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White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

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Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#71

Post by guytv »

rspoerri wrote: post #32

People tend to forget how fast technological development advances. Even if you lived trough it you tend to forget how recently the world looked very different. - before 2012 there was no smartphone - before 2001 there was no wikipedia - before 1995 less then 10 percent of the rich country home users had internet - before 2023 there was no ai available to home users. Hardware has been getting faster by a factor of 100…

Correction:

> - before 2012 there was no smartphone

- by 2011, 35% of US adults had smartphones, iPhone released June, 2007

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#72

Post by truetraveller »

mikkupikku wrote: post #45
truetraveller wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Top customer service" and AI do not mix. People hate an AI response more than a late, real response.

AI needn't respond, it can instead be used to sort the meaningless noise from the actionable complaints, where previously all would have been ignored. Raise only the issues that matter and can be addressed to the human.

This I can somewhat agree to. But how much time is saved vs just skimming a support request by an agent? Or, just having filters for "keywords" like "sales" / "purchase" to increase priority?

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#75

Post by mmiliauskas »

skywhopper wrote: post #30
fabian2k wrote: post #22

I think the argument here is a bit of a strawman, though there is a good point in there as well. AI will not automate all customer support, but it has the potential to automate a large fraction of it. The anecdote in there is about complex B2B enterprise software. That's not the majority of customer support, and is very heavy on escalating to actual experts. You don't have to remove 100% of the jobs to have huge effe…

The article literally addresses this point. The easily automated stuff doesn’t save that much money. The big costs of support are the hard things you can’t automate.

Finally. Thank you! This was indeed my point that everyone seem to have missed.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#76

Post by Madmallard »

robotswantdata wrote: post #38
Madmallard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that one? What exactly will these agents be able to do with enough consistency, accuracy, and reliability that people will want to hire them over humans? In my experience with even the most basic implementation of agents, i.e. customer service chat bots, I literally cannot stand interacting with them even once. They are extremely unhelpful and I will hang up or immediately ask to speak to a human.

The voice agents in development right now feel 100x the current chatbots deployed by companies. I had same opinion till a few months ago, now would prefer the [redacted company so as to not give free marketing] AI agent. You’ll start seeing this wave in around 3-6 months as most are in trial

Just sounds like gassing because you are invested in it yourself.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#77

Post by Madmallard »

exitb wrote: post #23
Madmallard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that one? What exactly will these agents be able to do with enough consistency, accuracy, and reliability that people will want to hire them over humans? In my experience with even the most basic implementation of agents, i.e. customer service chat bots, I literally cannot stand interacting with them even once. They are extremely unhelpful and I will hang up or immediately ask to speak to a human.

Most support agents lack... well, agency. If you connect a chatbot to an FAQ, that's exactly what you get. Just another instance of enterprise software being badly designed, badly written etc. It doesn't mean that it's actually an impossible problem.

They won't ever give agents the ability to actually do things for customers that can impact the company in some kind of negative fashion. At least not willingly.

That's sort of the whole point of talking to customer service though. Getting something done that you want that involves them having to do work for you. AKA you taking value from the company.

So yeah they're basically always going to be useless garbage if put together according to business requirements.

Other services should just be automated already.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#78

Post by rspoerri »

guytv wrote: post #71
rspoerri wrote: post #32

People tend to forget how fast technological development advances. Even if you lived trough it you tend to forget how recently the world looked very different. - before 2012 there was no smartphone - before 2001 there was no wikipedia - before 1995 less then 10 percent of the rich country home users had internet - before 2023 there was no ai available to home users. Hardware has been getting faster by a factor of 100…

Correction: > - before 2012 there was no smartphone - by 2011, 35% of US adults had smartphones, iPhone released June, 2007

sorry i got the date wrong, my first text where i researched it properly got deleted accidentially.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#79

Post by karmakurtisaani »

ForHackernews wrote: post #68
aurareturn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever has compute, will have the power. This is why big tech is plowing $1t into data center capex in 2026. Disclaimer: I'm an AI compute investor.

Strongly dispute this. Compute very depreciates rapidly. Inference is cheaper than training. DeepSeek was the warning shot across their bow, but the big AI firms can't afford to change course without jeopardizing their "Wile E. Coyote off the cliff" economics. LLM performance is already plateauing; models will get more efficient. Good-enough models will be deployed on chips, the same way H.264 is a good-enough video…

More than your points, I'm very curious how these AI companies are going to turn profit without making using AI insanely expensive. Some time ago, each prompt was highly subsidized, I doubt the picture has changed much.

Edit: maybe the model efficiency you mentioned is the key, we'll see.

Re: White-collar AI apocalypse narrative is just another bullshit

#80

Post by guzfip »

windward wrote: post #36
intellectronica wrote: post #4

Every morning the turkey rejoiced and said to himself "oh joy, I'm such a lucky turkey, I don't have to do anything, the food is plentiful, I just eat and shoot the breeze the whole day long, what an awesome life!" Until one morning, the day before thanksgiving, the turkey rejoiced about the awesome day he's about to have ... just to be picked up 5 minutes later and dragged to the slaughterhouse.

So I get to continue the hedonistic life without having to plan for a long slaughter? That's not such a bad way to go.

No you don’t get the hedonistic life. The turkey gets a hedonistic life because its value is in its consumption. It’s worth more to its owner fattened up as much as possible.

You on the other hand, are not bred to be consumed. And in fact the fatter you are, the more expensive and less useful you become.

So what you get is more likely starvation, if you aren’t culled to free resources.

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