alt Hacker NewsGood for you and wishing you more success. You probably going to be down voted as sentiment here in HN is going against AI due to the pressure on jobs, which is completely understandable from emotional point. People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans. How many errors happened due to human phone operators? In the last few days there was an article where humans scored 66% on human evals.
I’ve been working with AI for years now and it’s not an easy task to get it right, but negative news go viral faster especially when it’s what people want to hear.
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> People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans.
So I mostly avoid commenting on or pontificating about the value or lack thereof of AI, but the problem I have with companies rolling out "AI for whatever" isn't that sometimes AI gets "whatever" wrong, it's that the companies simultaneous gut the processes around correcting these mistakes.
I'm currently dealing with a months-long banking error where the bank has incorrectly linked my credit card account to my wife's account and/or an account of mine in a different region, so it variously doesn't show up in my online account, shows the wrong number, shows the purchases from the wrong account, etc.
Every time I call in in a 5-minute rigamarole of:
"Please describe what you're calling about."
"Representative."
"In order to connect to a representative, please describe what you're calling about."
"There's an error with my account."
"Would you like to know your account balance?"
"No, my credit card account is not correctly configured and isn't showing up in my online banking account."
"I didn't understand. Please describe what you're calling about."
Eventually the bot reaches some failure state and then allows me to wait on hold for an hour to talk to an actual rep.
When I eventually get to talk to a rep, I get "Yes, I see that your account isn't correctly configured, I'll submit a back-end ticket and it should get fixed within 5-10 business days."
The next week I check my online banking, my credit card still isn't showing up, and I call and repeat the entire process.
So yes, it's not AI that's directly causing this Kafkaesque nightmare, but it's AI that's empowered the leaders at every utility/retailer/bank/insurer/etc. that I deal with turn their support systems into this slop.
>;People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans.
Every single time AI or FSD tesla booster say these ... reality is that AI is given all benefits of the doubt that people are not.
It is always selling the thing way sooner then it is capable, maligning everyone else and then have everyone else deal with the fallout.
> People tend to compare AI to perfection for some reasons, which is not the case with humans.
No, people compare so-called AI with computer programs that are designed to work properly.
With pharmacies, people are emotional because their perscriptions getting filled can literally mean their livelihood, their health or their life. I hoard medications because my insurance will only cover 30 day fills, and often it takes 2-4 days to call enough people for insurance to cover a refill. Its a common problem for older folks to take half of their perscribed medication from either cost, or inability to get through to the pharmacy.
You effectively have AI gatekeeping healthcare, as companies roll these out and also take away any escalation path that a human call center, or local pharmacy staff might've been able to handle.
I've been also working with AI for years now, and it is absolutely horrifying to me that any company would feel comfortable rolling it out - you're basically saying a 5% error rate is acceptable to you when you're providing a gatekeeping service that is life or death.