Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

sierra.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 168 posts

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#91

Post by downrightmike »

paganel wrote: post #66
eaenki wrote: post #37

I remember waiting for uber next to him in SF one night 10+ years ago. This dude must be the son of some mafia boss or some shit and have some crazy blackmail to raise billions for companies that are copies of products where he’s the 12th company doing the same thing.. never turning a profit or anything and yet raising ever more money. doesn’t make sense otherwise

No mafia ties needed, just your regular Security State plant. From here [1] (I'm sure there's also an official link for it, can't be bothered to check): > OpenAI has appointed Paul M. Nakasone, a retired general of the US Army and a former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), to its board of directors, the company announced on Thursday. and the money quote: > “Artificial intelligence has the potential to have…

"...achieving its mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity[that remains after the purge].”

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#92

Post by downrightmike »

pmdr wrote: post #4

So we're supposed to believe that removing humans from customer support will lead to better outcomes? > Ensure you only pay for the value Sierra delivers with outcome-based pricing. Yeah... that won't last.

It is just to get hold of the process and make it impossible to go away from them. Then they will jack up the prices like we've never seen. Then it will be "people are actually cheaper why are we using them?" - can't move off the platform, they own our IP even though they said they wouldn't but they updated their ToS without us noticing last month and here we are.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#93

Post by ej88 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #90
ej88 wrote: post #43

It's always interesting seeing how HN reacts to AI CX (as someone who works in this space). Yes, the tech savvy crowd loves to say how they always ask for a human and love old school phone trees in reality 50-80% of callers come in with easily answerable questions because they don't know how to nav the website and prefer to ask in natural language The vast majority of callers call in to resolve their issue, and most…

I have yet to encounter an AI agent that was able to handle my support questions adequately. I always end up having to get a human (which is becoming increasingly difficult or virtually impossible). I'm sure AI Support Agents will be implemented better, but so far in my experience, the humans I connect to far outperform the AI agents.

that's fair, most implementations in the industry are in the early stages and implementing a full powered agent with access to all the tools it needs is hard (very political as you can imagine). i hope over the next year you notice them getting better!

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#94

Post by colesantiago »

ej88 wrote: post #46
eaenki wrote: post #37

I remember waiting for uber next to him in SF one night 10+ years ago. This dude must be the son of some mafia boss or some shit and have some crazy blackmail to raise billions for companies that are copies of products where he’s the 12th company doing the same thing.. never turning a profit or anything and yet raising ever more money. doesn’t make sense otherwise

hes board chair of openai and is ex co-ceo of salesforce, ex cto of facebook, can get a meeting with any exec in F500... their moat is distribution

> their moat is distribution

It is trust.

Everyone in the valley knows Bret Taylor and will back any project he does, even if the product has no distribution.

The same way everyone in the valley knows Naval Ravikant for example, angels and VCs will back any project he does even if his product has no distribution.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#95

Post by nubg »

ej88 wrote: post #93
insane_dreamer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to encounter an AI agent that was able to handle my support questions adequately. I always end up having to get a human (which is becoming increasingly difficult or virtually impossible). I'm sure AI Support Agents will be implemented better, but so far in my experience, the humans I connect to far outperform the AI agents.

that's fair, most implementations in the industry are in the early stages and implementing a full powered agent with access to all the tools it needs is hard (very political as you can imagine). i hope over the next year you notice them getting better!

thanks for your insights, however, citation needed that they will get better

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#96

Post by jjmarr »

ej88 wrote: post #43

It's always interesting seeing how HN reacts to AI CX (as someone who works in this space). Yes, the tech savvy crowd loves to say how they always ask for a human and love old school phone trees in reality 50-80% of callers come in with easily answerable questions because they don't know how to nav the website and prefer to ask in natural language The vast majority of callers call in to resolve their issue, and most…

SWEs get paid to get good at reading documentation on processes. I think HN is biased since we'll only escalate once documentation can't help us.

I'm also bullish because AI coding agents give up easily if my problem is complicated.

I think it'll be easier to convince an AI to transfer me to level 2 support than a human.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

svnt wrote: post #73
ej88 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hes board chair of openai and is ex co-ceo of salesforce, ex cto of facebook, can get a meeting with any exec in F500... their moat is distribution

Is that really a moat though or something like a firehose of gasoline?

> Is that really a moat though or something like a firehose of gasoline?

It's a moat from a defensive perspective. It's a firehose from an offensive one. Outside state capture, most moats are both.

Re: Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation

#99

Post by toraway »

ej88 wrote: post #43

It's always interesting seeing how HN reacts to AI CX (as someone who works in this space). Yes, the tech savvy crowd loves to say how they always ask for a human and love old school phone trees in reality 50-80% of callers come in with easily answerable questions because they don't know how to nav the website and prefer to ask in natural language The vast majority of callers call in to resolve their issue, and most…

  > Agents (if implemented well) are an order of magnitude more effective at resolving issues compared to a call centre worker who is reading off a script and churn within 9 months
For this to be true, the agent needs to actually be given the means to solve the problem, otherwise an "agent" is just a glorified help page that wastes your time.

But it seems like companies don't want to do this part, possibly because of fears that someone will trick the agent into giving them a refund or something. Or because the actual goal is to optimize for fewer costly refunds/cancellations/policy exceptions etc.

So for whatever reason, they stay stuck in that useless local maxima while simultaneously making traditional help increasingly difficult to get ahold of when needed for an overall net worse experience as a customer.

Post reply on HN