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Don't make me talk to your chatbot

raymyers.org

81–90 of 221 posts

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#81
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever had a chatbot solve your problem? I don't think this has ever happened to me. As a reasonably technical user capable of using search, the only way this could really happen is if there was no web/app interface for something I wanted to do, but there was a chatbot/AI interface for it. Perhaps companies will decide to go chatbot-first for these things, and perhaps customers will prefer that. But I doubt it…

Actually, I have, Amazon has an excellent one. I had a few exchanges with it, and it initiated a refund for me, it was much quicker than a normal customer service call. Outside of customer service, I'm working on a website that has a huge amount of complexity to it, and would require a much larger interface than normal people would have patience for. So instead, those complex facets are exposed to an LLM as tools it…

I did think about this use-case as I was typing my first message.

I can see it working for complex products, for functionality I only want to use once in a blue moon. If it's something I'm doing regularly, I'd rather the LLM just tell me which submenu to find it in, or what command to type.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#83
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a company that has very little right to complain about support costs. They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software and updates that required support in the first place. Nobody wants to call Microsoft for support. They do it because they've been forced to, usually by Microsoft. This kind of support can hardly be called "free" because even when Microsoft isn't charging customers…

> They'd save themselves a fortune if they stopped releasing bad software I doubt it. I suspect the number one tech support call is "I forgot my password" and everything else is a long way below that. I'll slag on Microslop all day, but users are dumber than dumb.

Users are "dumb", and it's a dumb _system_ and dumb business that doesn't plan for that in terms of FTUE, business model, support model, and product flows.

We product makers get to think about our one little product all day, and it's our job to make our product work for the "dumb" users. It's not their job to adapt to us.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#84
post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

Why not charge for support?

And if it turns out to be your mistake (faulty product or missing documentation) as opposed to something the user could have reasonably solved by themselves, refund the charge and possibly provide compensation for the inconvenience.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#86

As a customer, I just want the information I need. While I don't want to talk to a chatbot, I also don't want to talk to a human - and for the same reason: they usually don't have the info I need. That's the aspect I don't understand. The information I want is almost always something some other customers have asked already. I'd much prefer to avoid their customer support maze entirely and help myself on a searchable…

I mostly agree (although sometimes it is necessary to talk to someone about it); it would be better to actually have good documentation (so that you do not need to talk to someone about it).

A warning label like you mention is a possibility if that is considered to be necessary, although I think it might be better to have a file that you can download and read (or request by mail or telephone or fax, if this becomes necessary in some circumstances; do not assume the computer always works and is compatible with your file), instead of a searchable wiki.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#87

The key thing here is not whether it's AI. The key thing is quality and signal. No one wants to read to a low quality human comment either. If the AI output was actually better than talking to a real human, more useful, more concise, serving the job to be done, then no one would have a problem with it. In fact they would appreciate it. That future is not here in many areas. The problem is people are wielding AI right…

> The key thing here is not whether it's AI. The key thing is quality and signal. No one wants to read to a low quality human comment either.

This is so obviously true to intelligent people (and is even a point made in the article) ... it's sad that you're getting downvoted.

The OP wrote

> When I talk to a person, I expect that they are telling me things out of their head — that they have developed a belief and are trying to communicate it to me.

But when I'm having a conversation about a subject (rather than with a friend, partner, or other person with whom I have a relationship and the conversation is part of the having of that relationship) I don't care what is in that person's head, I care about the truth of the matter, so I'm far more interested in their sources, their logic and the validity of same. Unless I'm a psychologist doing a survey, why should I care about some random person's beliefs? Since I'm a truth seeker, I care about their arguments, and of course the quality of their arguments is of paramount importance. I appreciate people who can back up their arguments, and LLM summaries that are chock full of facts gleaned from the massive training data that includes a vast amount of human knowledge are fully appreciated--while being aware that hallucination is possible so I often double check things regardless of the source. OTOH, the pushback to this is from people I consider worse than irrelevant--they not only are willfully ignorant but they reject knowledge seeking for irrational ideological reasons. (I myself see the LLM industry to be extremely problematic, but as long as LLMs exist and are capable of producing quality signal--which is the given here--then I will use them.)

This whole page is illustrative: so many people are telling us things out of their head ... that have nothing to do with the article because they didn't read it. So they blather about their beliefs and opinions about support--because that's how they interpreted the title. These comments are useless.

P.S.

> If all you care about is the facts, and not the other’s relationship to them, why engage with a person at all?

I already said: I'm a truth seeker. Also I sometimes seek to persuade people in public forums--and not necessarily the person I'm corresponding with. And missing is any reason why I should care about internet randos' relationships with their beliefs, other than as a psychological survey.

> You could query a LLM for whatever subject, argument or counterpoint you wish.

I can do better, and can do more, as noted.

> Besides, your hypothetical summaries chock full of facts don’t exist, at least not yet. Most LLM summaries are chock full of filler, thus the name slop, thus why us “ignorant” people hate reading it.

This is an example of a belief that is not supported by the facts--if it's even a belief, which I doubt--it's emo ideology. Putting "ignorant" in quotes doesn't falsify it, and I have never encountered a remotely intelligent person who "hates" reading LLM summaries--this is in the same category as people who reject Wikipedia citations because "anyone can edit it". This person unintelligently reduces all LLM output to "slop"--maybe he should try actually reading the head article, which has a quite different take.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#88

The "figure out what you want to say" is key. I've started to think of LLMs, at least in a business setting, as misunderstanding amplifiers. How many times at work have you been talking to someone else where they're using common words as jargon? Maybe it's something like "the online system" or "the platform". And it's perfectly clear to them what they mean, but everyone else in the company either doesn't know what th…

And that people and the systems actually know the relevant terms.

I recently was dealing with the Amazon robot--after correctly identifying the items in the order it then proceeded to use short terms which were wrong, but make sense as what a classifier might have spit out. Instead of understanding being a shared thing it falls entirely on the user. Sufficiently adept user, this is fine. But a lot of users aren't sufficient adept.

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#89
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. I really do not care what the LLM has to say. If a person has taken the (substantial) time necessary to fill the context with enough information that something interesting comes out, I would much rather they simply give me the inputs. The middleman is just digested Internet text. I've already got one of those on my end.

Related: https://blog.gpkb.org/posts/just-send-me-the-prompt/ (I could have sworn there was a popular HN submission a while back of this or a similar blog post, but damned if I can find it now.)

wow, it's like that guy is in my head

Re: Don't make me talk to your chatbot

#90
post #13

People demand free support. When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some. Most common support calls where for things that were explained in the manual, the out of box experience, tutorial…

> When I worked at Microsoft, it cost over $20 to have a human customer support agent pick up the phone when someone called in for help. That was greater than our product margin. Every time someone called for help, we basically lost the entire profit on that sale, and then some.

This doesn't seem like a bad thing when it comes to aligning incentives (assuming customers actually want a product they don't need help to use).

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