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95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

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Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#391

Post by thfuran »

Spivak wrote: post #389
thfuran wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company that could save millions by not having staff write up their own call notes almost surely is already doing that.

And yet the topic of conversation is a company that did just that. The AI is just the smoke and mirrors that pushed the business to do it. Staff aren't writing their own call notes anymore. The LLM summary, almost by definition, isn't adding any additional signal to the call audio. If your data engineering pipeline works by processing LLM generated notes then it must work equally well processing the call transcript—t…

I think you’ve misunderstood something somewhere in the conversation. Text notes and transcripts are useful. They are widely used and integrated into existing processes at probably every large company that’s producing them.

You appear to be suggesting that they should just stop doing that and switch to processing audio instead because that’s somehow more pre-existing than their existing processes and they probably don’t need the text for all the things they’re already using it for?

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#392

Post by ponector »

jawns wrote: post #56

Full disclosure: I'm currently in a leadership role on an AI engineering team, so it's in my best interest for AI to be perceived as driving value. Here's a relatively straightforward application of AI that is set to save my company millions of dollars annually. We operate large call centers, and agents were previously spending 3-5 minutes after each call writing manual summaries of the calls. We recently switched to…

Your company saved millions means they fired many agents and hiked amount of cases per agent?

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#393

Post by seatac76 »

herval wrote: post #270
seatac76 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I wonder if the Windsurf folks saw the writing on the wall and cashed out when they could.

I was a big Windsurf fan. What they did with their team became a massive cautionary tale around the current wave of startups. It's creating a distrust culture that's gonna be very hard to repair (not that it matters for the handful of newly-minted billionaires)

Agreed. It was a bizarre exit and they did screw over their employees which leads to me to believe that the GenAI IDE market will be the first to implode.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#395

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

doorhammer wrote: post #384
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely don't think that the GP is actually making someone actually listen to the transcription and summary and check if the summary is wrong. I almost have this gut feeling that its the case (I may be wrong though) Like imagine this, if the agent could just spend 3 minutes writing a summary, why would you use AI to create a summary and then have some other person listen to the whole audio recording and check if…

They might not be, and their use-case might not be one I agree with. I can just imagine a plausible reality where they made a reasonable decision given the incentives and constraints, and I default to that. I'm basically inferring how this would go down in the context I worked under, not the GP, because I don't know the details of their real context. I think I'm seeing where I'm not being as clear as I could, though.…

Man firstly I wanted to say that I loved your comment to which I responded to and then this comment too. I feel actually happy reading it and maybe its hard explaing it but maybe its because I learned something new.

So firstly, I thought that you meant that they had to listen to every call so uh yeah a misunderstanding since I admittedly don't know much about it, but still its great to hear from an expert.

I also don't know about the GP's context but I truly felt like this because of how I said in some other comments too on how people are just slapping AI stickers and markets rewarding it even though they are mostly being reckless in how they are using AI (which the post basically says) and I thought of them as the same, though I still doubt them though. Only more context from their side can tell.

Secondly, I really appreciate the paragraph that you wrote about testing different strategies and almost how indepth you went into man. Really feel like one of those comments that I feel like will be useful for me one day or the other Seriously thanks!

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#396

Post by eldenring »

vdupras wrote: post #376
dang wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. " " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have trouble understanding how that guideline applies here. The original article shows how it's possible that we're about to see an AI bubble pop, the parent comment show generic american arrogance[1], and I come up with a historical example of such a mix of hubris and arrogance. If my comment can be characterized as flamebait, it has to be to a lesser degree than the parent, right? And I'm not even claiming that t…

I'm not American, I think its sad to see my country dismiss AI and continue to fall behind.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#397

Post by vdupras »

eldenring wrote: post #396
vdupras wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble understanding how that guideline applies here. The original article shows how it's possible that we're about to see an AI bubble pop, the parent comment show generic american arrogance[1], and I come up with a historical example of such a mix of hubris and arrogance. If my comment can be characterized as flamebait, it has to be to a lesser degree than the parent, right? And I'm not even claiming that t…

I'm not American, I think its sad to see my country dismiss AI and continue to fall behind.

It's alright, I'm not French :)

But yeah, I have to be colored surprised. I was certain I was replying to arrogance, rather than (possibly misplaced) admiration. I guess that puts me on the wrong side of the moderation fence. Sorry.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#398

Post by ch4s3 »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #382
ch4s3 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine OP is probably mining service call summaries to find common service issues, or at least that's what I would do.

That's what everyone says they'll do and then it never gets touched again.

I guess you just know better than everyone, include the people who do look at user interactions. I know I've done it, so I must be no one.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#399

Post by xpe »

varispeed wrote: post #11

The funniest part isn’t that AI hasn’t delivered profits. It’s that the only “value” most people got from LLMs was accidentally rediscovering what Google used to be before it turned into an ad-riddled casino. Executives mistook that novelty for a business revolution. After years of degraded search, SEO spam, and “zero-click” answers, suddenly ChatGPT spat out a coherent paragraph and everyone thought: my god, the fut…

Grain of truth acknowledged, though much exaggerated -- to the point of forgetting history.

> No - you just got a glimpse of 2009 Google with autocomplete.

Go look at the kinds of "answers" you got in 2009 with Google's autocomplete.

Time to drop this convenient nicely-packaged narrative.

> These things don’t think, don’t learn, don’t adapt.

Perhaps some don't -- for some intentionally constructed definitions of these terms. Adding a feedback loop (chain of thought, etc) challenges even such definitions though.

> if you expect parrots to run your company, you get birdshite for returns.

If this is a reference to "stochastic parrots" metaphor, then I would encourage you to read these articles and HN comments below, which push-back against misunderstandings or overuse of that metaphor:

[1]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HxRjHq3QG8vcYy4yy/the-stocha...

[2]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7aHCZbofofA5JeKgb/memetic-ju...

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44299996

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44926540

[5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44967655

[6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43676755

[7]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43585572

[8]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42351348

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#400

Post by ponector »

lljk_kennedy wrote: post #320
doorhammer wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, have you noticed an impact on agent morale with this? Specifically: Do they spend more time actually taking calls now? I guess as long as you're not at the burnout point with utilization it's probably fine, but when I was still supporting call centers I can't count the number of projects I saw trying to push utilization up not realizing how real burnout is at call centers. I assume that's not news to you…

Thank you, I came to say this too. You're mushing your humans harder, and they'll break. Those 5 mins of downtime post-call aren't 100% note taking - it's catching their breath, trying to re-compose after dealing with a nasty customer, trying to re-energise after a deep technical session etc. I think AI in general is just being misused to optimise local minima in detriment to the overall system.

Imagine how AI changed the call center's work:

1. Some agents have been laid off.

2. Survivors got stripped off 5-minutes summarizing breaks between calls and assigned new higher targets of how many calls should they take per hour/day.

And it wasn't a good job before AI...

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