Live data from Hacker News

Some companies find only humans can do the job

wsj.com

51–60 of 86 posts

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#51
post #18

I spent a lot of time and effort deploying automation in customer service. The idea was to do it in ways that were really valuable, as opposed to spreadsheet positive. Our management had been toasted too many times by folks selling snake oil, but my god savings were needed. They just had to be real... So first issue: developing measures that measure real overall service productivity... this is hard, the gaming is int…

I’m super curious, what are HAL and Holmes? > algorithm costs $100k to run I almost choked on my coffee. They used this line on multiple companies??

the $100k thing is referring to the costs of deep learning, in my case these costs torpedoed an otherwise good looking business case. Other things that academics do is to report "human level" results when they mean "10 people I recruited on AWS mechanical turk, who really didn't give a monkeys about what they were doing". For academic papers indicating that technology might be valuable in the real world it's clear that they should be read as "this technology might be valuable after 5 years of development". The problem is that this tech then gets hyped by thirdparties which then obscure the 5 years of work required - sometimes meaning that the 5 years doesn't get done...

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#52
post #18

I spent a lot of time and effort deploying automation in customer service. The idea was to do it in ways that were really valuable, as opposed to spreadsheet positive. Our management had been toasted too many times by folks selling snake oil, but my god savings were needed. They just had to be real... So first issue: developing measures that measure real overall service productivity... this is hard, the gaming is int…

I’m super curious, what are HAL and Holmes? > algorithm costs $100k to run I almost choked on my coffee. They used this line on multiple companies??

HAL is IBM, Holmes is Watson.

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#53
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect to be better in 30 years? We have NOW insane computing power, cool stuff like insane size FPGAs and super fast GPUs. Mechanical parts work with fraction of micron accuracy. And yet we have millions of workers picking simple shaped objects manually every day around the world.

We'll have increasingly more incentive if birthrates (and thus the size of the workforce) continues to shrink. Moreover, robots of all sorts will probably have come down in price which is one of the stumbling blocks mentioned in the article.

> We'll have increasingly more incentive if birthrates (and thus the size of the workforce) continues to shrink.

This is currently being solved by migration, countries that aren't open for immigrants are the ones paying the price.

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#54
post #18

I spent a lot of time and effort deploying automation in customer service. The idea was to do it in ways that were really valuable, as opposed to spreadsheet positive. Our management had been toasted too many times by folks selling snake oil, but my god savings were needed. They just had to be real... So first issue: developing measures that measure real overall service productivity... this is hard, the gaming is int…

I’m super curious, what are HAL and Holmes? > algorithm costs $100k to run I almost choked on my coffee. They used this line on multiple companies??

Oblique references to IBM and their product Watson. I assume they're afraid IBM would otherwise find their comment and sue them for libel (implausible).

For those that need further explanation, HAL is the killer computer in the movie 2001, the name was picked for the movie because the letters are shifted by one from "IBM." IBM's product Watson is named after Sherlock Holmes's sidekick, Dr. Watson.

Edit: the product was named after a prominent, early CEO of IBM, not the character; Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson is what the commenter was referencing (I've thought the Watson name was a Holmes reference since it won Jeopardy).

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#55
post #18

I spent a lot of time and effort deploying automation in customer service. The idea was to do it in ways that were really valuable, as opposed to spreadsheet positive. Our management had been toasted too many times by folks selling snake oil, but my god savings were needed. They just had to be real... So first issue: developing measures that measure real overall service productivity... this is hard, the gaming is int…

I’m super curious, what are HAL and Holmes? > algorithm costs $100k to run I almost choked on my coffee. They used this line on multiple companies??

> I’m super curious, what are HAL and Holmes?

HAL is just IBM encypted using Caesar cipher / ROT25 :)

Holmes must be Watson (but "Holmes" is also the marketing name given by another tech vendor in this space to their own AI product inspired by Watson - very creative)

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m super curious, what are HAL and Holmes? > algorithm costs $100k to run I almost choked on my coffee. They used this line on multiple companies??

Oblique references to IBM and their product Watson. I assume they're afraid IBM would otherwise find their comment and sue them for libel (implausible). For those that need further explanation, HAL is the killer computer in the movie 2001, the name was picked for the movie because the letters are shifted by one from "IBM." IBM's product Watson is named after Sherlock Holmes's sidekick, Dr. Watson. Edit: the product w…

Although the reference here makes sense, I always figured that Watson was named for Thomas Watson, the CEO of IBM?

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#59
post #58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oblique references to IBM and their product Watson. I assume they're afraid IBM would otherwise find their comment and sue them for libel (implausible). For those that need further explanation, HAL is the killer computer in the movie 2001, the name was picked for the movie because the letters are shifted by one from "IBM." IBM's product Watson is named after Sherlock Holmes's sidekick, Dr. Watson. Edit: the product w…

Although the reference here makes sense, I always figured that Watson was named for Thomas Watson, the CEO of IBM?

Oh dang, you're right!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Watson

Re: Some companies find only humans can do the job

#60
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...fiction? At the very least, robots have full coverage healthcare.

But only with regards to health issues that affect their workplace performance. I don't think they are covered for problems that may affect them outside of normal working hours. Speaking of which, I don't think their work/life balance is that great.

Not until the [redacted] laws, when they decided humans should work at least 10 hours a day and robots 1 hour a day, given that they produce 10x more work in the same amount of time.
Post reply on HN