I will note that AI customer service could be an improvement. Customer service helpline jobs are one of the worst jobs to get paid peanuts to do.

Of course, my preference is to upgrade the crap voice recognition system with an AI voice recognition system, which is way better at understanding words. The help desk jockeys can stay, as they do the real work.

That can be accomplished with basic if-else decision tree. You don't need the massive resource sink that is AI

In the case of Air Canada, the thing the chatbot promised was actually pretty reasonable on its own terms, which is both why the customer believed it and why the judge said they had to honour it. I don't think it would have gone the same way if the bot offered to sell them a Boeing 777 for $10.

They did the same for me when my mother passed (no AI, just assholes though).

The transition to an AI-focused business world is proving to be far more challenging than initially anticipated.

No shit, Sherlock.

Someone already tried.

A television commercial for the loyalty program displayed the commercial's protagonist flying to school in a McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II vertical take off jet aircraft, valued at $37.4 million at the time, which could be redeemed for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points. The plaintiff, John Leonard, discovered these could be directly purchased from Pepsi at 10¢ per point. Leonard delivered a check for $700,008.50 to PepsiCo, attempting to purchase the jet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico%2C_Inc.

Can we get our customer service off of "X former know as Twitter" too while we're at it?

Sure, once it is no longer one of the most popular social media platforms.

Hilariously, many of these companies already fired staff because their execs and upper management drank the Flavor-Aid. Now they need to spend even more rehiring in local markets where word has got round.

I’m so sad for them. Look, I’m crying

They're trying to use AI to take over the overseas jobs that took over our jobs.

I feel no sympathy for either the company, the AI, or the overseas people.

It does make me smirk a little though.

Phone menu trees have their place, they can improve customer service - if they are implemented well, meaning: sparingly - just where they work well.

Same for AI, a simple: "would you like to try our AI common answers service while you wait for your customer service rep to become available, you won't lose your place in line?" can dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Of course, there's no substitute for having people who actually respond. I'm dealing with a business right now that seems to check their e-mails and answer their phones about once per month - that's approaching criminal negligence, or at least grounds for a CC charge-back.

Are porn sites replacing staff with AI though? Not content since that comes from contributors for the most part, but actual porn site staff.

No idea honestly.

Oh my God... The best/worst thing about the idea of AI porn is how AI tends to forget anything that isn't still on the screen. So now I'm imagining the camera zooming in on someone's jibblies, then zooming out and now it's someone else's jibblies, and the background is completely different.

Most of the time when I talk to a chat bot it's because I need to contact support for an issue only support can help me with, but unfortunately the company in question is Id.me and they apparently don't have support of any kind and all these tickets I've been writing have been going into a paper shredder

AI + worker effort is the sweet spot for efficiency and accuracy

It has the same energy as upper management firing their IT staff because "our systems are running fine, why do we need to keep paying them?"

Phone menu trees have their place, they can improve customer service - if they are implemented well, meaning: sparingly - just where they work well.

Same for AI, a simple: "would you like to try our AI common answers service while you wait for your customer service rep to become available, you won't lose your place in line?" can dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Of course, there's no substitute for having people who actually respond. I'm dealing with a business right now that seems to check their e-mails and answer their phones about once per month - that's approaching criminal negligence, or at least grounds for a CC charge-back.