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Don't make me talk to your chatbot

raymyers.org

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Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#3

Post by kokanee »

I view the issue of inefficient communication as a problem that will wane as LLMs progress, and a bit idealistic about the efficiency of most human-to-human communication. I feel strongly that we shouldn't be forced to interact with chatbots for a much simpler reason: it's rude. It's dismissive of the time and attention of the person on the other end; it demonstrates laziness or an inability to succeed without cutting corners, and it is an affront to the value of human interaction (regardless of efficiency).

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#4

Post by senko »

I thought this was going to be about (customer support) chatbots, which can be a good thing.

"Don't make me talk to your [customer support] chatbot" reads like "Don't make me go to an ATM for a cash withdrawal". If I can solve a thing quickly and effectively without waiting forever to speak to an overworked customer support agent on another contitent, I would very much like that!

Well, anyways, the post is not about that. It's about posting AI-generated text (blog posts, PR summaries). Which I agree with, although there are a bunch of holes in the argument, such as:

> 1. Figure out what you want to say. 2. Say it. That first figuring-out part is important.

Well, yeah, I can figure out what I want to say, then have the chatbot say it. So looks like the second part is important, too.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#6

Post by ericd »

kokanee wrote: post #3

I view the issue of inefficient communication as a problem that will wane as LLMs progress, and a bit idealistic about the efficiency of most human-to-human communication. I feel strongly that we shouldn't be forced to interact with chatbots for a much simpler reason: it's rude. It's dismissive of the time and attention of the person on the other end; it demonstrates laziness or an inability to succeed without cuttin…

I feel like that ship sailed long ago with phone trees and hour-long support wait times becoming normal. Not that it's an ideal state of affairs, but I'd much rather talk to a chatbot than wait for an hour for a human who doesn't want to talk to anyone, as long as that chatbot is empowered to solve my problem.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#8

Post by nickff »

kokanee wrote: post #3

I view the issue of inefficient communication as a problem that will wane as LLMs progress, and a bit idealistic about the efficiency of most human-to-human communication. I feel strongly that we shouldn't be forced to interact with chatbots for a much simpler reason: it's rude. It's dismissive of the time and attention of the person on the other end; it demonstrates laziness or an inability to succeed without cuttin…

The problem is that people are very rude to customer service representatives, so companies spend money training CSRs, who often quit after a short period of being abused by customers. Automated reception systems disallow people from reaching representatives for the same reason.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#9

Post by tombert »

I guess part of the advantage of being an extremely long-winded writer who makes lots of typos is that people know that what I'm writing is probably written by a human.

Though maybe people will start supplying context like "no em dashes, and occasionally misspell a word or two", and soon you won't even be able to tell that.

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