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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

#161

Post by zmgsabst »

bsder wrote: post #74
autoexec wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a company that has very little right to complain about support costs. They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software and updates that required support in the first place. Nobody wants to call Microsoft for support. They do it because they've been forced to, usually by Microsoft. This kind of support can hardly be called "free" because even when Microsoft isn't charging customers…

> They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software I doubt it. I suspect the number one tech support call is "I forgot my password" and everything else is a long way below that. I'll slag on Microslop all day, but users are dumber than dumb.

Okay — but did they try to address that, eg, via easy to remember pass phrases? Or were they hacks pushing that complexity nonsense that XKCD called out as midwit math?

https://xkcd.com/936/

Passwords are the ultimate example of technologists turning in substandard bullshit and then blaming users for “holding it wrong”. If that’s Microsoft’s largest problem, they’ve deserved every call.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#162

Post by godelski »

com2kid wrote: post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

  > People demand free support.
  > When I worked at Microsoft
Last I checked windows was a paid product...

Last I checked the common nicknames were "Microslop" and "Winblows"

Maybe if Microslop spent more time improving their product they'd spend less money and time on support.

Sorry, I have no empathy for a multi trillion dollar company that's shoving things down our throats. I'm sorry you had a frustrating experience as an employee but my feelings about a mega corp are very different. It's like watching someone wipe away their tears with hundred dollar bills

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#163

Post by edot »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #131

This submission might be an HN record for highest % of commenters who skipped reading the article. I'm sure it's always high but so far there are 125 comments and maybe 3 or 4 referencing what was in the actual article.

Yes, from the title and first few comments I thought it was about getting customer support and having to talk to a chatbot first. For anyone else who didn't read, this article is about how mindlessly copy-pasting LLM output is comparable to "making me talk to your chatbot".

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#164

Post by DonHopkins »

wtallis wrote: post #121
chimeracoder wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Power cycling is not a solution. It's a crappy workaround, and you still had downtime because of it. The device should never get stuck in the first place, and the solution for that is fixing whatever bug is in the firmware. I'm sympathetic to the argument that companies should make support calls less necessary by providing better products and services, but "just write bug-free software" is not a solution.

Giving the device enough RAM to survive memory leaks during heavy usage would also be a valid option, as is automatic rebooting to get the device back into a clean state before the user experiences a persistent loss of connectivity. There are a wealth of available workarounds when you control everything about the device's hardware and software and almost everything about the network environments it'll be operating in…

You can't just throw RAM at embedded devices that you make millions of and have extremely thin margins on. Have you bothered to look at the price of RAM today? At high numbers and low margins you can barely afford to throw capacitors at them, let alone precious rare expensive RAM.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#165

Post by zahlman »

meatmanek wrote: post #125
zahlman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: https://blog.gpkb.org/posts/just-send-me-the-prompt/ (I could have sworn there was a popular HN submission a while back of this or a similar blog post, but damned if I can find it now.)

You're probably thinking of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888803

Yes, you're abs- I mean, that's the one.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#166

Post by DonHopkins »

edot wrote: post #163
appreciatorBus wrote: post #131

This submission might be an HN record for highest % of commenters who skipped reading the article. I'm sure it's always high but so far there are 125 comments and maybe 3 or 4 referencing what was in the actual article.

Yes, from the title and first few comments I thought it was about getting customer support and having to talk to a chatbot first. For anyone else who didn't read, this article is about how mindlessly copy-pasting LLM output is comparable to "making me talk to your chatbot".

"Don't make me read your blog"

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#167

Post by chillfox »

jibal wrote: post #98
com2kid wrote: post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

Why are you talking about support? The article has nothing to do with that.

I can't believe how far down I had to scroll before someone called the OP out for not having actually read the article and just decided to make up their own topic.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#168

Post by foxglacier »

Some people deserve it because they already write in a vague overly diplomatic, bloated way that's hard to extract the core meaning from - or has no meaning underneath all the words. Schoolteachers, I mean you. I'm happy using AI to email teachers because they might as well be human-powered AIs themselves.

We do need to be more tolerant of AI writing though. Some people need it because they can't express their ideas well themselves. You wouldn't say "no wheeled vehicles allowed inside" because that would exclude handicapped people who need wheelchairs.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#169

Post by godelski »

andrew_lettuce wrote: post #149
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial documents, FAQ pages, and so on and so forth. My brother used to work at tech support for XBox Live. He said that 80% of his calls were for password resets, something users can easily self-service. There's literally an option on the login form for "Forgot Password", and people would rather spend time ca…

The thing is a YOU don't get to decide this. Maybe the PW reset flow is significantly more complex for some people who don't have an actual human walk them though it; maybe Xfinity routers shouldn't need to be power cycled to fix problems. Maybe corporations should make their products better to avoid do many support calls or price that into the purchase price. At least let's be honest that the entire exercise is an a…

I've called for password resets before. Sometimes the email doesn't come in or can take like an hour (fuck "Magic links" and email OTPs...). I've even had support reset it and a day later get the half dozen reset requests I made.

Just because something appears simple and obvious doesn't mean it is. There's a lot of ways for those systems to fail. Might be the user's connection or might be the server the user is connecting to and the customer support is sending through a different one.

Big lesson I've learned is that if a lot of people are struggling with something that seems obvious then it probably isn't.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#170

Post by autoexec »

Blackthorn wrote: post #115
bsder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software I doubt it. I suspect the number one tech support call is "I forgot my password" and everything else is a long way below that. I'll slag on Microslop all day, but users are dumber than dumb.

Very easy solution to users forgetting their passwords. It's to not need a password for your software. Something that once upon a time, Microsoft did not require with their operating systems.

They also invented that whole "you changed your video card so now you have to call support to reactivate windows" process.
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