait, how does this work?”, “How do I get a receipt?”, “How do I know it won’t over charge me?”, etc.

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

#422

Post by esafak »

ke88y wrote: post #419
smeej wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> True technical support can't be replaced yet, but thousands upon thousands of tier 1 human drones can be. I disagree. Those agents are useless by design . They exist to do nothing in most cases, but none-the-less need to exist because of the regulatory + political + market backlash if they didn't. Chatbots don't fulfill the core requirement of being able to tell regulators and juries that you did, in fact, have an…

How do you know they're not just incompetent?

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

#423

Post by dheera »

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…

> Freaking "unintended item in baggage area".

When that happens I usually just pick up my stuff and start over at another machine. It's usually faster than waiting for them to come over and enter their password. Sometimes by the time I'm done there are 3 machines "waiting for assistance". (I just hope their UX researchers are watching from a corner, but that's their problem.)

Self checkout is supposed to be faster than non-self checkout, if it doesn't meet that bar it is useless.

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

#424

Post by ke88y »

esafak wrote: post #422
ke88y wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True technical support can't be replaced yet, but thousands upon thousands of tier 1 human drones can be. I disagree. Those agents are useless by design . They exist to do nothing in most cases, but none-the-less need to exist because of the regulatory + political + market backlash if they didn't. Chatbots don't fulfill the core requirement of being able to tell regulators and juries that you did, in fact, have an…

How do you know they're not just incompetent?

Tomato, Tomato

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

#425

Post by data-ottawa »

indy wrote: post #285
data-ottawa wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI can answer questions cheaper, but can it address real problems? I worked at Shopify when it was much smaller, it was fairly common for support staff to reach out with questions for the product team which drive fixing bugs or improving features. How can the AI chatbot fill that role? It’s a gap that offshoring/disintegrating support creates.

Yes, the AI chatbot will fill that role. It will answer questions that customers have and then it will feedback to the product team about the most common queries made by customers. Honestly, the Hacker News crowd have been such visionaries about the potential for technology but as soon as that technology infringes upon their livelihood they develop these massive blind spots.

There's a difference "between 12 people asked about X" and reaching out on Slack to a product team "a customer asked about X and the behaviour is weird, why would enabling setting Y cause X to ...", and that's the issue that I worry goes missing with removing support staff from the main org.

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

#426

Post by boringuser2 »

CSR is kinda done.

AI is just better at this task to a shocking degree

My company is talking about this as well, and they're right to do so.

Now, massive layoffs during a period of stagflation, depressed wages and overpriced necessities like housing, transportation, and healthcare is really, really bad, so anyone comparing this to other technologies in a hopeful manner is way off the mark.

That being said, you can't really predict the future, and ruminating on potential negatives is always bad.

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

#427

Post by bdcravens »

TheCleric wrote: post #221
bdcravens wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire software industry is based on replacing jobs with more efficient alternatives.

Speak for yourself.

If you've been in software for any amount of time, and haven't written software that involves either automating processes (thereby making those processes less dependent on human labor) or increasing efficiency (doing more with less human labor) that's unusual.

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

#428

Post by avodonosov »

smeej wrote: post #361
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.

I haven't, but saw this in movies: https://youtu.be/BqnFnWSYzaQ

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

#429

Post by echelon »

WhackyIdeas wrote: post #380

At least their chatbots might be better than the ‘humans’ we spoke to a few years ago at Shopify. Atrocious company, zero ethics then and zero ethics now it appears. We moved to Wordpress/Woocommerce and have never regretted it for a second. Well, I lie… we regret ever trying wordpress.com (they are short on ethics too, such as entering and walking around your house uninvited… like the orders screen of our back-end!)…

These are businesses at scale. They're not going to hold your hand. Be reasonable.

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

#430

Post by prayze »

WhackyIdeas wrote: post #380

At least their chatbots might be better than the ‘humans’ we spoke to a few years ago at Shopify. Atrocious company, zero ethics then and zero ethics now it appears. We moved to Wordpress/Woocommerce and have never regretted it for a second. Well, I lie… we regret ever trying wordpress.com (they are short on ethics too, such as entering and walking around your house uninvited… like the orders screen of our back-end!)…

I have to echo your same sentiments. I swore off them a year ago when I provided support with step-by-step screenshots of how to produce my exact error, and even the error itself. The support told me it wasn't an issue and closed it.
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