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

Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

wpvip.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 608 posts

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#381

Post by irishcoffee »

Evil_Saint wrote: post #370
jcranmer wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh fucking hell yes, how much I hate that shit. Bring back the "press 5 for XYZ" phone trees, I never have problems getting the systems to understand what I'm trying to indicate there.

I definitely prefer phone trees the ai agents. Something that has never made sense to me is why we even need most of the phone trees. Could they not just have separate numbers? Billing is X num. CS is Y num. Save the human species minutes for every fucking call. I realize the decision makers have been prioritizing the opposite. Making calls take as long as possible but I have no idea what is incentivizing them to do…

They're just filters to see if you actually need help. "They're willing to sit here for 4 minutes listening to prompts and hitting buttons, they must need help" because as we all know, in most cases it doesn't matter which sequence of numbers you press, the same person is going to answer the phone, or same group of people.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#382

Post by RoadieRoller »

rationalist wrote: post #133
tennfown wrote: post #99

I was at the grocery store a few weeks back browsing the clearance with my girlfriend. To my amazement I picked up a, grifty “hair regrowth” supplement. Right on the top of the box, they had the text: “AI TECHNOLOGY” If you want to know what the fuck is happening to this country you just have to understand that we’re at a point where a company finds it even worth slapping an obvious grift on an obvious grift because…

To be fair, it was in clearance.

Good one!

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#383

Post by groundzeros2015 »

torben-friis wrote: post #92
dbalatero wrote: post #5

I could be wrong, but it feels like one issue is that AI seems to cater more as a signal to venture capital and the internals of the tech industry in a lot of these products, while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

>while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour. I would say that undersells the (not neutral, actively negative) impact of AI to many. What many people hear is "made with the tech that plagiarizes, leaves artists (and soon you as well) without a job, and makes things generic and bland!" You might as well ma…

Young people do not care about plagiarism.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#384

Post by lacy_tinpot »

jcranmer wrote: post #368
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true schools wouldn't have a problem with AI. AI usage is rampant.

AIUI, most of the AI usage by students is seen by themselves as cheating, and cheating is largely for the tasks that you don't care about. Which means there's likely a strong association with students of generative AI work products with "we don't care about the quality of this stuff." Rampant use of AI for cheating is not at all incompatible with negative opinions of AI.

Is this all being astroturfed?

Even researcher are using AI to do their research. It's not just being used for cheating.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#385

Post by lacy_tinpot »

prmoustache wrote: post #377
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people clicking through websites will be viewed the same as people going to the library and reading through books to research. You just get the information you need way quicker. Recently I had to make changes to cancel my flight. Luckily the website had an agent and I used it to cancel my flight. Didn't have to wait for an email/chat or worse call. I even rescheduled my flight using the same website agent. It…

I'd tend to say that it is probably because they haven't yet crippled their AI bot with the same dark patterns (trying to make you select insurance, paid selection of seats, additional luggages, rented car at the airport) as they do on the website. Airlines websites could be so much simpler and quick to use if they weren't designed to be full of traps. Don't expect that edge to persist indefinitely, they are in the a…

It becomes a problem when individual users are driving these agents for them, locally through computer use.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#386

Post by [deleted] »

victor106 wrote: post #314

>No customer or user wakes up and says, ‘I hope I get to talk to a chat bot or an AI agent today This is so true. I led the implementation of an AI customer service agent and even though management thinks it’s a great success the metrics tell a totally different story. Our customers hated it. I haven’t seen anything in tech that is hated more. Before you think we did a bad job with our solution, I can tell you we wen…

[deleted]

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#387

Post by LPisGood »

fckgw wrote: post #324
victor106 wrote: post #314

>No customer or user wakes up and says, ‘I hope I get to talk to a chat bot or an AI agent today This is so true. I led the implementation of an AI customer service agent and even though management thinks it’s a great success the metrics tell a totally different story. Our customers hated it. I haven’t seen anything in tech that is hated more. Before you think we did a bad job with our solution, I can tell you we wen…

What is is about management where they can't see how bad and half-baked these customer service agents are, but the customer can tell INSTANTLY they're AI and just not helpful in the slightest

I recommend everyone in this thread call OpenAI and talk that support agent. I had some issue and tried to trip it up, spoke naturally and ambiguously, and it actually did a pretty good job.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#388

Post by tempest_ »

prmoustache wrote: post #341
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guarantee this is a generational split. The younger demographics will prefer the AI bot to talk to.

I don't thinks so because the ai bot will reliably give you the answers you could already get from the website to begin with and will never solve your problem. If people are calling or opening an interactive chat, this is because all automatized procedures have already failed and you are in a situation not supported by them.

The problem is that the agents can not be trusted to do things so at the end of the day you wade through loads of crap and they cant solve your problem because they usually only have the same powers you do.

Great if grandma doesnt know how to use a web form, fucking useless for everyone else.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#389

Post by pluralmonad »

lambdaone wrote: post #363
bwfan123 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immediately skip all youtube ads that are AI generated, and I can easily spot them. Not just that, I am planning to actively avoid those brands that are doing this. A small way to send a message that this form of AI sucks. In addition, I make it a point to compliment humans that assist me in customer support, and ask them to tell their management that they need to hire more humans.

The problem is that your principled opposition to these ads by voting with your wallet does nothing. The advantage to the advertiser is that AI allows them to vomit out ads even more cheaply and to make even more micro-targeted versions of them, and the greater number of suckers sold to more than offsets principled opposers. The real solution would be the ability to block AI-generated adverts completely in your brows…

The real solution is blocking all ad tech. I'll show anyone who asks me how to set up an ad blocker in a decent browser.

Re: Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff

#390

Post by npongratz »

fckgw wrote: post #324
victor106 wrote: post #314

>No customer or user wakes up and says, ‘I hope I get to talk to a chat bot or an AI agent today This is so true. I led the implementation of an AI customer service agent and even though management thinks it’s a great success the metrics tell a totally different story. Our customers hated it. I haven’t seen anything in tech that is hated more. Before you think we did a bad job with our solution, I can tell you we wen…

What is is about management where they can't see how bad and half-baked these customer service agents are, but the customer can tell INSTANTLY they're AI and just not helpful in the slightest

They don't use their own product, and they don't want their engineers to use their product either. They want velocity, and you can't have velocity if you're bogged down by doing end-to-end testing and finding friction and whatnot.
Post reply on HN