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"Sludge" is a dumb name for monetizing misery with intentional barriers bullshit. Like the "work requirements" bullshit being added to SNAP and Medicaid to take away healthcare, housing, and food from the most vulnerable people. John Oliver just did a segment about this. (No link yet as of writing.)
I wonder if the coming AI Customer Service chatbots will be programmed with “sludge” as part of their operating procedure or can we expect an Asimov-like set of ethics from it where it will optimize to be as helpful to the best extent possible. Software does not need an attitude and it won’t get tired either.
This is where the average consumer needs agentic AI on their side.
I wonder if the coming AI Customer Service chatbots will be programmed with “sludge” as part of their operating procedure or can we expect an Asimov-like set of ethics from it where it will optimize to be as helpful to the best extent possible. Software does not need an attitude and it won’t get tired either.
I wonder if the coming AI Customer Service chatbots will be programmed with “sludge” as part of their operating procedure or can we expect an Asimov-like set of ethics from it where it will optimize to be as helpful to the best extent possible. Software does not need an attitude and it won’t get tired either.
I asked it to talk to a real person: a manager, legal, or compliance employee and it hung up on me
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So there’s even less accountability?
To restore balance to the power asymmetry. Customer agent brute forces against the enterprise to reach a favorable outcome.
Look at the AI “support” Google or Facebook offer. Is it an empowering experience or a black hole of frustration leading nowhere?
Any tool is a mirror of what its owner needs it to be. AI will just commit the same abuses cheaper, faster, and with less accountability.
Mediation was how corporates tried to get out, but it should demand good faith. An awful lot of what happened to her wouldn't pass the good faith bar. At the end, she'd be offered a damn sight more than competitive finance terms as a future customer. On the steps of the courthouse, and bound into an NDA, but for her initial stake money, and therefore a path only available to rich people..?
> a number of these obstacles are deliberate tools that discourage
This 'sludge' seems to be a common phenomena. Adobe are famous for making sign-up easy but unsubscribing extremely difficult.
'Sludge' had an unexpected upside when a friend's wordpress site went down when the host demanded 400% more for hosting. I waded through their intentionally broken UI and well-hidden online chat to try to help sort it out, but they eventually admitted (after three lengthly chats over 2 days) it was basically extortion as they advertised at $x but actually charge $(5x). The fact they wasted so much time was what frustrated me and prompted the irrational action of moving the entire site to lightsail, copying across the DNS records, setting up auto renew on SSL cert etc. A lot of work for a weekday evening considering I knew nothing about wp. But it worked!
tl;dr that hosting company's 'sludge' caused such frustration it prompted an irrational response, which had led to a very good outcome (leaving the company for a much better one, even through it wasn't worth it from a purely rational perspective).
This is where the average consumer needs agentic AI on their side.