> "help" is always framed as my needing to be educated
For many users, this is often the case, and front line AI support like this can handle that pretty effectively while giving your case faster live support. Would you rather sit behind 4 people in the queue trying to figure out why their device doesn't work without batteries when it's not plugged in or have them deal with AI to solve the problem while you get your real issue sorted out quickly after dealing with a handful of basic prompts?
I wouldn't mind, if it ended up getting me a human at the end of the process.
It's not quite at the level of the "shibboleet" XKCD, but I did once manage to get a much higher support tier at Comcast who was able to verify that 1) I had a problem that was their fault and 2) fix it. Even that guy was halfway on a script. Y'know, after I've read you a ping timeout three times from the Windows command line, I probably shouldn't have to read it verbatim to you again. It hasn't changed.
I agree that's why I would prefer to have AI if it does the job better and if it can be further trained to understand when to escalate in the case of a more technical user which I have found humans rarely do.