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

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

#361

Post by kridsdale3 »

ardacinar wrote: post #209
nonethewiser wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh kind of. What you say is definitely true of some products but it's funny, because the EXACT same criticisms were levied against machine learning. - "ML is such a buzzword. Everyone is trying to shoe-horn it into their product." - "Why are they putting 'machine learning' in their hero section? Just do the thing well. ML is an implementation detail." - "You dont even need ML for this. Simple linear regression woul…

Citation needed. Machine Learning was NOWHERE NEAR as overused as AI in user-facing communication. The last one is a traditional nerd criticism though, it has been present on HN for the last ~20 years. Kind of ignorable.

The broad public did catch on. They just know there is some invisible force out there named The Algorithm that acts like some fickle god they must appease in order to do well on the internet. Nobody can explain The Algorithm to you, because it isn't like what we learn in school or write in C, it's weights.

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

#363

Post by lambdaone »

bwfan123 wrote: post #336
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…

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 browser, forcing advertisers to send you non-AI ads if they want your attention.

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

#365

Post by throw4847285 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #338
gambiting wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like how these automated call handlers that say "Just tell us what you need help with" and then no matter how you phrase the sentence it just doesn't understand what you mean. Great idea in theory, horrendous execution. Bonus points if it automatically disconnects after 3 attempts without finding the right magic word from its dictionary of options.

The answer I always give to "tell us what you need help with" is "representative" or "speak to a human". I despise the automated systems that respond to that with "before we can route you to a human, we need to know what you're calling about". Fortunately, some of those will take the continued statement of "representative" as a sign that they should give up and give you a human to talk to. Not all of them, though.

Have you encountered those voicemail AI customer service representatives? Those can't route you anywhere so you're stuck talking to a robot.

I was just trying to schedule my daughter's dentist appointment and had to spend 10 minutes talking to an AI when I could have found a time that worked in 30 seconds with a human. And at the end of the whole process, she got my daughter's name wrong. It was demoralizing.

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

#366

Post by throw4847285 »

beej71 wrote: post #328
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…

This reminds me that I have to write my dentist. They replaced their beep answering machine with an AI chatbot, and the experience is horrible. I just want to say what I want, have it transcribed to text, and then have a human do something about it. It. I don't want to have to slowly explain to a bot who is just going to do the same thing. Plus, the first time you encounter it, it doesn't identify itself as a bot for…

Same thing happened to me at my dentist! Infuriating!

I suspect someone is selling these to dentists in particular. Dentists have cash to burn on these kinds of solutions, I guess.

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

#367

Post by wcfrobert »

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…

People say jobs with the "human touch" will stay relevant after AGI. And I'm like have you seen customer service? I can't even find the phone number anymore on amazon

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

#368

Post by jcranmer »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #337
alex_suzuki wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z hates AI… according to https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/g... (and others)

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.

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

#369

Post by DrewADesign »

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…

> even though management thinks it’s a great success the metrics tell a totally different story.

::2065, in a US Social Studies class::

And that, children, across many industries, along with the unfortunately-timed chatbot craze, then believed to be real AI, is the surprisingly simple origin of Corporate Optimistic Cynical Braindeadism. It’s a bit wordy, but it was LLM-generated before the Big Correction, and nobody bothered to fix it.

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

#370

Post by Evil_Saint »

jcranmer wrote: post #345
gambiting wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like how these automated call handlers that say "Just tell us what you need help with" and then no matter how you phrase the sentence it just doesn't understand what you mean. Great idea in theory, horrendous execution. Bonus points if it automatically disconnects after 3 attempts without finding the right magic word from its dictionary of options.

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 that.

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