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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

#461

Post by jiggawatts »

chmod775 wrote: post #449
jiggawatts wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people are "blown away" by the absolute skill level of ChatGPT. It's more that there exists an AI that can do this at all . This just wasn't a thing three years ago, and the first truly capable version (GPT 4) only become publicly accessible this year . Some things I've seen GPT 4 do is "as good as human", often better than average. For example, spotting bugs or reverse-engineering code and then writing doc comme…

You want to trust that thing to review your code? It will often give you eloquent explanations, trying to convince you that code has a certain bug, while completely missing the actual bug. You'll be gaslit into chasing down dead ends, distracted from actual issues. Example: "In JS, create a Promise that is resolved with some emitted value from an EventEmitter, or rejected if an 'error' event is emitted first. Write t…

90-95% of programmers I've worked with can't "grok" asynchronous or multi-threaded programming, and when forced to write async code it is littered with bugs.

ChatGPT doesn't need to find 100% of bugs in 100% of code out there.

Think of it as a "better linter". It's cheap, and finding just 50% of bugs would be an enormous step up for quality in most code bases.

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

#462

Post by ravenstine »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #446

After a recent horrible experience with JetBlue customer service, it has become obvious to me that the true purpose of all "customer service" at major companies is not "solve the customer's problem" but "make the customer go away." This seems to be true regardless of whether humans or robots are involved. If humans are involved they will be low-paid hourly workers on the other side of the planet, staring at the same…

Given how The Google seems to still set the standard for everything, should this be new information to us?

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

#463

Post by carlosjobim »

RugnirViking wrote: post #218
carlosjobim wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice I see a lot of businesses murdering their competition because they offer better customer service.

the biggest companies in the world (microsoft, google, netflix, amazon, facebook) have pretty awful customer service no imo. What kinds of companies are you talking about?

The world is so much more than these few tech giants where everybody at HN works.

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

#464

Post by xtracto »

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…

>Given labor costs and labor shortages, expect even more

I cant accept this. Labour cost is as cheap as it has been, as it can be seen in those inflation vs salary increase historic charts.

Similarly with labour shortage: population is just growing and growing, what labour shortage?

I think reality is grimmer: companies are unwilling to pay humans a fair share for their labour, as it happened in the past. Nowadays companies prefer crappy cheap AI with 1/10th of the cost instead of humans.

It's depressing. We need a) steep government taxes to companies that do this so that part of those savings go to society, b) UBI paid by those taxes so that people can keep living a dignified life.

(Btw I'm not American and dont live there, so Socialist measures are OK to me) socialists not communist

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

#465

Post by donmcronald »

jiggawatts wrote: post #461
chmod775 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to trust that thing to review your code? It will often give you eloquent explanations, trying to convince you that code has a certain bug, while completely missing the actual bug. You'll be gaslit into chasing down dead ends, distracted from actual issues. Example: "In JS, create a Promise that is resolved with some emitted value from an EventEmitter, or rejected if an 'error' event is emitted first. Write t…

90-95% of programmers I've worked with can't "grok" asynchronous or multi-threaded programming, and when forced to write async code it is littered with bugs. ChatGPT doesn't need to find 100% of bugs in 100% of code out there. Think of it as a "better linter". It's cheap, and finding just 50% of bugs would be an enormous step up for quality in most code bases.

> Think of it as a "better linter".

No way. A linter is deterministic. ChatGPT is all over the place and, for me, it’s wrong almost every time I ask it anything. I wouldn’t trust it to tell me the ingredients in a pepperoni pizza. I’m definitely not letting it give me programming advice.

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

#466

Post by moomoo11 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #446

After a recent horrible experience with JetBlue customer service, it has become obvious to me that the true purpose of all "customer service" at major companies is not "solve the customer's problem" but "make the customer go away." This seems to be true regardless of whether humans or robots are involved. If humans are involved they will be low-paid hourly workers on the other side of the planet, staring at the same…

The goal is to sell.

Just like how people go nuts over “insane” MRR/ARR while fueling unsustainable enterprises. I guess it’s one way to wash money.

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

#467

Post by onetokeoverthe »

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.

[dead]

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

#469

Post by DangitBobby »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #455
dorkwood wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, when you said you used automated customer support to "cancel orders, cancel subscriptions, change a broadband package, arrange a return/refund for faulty goods", you're saying you used UI to do those things?

Correct.

The goal of communication is to share ideas and reach an understanding, not to be technically correct. No one else was thinking about websites when talking about "support" and I'm guessing you knew that.

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

#470

Post by grepfru_it »

Modified3019 wrote: post #182
gnufied wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’ve found it heavily depends on the system the store uses and if improvements are actively made. Walmart’s self-checkouts are great, and I’ve noticed distinct improvements over the years, reducing or removing common sources of issues. WinCo’s on the other hand have been and continue to be prone to becoming a pain in the ass requiring multiple employee interventions. I personally hate interaction at grocery stores, I…

>Walmart's self-checkout

Look up next time you use your credit card :|

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