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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

#461
post #76
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real thing i think people forget is that humans actually value time and effort from other humans. AI is often used by people who want to do neither and that's really what it boils down to. Ask yourself, would you like to receive a christmas or birthday card with a personalized message or something produced you know was 100% produced by AI bot - even better when it has a hallucination in there.

But that's the rare exception. Almost nobody prefers an artisanal chair over one from IKEA, especially when they see the price tag.

That one from IKEA was designed by actual people though. If I had a chair designed by robots it probably wouldn’t be as nice, comfortable and evidently, affordable.

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

#462
post #324

>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 know, because in their personal capacity, they hate interacting with AI customer service agents from other companies.

But their bonus depends on driving down costs in their company.

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

#463

>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 don't immediately hate talking to an chatbot, my dislike comes from chatbots that sound like humans but can't actually do anything useful. Maybe it just searches the KB and returns an article or maybe it just collects information for the ticket and I still need to wait for a human to reply back. Like I know how to search the KB, I wouldn't be trying to talk to support if I didn't have a real issue. Or it takes forever giving my information to a seemingly real person only to be told to wait, just let me fill out a form and give me a queue ETA. And half the time the real agent can't see the AI messages so I'm stuck repeating myself. Or my question is a very simple one that an AI agent could have the capability of figuring out (is the system down? Unlock my account, etc) but it can't because it's incapable of doing anything other than maybe searching the KB.

It's like you hired the dumbest idiot to answer support phone calls who can't do anything other than cold transferring me to someone that can do stuff. It seriously makes me reconsider doing business with them. What critical expense did they neglect in order to have the funds for an AI idiot? It just feels like corner cutting or something to impress stakeholders that doesn't actually improve product quality or worker efficiency, it's just a vanity project.

If you're not willing to build an AI agent that can actually do real work while also being hardened against exploits (see Instagram), do not spend the money. You are either just going to waste money on the dumbest receptionist money can buy or you are giving away the keys to the kingdom to anyone with a clever prompt.

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

#464
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real thing i think people forget is that humans actually value time and effort from other humans. AI is often used by people who want to do neither and that's really what it boils down to. Ask yourself, would you like to receive a christmas or birthday card with a personalized message or something produced you know was 100% produced by AI bot - even better when it has a hallucination in there.

Hallmark built a brand on creating generic messages in card.

Perhaps, but you can tell that these cards were made by real people. The art, messages, etc. are all different with varying levels of humor, seriousness, etc. LLMs really seem to converge to specific patterns regardless of the task that are instantly identifiable and low quality. What ends up happening is that the person on the other end thinks “this guy is a moron, he needed a robot to write out a happy birthday card?” Sure getting the hallmark card is mass produced, but they really do hire real artists and writers to make these cards. The robot creates a converged output that is instantly identifiable and has perceived lower quality.

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the hitler salute?

Correct

"Nazis are fine, but touchscreens aren't" seems like a weird place to draw the line, but I guess it's good that you have one at all.

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

#466

>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 recently took my car to the dealership to get my A/C fixed. On the drive home, I discovered that they'd somehow screwed up my blinkers when they were fixing their A/C. When I called the next day to explain the problem, confirm they knew it was their issue to fix at no cost and to schedule a time to come in I got an AI Assistant. An AI Assistant that has not been trained to expect an issue to be their fault and who kept trying to direct me book on their site or to book a new appointment to get the problem fixed at my cost through her.

The dealership's decision to hand things over to AI, and to choose to focus that AI on only booking appointments instead of fixing problems is a proverbial F U to me. It's the dealership shifting more work on to me. It's disrespectful and wasteful of my time. By the time I managed to get to a human I was angry and distrustful.

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

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, what are the positive viewpoints of generative AI in the end? Are there others major ones than the following? * My vibe coding machine goes brrrrt and that's all I care about * My college essay cheating machine goes brrrt and that's all I care about * My custom waifu/porn-generating machine goes brrrt and that's all I care about * The concept of AI is drawing all the investor money and that's all I care abo…

Here's one: AI democratizes the ability to produce software, which has mostly been an arcane craft wielded by a priestly class. Now anyone, if they know what they want and it isn't too complex, can talk to AI and get working (if not also janky) software in a very short amount of time. Hopefully this breaks the grip that platforms/large corporations have on personal software and the internet.

I would counter that:

a) it seems likely to me that in the end, few normal people know what to do with the ability to create their own software for their private use,

b) getting bespoke software working on the platforms that the majority of people actually use (Android and iOS) is somewhere between hard and impossible, and

c) large corporations have a de facto grip on AI as well, local models require you to have the knowhow and beefy hardware to run them, and they’re not magic software machines like Claude.

All in all, it seems rathet optimistic that AIs could do much if anything to help consumers against corporations. But I concede that it is a viewpoint that’s at least less selfish than most.

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

#469

>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 went through the text logs for ours and it was all:

"Fuck off and pass me to a human" and stuff like that.

No one wants this who's calling you. We are literally damaging our company with it.

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

#470

I don't understand people claiming all this "the average consumer doesn't like AI" stuff is useful at all, when AI companies are making stratospheric revenue, and ChatGPT is the 5th most visited website.

I see a big difference between AI people choose to use themselves (eg ChatGPT), and AI people are forced to use (whether unhelpful customer-service bots, or LLMs attempting to cover up for poor user interface design).
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