That video at the end is interesting both for its content and for its delivery technology.
And I do agree with him: If whether you get work or not decides on a black box AI and your only support channel is another black box AI, that is pretty much a Kafka-esque nightmare.
I'd guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst. So the next time you help someone automate their customer support, ask yourself: How would I feel if my well-being depended on this? Because for some poor soul, it might. Is there a clear fall-back in case the AI fails horrible? Because, you know, they always do.
I once had my own support automation problem with Amazon, but luckily I had no stakes in it. They accidentally sent me someone else's parcel. So I filed a support request to inform them. They very politely apologized within a minute and informed me that they are sorry about my lost parcel and they'll send another one. So I got the same wrong parcel again. After waiting a while, I opened up the two parcels, each roughly 10x5x5 inches (25x10x10 cm) large. It was two single pencil erasers.
But boy would I have been furious if I had received the same support quality for a lost high-value parcel... Also, I did ponder if it is OK for Amazon to waste my time if I'm not even their customer. I mean their support forms are difficult to reach, no matter why you need to contact them.
> I'd guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst.
I agree that individuals should be conscious of which companies they support through their labor and/or spending habits.
But I also think that HN overestimates the ability for single engineers to upend the goals of an entire organization. In the real world, if a company wants to automate anything and they’re paying well, there will be a line of engineers out the door applying to get it done.
> So the next time you help someone automate their customer support
I think this strikes at a false dichotomy that occurs frequently in these conversations: There’s an idea that if we simply removed the automated solutions then companies would be forced to replace them with the idealized solutions that we want. In practice, companies know very well that automated customer support and similar solutions aren’t comparable to having a well-paid, highly-trained person pick up the phone. But they weren’t going to pay for the expensive solution anyway.
And the real driving factor isn’t just the companies, it’s the customers. If given the choice between two identical products where the only difference is automated versus human customer support (and associated higher price for human customer support), the majority of customers will choose the cheaper option every time. There are a few people who will proudly pay more for the better CS, but they are a tiny minority. Overall, customers want the cheaper option even if it comes with tradeoffs, and they will vote with their wallets.
The irony is that it’s middle management that will be the first to be laid off. What globalization did for blue collar, management automation will do with middle management.
Making this a “workers’ issue” won’t lead to anything, specially when it’s gig economy workers. Obviously these AI will make their way to non-gig economy sector, and from there spread like wildfire.
This will only exacerbate socio-economic inequalities to a point of no return (revolution of the precariat aside)
Creepy how it’s all too similar to the short story Manna[1] (substituting fast food for gig economy)
I firmly state my disapproval to engineers working on such systems. Doesn't really work, you always find someone that prostitutes himself.
Production surveillance can be essential for quality control, but you don't need individual surveillance for that and line managers are better at evaluating people.
It is mostly useless managers that want to show of a nice Excel sheet.
> So I got the same wrong parcel again. After waiting a while, I opened up the two parcels, each roughly 10x5x5 inches (25x10x10 cm) large. It was two single pencil erasers.
The monstrosites which reach this scale always amaze me. In case of individuals, when sending an item the main concern is packaging, shipping costs and time. Amazon and others? They just furiously and repeatedly ship oversized boxes filled mostly with fillers, while eco-shaming the customer.
> I'd guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst.
Best positioned, but how well equipped are you? Are you organized enough to collectively refuse such requests, or will you fall into the "If I don't do it someone else will" trap?
> So the next time you help someone automate their customer support…
In my experience people working on these things are well intentioned. So it comes down to a need to shift priorities. Maybe you need to launch something now, and the PM tries to make you delay some important thing for the next release, launching without it at first. That’s the kind of thing we need to change. No more promises of “We are working to make this better” while launching without crucial pieces first. We’re used to making that kind of choice when it’s not people’s livelihoods and working conditions at stake, and we have to make those choices differently when the stakes are people.
“I'd guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst. So the next time you help someone automate their customer support, ask yourself: How would I feel if my well-being depended on this? Because for some poor soul, it might. Is there a clear fall-back in case the AI fails horrible? Because, you know, they always do.”
I don’t think we are that well equipped to prevent the worst. Maybe some entrepreneurs are but most engineers develop tools that can be used for good and bad. I think automation provides enormous benefits to society and we should keep pursuing it. To make sure it doesn’t end up with an abusive system is a political problem and should be addressed by rules and laws.
In the last few decades the mantra was that the more money the psychopaths can make the better for society and screw the victims. That has to change. Society overall suffers if we have a few billionaires lording over the working masses.
I am pretty hopeful that we can create systems that balance technological progress with concerns of social welfare. We have made big progress with environmental regulation and I hope we will do the same in other areas.
I think Amazon support forms are difficult to reach by design. It helps keep the traffic down. They are simply not at all interested in people who are not customers, and not especially interested in those who are. There was a time when I got a lot of email from Amazon about things that someone else had purchased. How my email address became associated with their account I have no idea. I tried to notify Amazon but there just wasn't any proper way to do it and after sending an email or two I just gave up. It was more than six months later that I stopped getting such email
The support links are two clicks away in the footer. “Customer Service” : “Get help with something else”
Or if it was your order, you could nav through “customer service” and then click on the order. Amazon may have some issues, but having a hard time reaching A2Z care isn’t one of them IMO.
It reminds me of the short story "Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future" [1], which describes the steady establishment of AI process optimizers as the managers of human employees, who increasingly became a replaceable commodity. Fascinating read.
When I first read Dune, 'lo those many years ago, I always thought of the Butlerian Jihad as being somewhere in our far future. Now, I'm not so sure...
I've been seeing more and more references to this story over the last few years which is a sign.. Of something. It would be really interesting to see the Http referrer logs his website gets for it. Probably a great collection of threads about everywhere this kind of automation is happening.
How can it be that the most predatory elements of society have been given so much leeway?
This is not an intrinsic pattern of our species / societies or we would have devoured ourselves literally or figuratively long time ago.
Obviously restoring forces that would push this evil genie back in its bottle exist but are somehow dormant, neutralized or otherwise missing-in-action.
This fight and push-back should not be a thing for "activists". It affects every single person. We are all "gig workers".
We have been devouring each other for ages now. Entire cultures have vanished, destroyed by more powerful members of the same species. The entire history of our species has been on violent conflict where a stronger group removes a weaker group, only to be removed later by another group that emerges stronger. Previously it was racial, clan-based violence. Now it's economic servitude where a perpetually unfortunate lower class keeps on greasing the wheels of industry with sweat and blood. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor.
We are not benevolent or kind creatures. We are programmed to survive. As long as the poor live, they will rarely question the rationality behind the inequality that keeps them poor.
Because lacking ethical prohibitions always gives one an advantage. People who lack ethics can always choose to act ethically when it confers a social advantage, or to act otherwise when that's more advantageous. Ethical people are by definition often forced to act at a disadvantage.
The only advantage that individual ethical behavior gives is through supporting the health of the group, thereby supporting members who depend on the group. People who aren't loyal to a group can shop around, play one against the other, etc. Even better, if you automate the interactions between people, there's no need or benefit for ethical behavior. Profit comes from pleasing the algorithm rather than any sort of loyalty.
Edit: The algorithm that capitalism uses is maximizing value against cost. All ethical complaints about it are asking people to accept less value/more cost. Capitalism insists that if everyone maximizes value against cost personally, that sends a control signal to the collective that will maximize the greater good. This is the ethic that we're automating.
> How can it be that the most predatory elements of society have been given so much leeway?
Partially because we as collective societies let them, by not voting out or actively voting in those who campaigned on neo-liberal platforms, many decades ago.
Partially because not many (and those who did were mostly on the hard-left side, which was and still is vilified) saw the "boiling frog" effect at play... stuff like the end of the Fairness Doctrine that gave way to today's mass media and its problems with propaganda, the Citizens United decision that paved the way for utterly absurd amounts of money in political campaigning, gerrymandering and other forms of voter manipulation, the building/consolidation of media empires like Sinclair [1], or the total lack of any regulation for social media and the blindness of everyone regarding Russian and Chinese propaganda on these platforms.
Now, the water is boiling: support for democracy - not just in the US but worldwide - has been eroding, as have democratic freedoms and lessons-learned from WW2 (such as, especially in Europe, the rights of those fleeing from war, destruction and hunger, or the need for international cooperation). Countries in the European Union (Poland, Hungary) begin to qualify as quasi-dictatorships, the UK dropped out in an epic clusterfuck, the US suffered from a (thankfully incompetent) putsch attempt, and as the COVID crisis has shown people don't even trust vaccinations any more. Meanwhile, the rich have gone ever more rich (sometimes to utterly absurd degrees).
How do we get back to civilization? I have no idea if it is / will be possible without some kind of global "reset" event... we Germans caused the last one, this time the cause will likely be either somewhere in Asia (invasion of Taiwan) or Russia (which is moving enough troops to the Ukrainian border to run an actual blitzkrieg style invasion [2]).
There is an avalanche of gig economy employee management and monitoring software (Teramind, ActivTrak, Ekran System, BrowseReporter, workpuls, Cerebral, monday.com, DeskTime, Time Doctor, etc). Many of these systems contain algorithms that surveil and manage workers. These tools eliminate much of the risk of outsourcing work to remote workers that cannot be directly supervised. They enable the remote workers by making them eligible for employment, and engineering a higher degree of trust into the relationship.
Happened to be reading a photo essay about delivery drivers [0] today and was struck by how intensely vulnerable the workers are. e.g. Saying he knows 5 people that died and non that have filed insurance claims. i.e. They're not even bothering with the shiny "support" processes the companies put in place. Sure that is in a dangerous country, but still says a lot about the people that are (by necessity) attracted to these jobs.
It's not just the algo angle...the entire system isn't fit for purpose.
To be honest, I just realized I am culpable in this area. So far its small things for small company:
e.g. automated alerts when checklist is not filled for selected day,
information in 1 system is not matching with info in second system.
By themselves those things look innocent, and just automate my headache of writing emails to correct the info.
What will it be 2-3 years for now? For sure automated penalization system in case you don't do those things correctly.
Do I have enough morality to not do those alerts/ "small productivity hacks" for me and do it manually for greater good instead? Tbh I need to think about it.
I would say that first thing you should do is to make sure the emails/notifications you send contain all information needed that the affected person knows what he did wrong and also contain a way to dispute.
We need to push against broken system that abuse us, like in my case I got an email from Sony that I violated a super generic rule and my account is suspended for 2 months, with no way to dispute this and sure enough no refunds or compensation for my currently paid and active yearly subscription. (this can happen to any of us is not only Google/Apple/PayPal/Amazon that can screw you with their automation and shit customer support , the list is much larger and probably growing)
[+] [-] fxtentacle|4 years ago|reply
And I do agree with him: If whether you get work or not decides on a black box AI and your only support channel is another black box AI, that is pretty much a Kafka-esque nightmare.
I'd guess we here on HN are the people best equipped to prevent the worst. So the next time you help someone automate their customer support, ask yourself: How would I feel if my well-being depended on this? Because for some poor soul, it might. Is there a clear fall-back in case the AI fails horrible? Because, you know, they always do.
I once had my own support automation problem with Amazon, but luckily I had no stakes in it. They accidentally sent me someone else's parcel. So I filed a support request to inform them. They very politely apologized within a minute and informed me that they are sorry about my lost parcel and they'll send another one. So I got the same wrong parcel again. After waiting a while, I opened up the two parcels, each roughly 10x5x5 inches (25x10x10 cm) large. It was two single pencil erasers.
But boy would I have been furious if I had received the same support quality for a lost high-value parcel... Also, I did ponder if it is OK for Amazon to waste my time if I'm not even their customer. I mean their support forms are difficult to reach, no matter why you need to contact them.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
I agree that individuals should be conscious of which companies they support through their labor and/or spending habits.
But I also think that HN overestimates the ability for single engineers to upend the goals of an entire organization. In the real world, if a company wants to automate anything and they’re paying well, there will be a line of engineers out the door applying to get it done.
> So the next time you help someone automate their customer support
I think this strikes at a false dichotomy that occurs frequently in these conversations: There’s an idea that if we simply removed the automated solutions then companies would be forced to replace them with the idealized solutions that we want. In practice, companies know very well that automated customer support and similar solutions aren’t comparable to having a well-paid, highly-trained person pick up the phone. But they weren’t going to pay for the expensive solution anyway.
And the real driving factor isn’t just the companies, it’s the customers. If given the choice between two identical products where the only difference is automated versus human customer support (and associated higher price for human customer support), the majority of customers will choose the cheaper option every time. There are a few people who will proudly pay more for the better CS, but they are a tiny minority. Overall, customers want the cheaper option even if it comes with tradeoffs, and they will vote with their wallets.
[+] [-] bigodbiel|4 years ago|reply
Making this a “workers’ issue” won’t lead to anything, specially when it’s gig economy workers. Obviously these AI will make their way to non-gig economy sector, and from there spread like wildfire.
This will only exacerbate socio-economic inequalities to a point of no return (revolution of the precariat aside)
Creepy how it’s all too similar to the short story Manna[1] (substituting fast food for gig economy)
[+] [-] raxxorrax|4 years ago|reply
Production surveillance can be essential for quality control, but you don't need individual surveillance for that and line managers are better at evaluating people.
It is mostly useless managers that want to show of a nice Excel sheet.
[+] [-] durnygbur|4 years ago|reply
The monstrosites which reach this scale always amaze me. In case of individuals, when sending an item the main concern is packaging, shipping costs and time. Amazon and others? They just furiously and repeatedly ship oversized boxes filled mostly with fillers, while eco-shaming the customer.
[+] [-] jevoten|4 years ago|reply
Best positioned, but how well equipped are you? Are you organized enough to collectively refuse such requests, or will you fall into the "If I don't do it someone else will" trap?
[+] [-] 6gvONxR4sf7o|4 years ago|reply
In my experience people working on these things are well intentioned. So it comes down to a need to shift priorities. Maybe you need to launch something now, and the PM tries to make you delay some important thing for the next release, launching without it at first. That’s the kind of thing we need to change. No more promises of “We are working to make this better” while launching without crucial pieces first. We’re used to making that kind of choice when it’s not people’s livelihoods and working conditions at stake, and we have to make those choices differently when the stakes are people.
[+] [-] konschubert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|4 years ago|reply
I don’t think we are that well equipped to prevent the worst. Maybe some entrepreneurs are but most engineers develop tools that can be used for good and bad. I think automation provides enormous benefits to society and we should keep pursuing it. To make sure it doesn’t end up with an abusive system is a political problem and should be addressed by rules and laws.
In the last few decades the mantra was that the more money the psychopaths can make the better for society and screw the victims. That has to change. Society overall suffers if we have a few billionaires lording over the working masses.
I am pretty hopeful that we can create systems that balance technological progress with concerns of social welfare. We have made big progress with environmental regulation and I hope we will do the same in other areas.
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] C19is20|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|4 years ago|reply
Or if it was your order, you could nav through “customer service” and then click on the order. Amazon may have some issues, but having a hard time reaching A2Z care isn’t one of them IMO.
[+] [-] ghgr|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
[+] [-] AussieWog93|4 years ago|reply
At the moment, the technology is in the "chapter 1" stage where things are pretty smooth and chill. It's genuinely low-stress, well-paced work.
Once self-driving tech hits the market, though, it's clear that the human employees will be replaced without a care or thought for their well-being.
[+] [-] mikro2nd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monkeybutton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoachimS|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] streamofdigits|4 years ago|reply
This is not an intrinsic pattern of our species / societies or we would have devoured ourselves literally or figuratively long time ago.
Obviously restoring forces that would push this evil genie back in its bottle exist but are somehow dormant, neutralized or otherwise missing-in-action.
This fight and push-back should not be a thing for "activists". It affects every single person. We are all "gig workers".
[+] [-] caddybox|4 years ago|reply
We have been devouring each other for ages now. Entire cultures have vanished, destroyed by more powerful members of the same species. The entire history of our species has been on violent conflict where a stronger group removes a weaker group, only to be removed later by another group that emerges stronger. Previously it was racial, clan-based violence. Now it's economic servitude where a perpetually unfortunate lower class keeps on greasing the wheels of industry with sweat and blood. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor.
We are not benevolent or kind creatures. We are programmed to survive. As long as the poor live, they will rarely question the rationality behind the inequality that keeps them poor.
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
The only advantage that individual ethical behavior gives is through supporting the health of the group, thereby supporting members who depend on the group. People who aren't loyal to a group can shop around, play one against the other, etc. Even better, if you automate the interactions between people, there's no need or benefit for ethical behavior. Profit comes from pleasing the algorithm rather than any sort of loyalty.
Edit: The algorithm that capitalism uses is maximizing value against cost. All ethical complaints about it are asking people to accept less value/more cost. Capitalism insists that if everyone maximizes value against cost personally, that sends a control signal to the collective that will maximize the greater good. This is the ethic that we're automating.
[+] [-] mschuster91|4 years ago|reply
Partially because we as collective societies let them, by not voting out or actively voting in those who campaigned on neo-liberal platforms, many decades ago.
Partially because not many (and those who did were mostly on the hard-left side, which was and still is vilified) saw the "boiling frog" effect at play... stuff like the end of the Fairness Doctrine that gave way to today's mass media and its problems with propaganda, the Citizens United decision that paved the way for utterly absurd amounts of money in political campaigning, gerrymandering and other forms of voter manipulation, the building/consolidation of media empires like Sinclair [1], or the total lack of any regulation for social media and the blindness of everyone regarding Russian and Chinese propaganda on these platforms.
Now, the water is boiling: support for democracy - not just in the US but worldwide - has been eroding, as have democratic freedoms and lessons-learned from WW2 (such as, especially in Europe, the rights of those fleeing from war, destruction and hunger, or the need for international cooperation). Countries in the European Union (Poland, Hungary) begin to qualify as quasi-dictatorships, the UK dropped out in an epic clusterfuck, the US suffered from a (thankfully incompetent) putsch attempt, and as the COVID crisis has shown people don't even trust vaccinations any more. Meanwhile, the rich have gone ever more rich (sometimes to utterly absurd degrees).
How do we get back to civilization? I have no idea if it is / will be possible without some kind of global "reset" event... we Germans caused the last one, this time the cause will likely be either somewhere in Asia (invasion of Taiwan) or Russia (which is moving enough troops to the Ukrainian border to run an actual blitzkrieg style invasion [2]).
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/anchors-reciting-sin...
[2] https://www.euronews.com/2021/11/24/russia-s-military-build-...
[+] [-] stevenjgarner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afandian|4 years ago|reply
e.g. UK Data Protection Act 2018
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/part/3/chapter/...[+] [-] Havoc|4 years ago|reply
It's not just the algo angle...the entire system isn't fit for purpose.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/13/ghost-riders-t...
[+] [-] i_like_waiting|4 years ago|reply
By themselves those things look innocent, and just automate my headache of writing emails to correct the info.
What will it be 2-3 years for now? For sure automated penalization system in case you don't do those things correctly.
Do I have enough morality to not do those alerts/ "small productivity hacks" for me and do it manually for greater good instead? Tbh I need to think about it.
[+] [-] simion314|4 years ago|reply
We need to push against broken system that abuse us, like in my case I got an email from Sony that I violated a super generic rule and my account is suspended for 2 months, with no way to dispute this and sure enough no refunds or compensation for my currently paid and active yearly subscription. (this can happen to any of us is not only Google/Apple/PayPal/Amazon that can screw you with their automation and shit customer support , the list is much larger and probably growing)
[+] [-] agustif|4 years ago|reply
https://marshallbrain.com/manna2
https://marshallbrain.com/manna3
[+] [-] ape4|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monkeydust|4 years ago|reply
https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/11657
Helps understand (for me at least) what's going on here
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Bayart|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
How far away is an AI system that supervises web developers?
[+] [-] ammonammonammon|4 years ago|reply