Went to get some laundry services and called the number. I was leery as I am in Toronto area and number was Nova Scotia.
A male sounding person answered and I started posing questions about laundry services they offered. This guy was the politest person I had heard in over a decade. Concise but vague. I thought it was VOIP delay as there was a 3-5 second pause for him to reply but realized that it was too consistent. It was a fucking AI attendant talking at me. I said stick your AI, I will not be using your services and hung up.
Grrrrr me want human.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
From a business point of view, how much more for the product/service would you be willing to pay for a human operator on the other side or conversely, how cheap would the non-human supported product/service have to be for you to choose it over the more expensive human supported option?
This is really the questions that are driving these changes. Most people vote with their wallets and choose the non-human one because its significantly cheaper to the consumer of the product/service.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Inversely; How comfortable would you be in a society where you couldn’t access another human if you couldn’t afford one? Because that’s where prioritizing profit over people is going to lead us.
Hackworth@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
When I’m on the phone with a real human being in customer service, I’m often actually talking to an egregore of the company. They’re reading scripts (written by AI?), being scored by an AI that’s listening in to the recorded conversation, and responding in ways that the conversation tree tells them to respond. Even in the call center jobs that aren’t so managed, there’s really only so far someone can go off script. So while I definitely want more genuine human interaction in the world, I dunno if this is the hill to fight on. All that said, we’re definitely headed for the cyberpunk future, cause everything’s run by a buncha gonks.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d argue we’re already there in many aspects of our society.
Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
That was one of my main thoughts against. Profits over people. I don’t want a dime of my money going to AI run companies if I can give it to a human. So far AI has not proliferated to the point where I cannot get a specific service via human. I am also sure that time will come. Since I am old I hope I die before that happens.
Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I would pay more for a human without a second thought.
Fuck AI
Canconda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Exactly. The economy right now is a big ball and cup game so that the rich can convince workers to keep funding their kleptocracy.
We pay taxes for public services and utilities that generate private profits while the rich get to benefit of the infrastructure that we funded. The cups, the balls, and the god damn table were all built and paid for by the working class.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Your scales are off. The fully loaded cost of a human worker that can answer customer service questions is probably $60k-$100k per year. That worker can only talk to one customer at a time. That worker can’t cover an entire shift by themselves because you have to have extra workers to accommodate sick/vacation time. So the cost to the company to service the customer service request is potentially $15-$40.
The cost of the AI to provide customer service (we’re not talking about quality in this statement) is maybe $1 to $5 per customer serviced.
The cost of the automated support is about an order of magnitude less than the human worker. Those higher costs for the human have to be rolled into the cost of the product or service.
This might mean you pay $10 or more for the product or service (possibly much more if multiple customer service events are expected for the product/service). Likely not 30 cents saving you’re estimating.
qarbone@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Have you seen prices drop since companies have laid off all the human help? If human interaction is such a botique concession how did business manage until now and where did their savings go?
Why are prices staying the same (if we’re lucky) or still rising, services are staying the same (if we’re lucky) or getting worse, companies are taking all these cost-saving measures like sweeping layoffs, and yet the biggest companies are generally posting record profits?
I understand you’re probably playing devil’s advocate but devils aren’t entitled to an attorney.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
A portion to expensive human salaries. Another portion so naked profit taking on the part of these businesses.
To the salaries angle, look at nations which still have massively large populations with low labor costs. You’ll see that work is done by dozens or hundreds of low paid humans instead of automation. There is a tipping point where it becomes cheaper to invest in automation rather than paying a human. In places like Europe, USA, and Japan we’re way past that tipping point and automation (whether thats robots, computer automation, or AI) becomes the significantly cheaper option to getting something done/manufactured. China is quickly joining our ranks too. While they still have a large population, the cost of labor in China is reaching middle class levels and we’re starting to see the same thing there were automation is replacing human workers.
Because in our economic system a small amount of inflation is necessary. A deflationary status in our economy would actually be devastating. However, when the economy overheats we get significant inflation.
I don’t disagree with this.
I am, but if people are asking these question non-rhetorically, then they actually want to know why these things happen. I’m willing to provide the understanding I’m aware of, most of which isn’t obvious without prior study. Understanding why the current state exists is the starting point for affecting change, if they want change.
TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The fucking normal amount. These changes within the corporate world are not advantageous, they cut their overhead and operating costs without furnishing any decreased cost to the end-user (that you, me, and anyone else giving patronage to the business in question). A similar setup can be observed in the quality of ‘consumer goods’, where the materials used in manufacture (wood/aluminum/paint/lacquer/finish) were compromised with cheap, flimsy, shitty plastic. Some of it is literally garbage straight out of the box. Despite this, prices have not only not decreased, but normalized. Even worse, it’s become difficult to source products which aren’t worthless pieces of shit which cannot be repaired, at least not without considerable research - some of it also cannot be repaired without cannibalizing copies of the same device because no replacement parts have been manufactured.
People ‘vote with their wallets’ inasmuch as people on a raft in the ocean vote for beef instead of fish for supper. There is none available, of course they’re going to eat the fucking fish.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The “normal amount” keeps going up especially with the cost of human labor. So the “normal amount” would actually be a “large increased amount” for the same service with no additional benefits.
The good ones can still be had, but they are massively more expensive, so people don’t buy them. Lets take washing machines. This is generally the same design, quality, and longevity out grandparents bought 40 years ago. This is a basic unit without any fancy features:
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Here’s the modern enshitified basic unit like the kind you’re referring to that won’t last:
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Speedqueen exists! What brand of washer do you own? Do you walk the walk and did you spend over $1000+ more for a unit that does the exact same job, but is repairable will last 20 or 30 years or did you buy the cheap one?
brendansimms@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Can you provide an example where “Most people … choose the non-human one because its significantly cheaper to the consumer of the product/service.”
Canconda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
This. The only example where I pick a robot over a human is self checkout… and that’s cuz it’s faster due to there only be 1 queue for several checkouts. Not because it saves me money.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure. Frontier airlines charges a fee to talk to a customer service human agent while the same tasks can be accomplished for free through the app/website:
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source
knightly@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Better question, how much is a company willing to pay me to use an LLM instead of going to one of their competitors?
Because if the answer is insultingly small then I’m not patronizing them.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Why would they pay you anything at all?