Several news reports announced that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s word of the year is “slop” as in AI slop; however, it is more insidious than just bland slop.
“Will AI take our jobs?” some cry. It’s less of “will” but “how many”.
Within the past week I’ve had to deal with crappy AI pretending to be customer service. Besides, the most important part of any business is to provide quality service and products to a wide base of customers. But no one wants to deal with the customers; they just want the customers’ money then have them go away, so why not have unthinking AI annoy the customers until they go away?
One situation was while seeking assistance from a financial institution. When I called, I immediately found myself dealing with an AI system:
“Please tell me how I may help you?”
“I need to stop a payment?”
“I do not understand. Please describe what you need help with.”
“I need to stop a payment on a pending charge.”
This went on for a bit, trying to describe what I needed to a system that could barely identify basic words.
“It sounds like you need help with stopping an insurance payment. Please hold as I transfer you to the Insurance Department.”
At this point, I’m dumbfounded and yelling at the stupid system. I eventually got a live person who said I needed Accounts and transferred me. Then Accounts transferred me to Stop Payments. Let that sink in for a moment before continuing.
I explained to an AI system and two people that I needed to stop a payment, and I kept getting bounced around when this entire time there was a directly named Stop Payment & Disputes Office. So, after at least 20 minutes, while I’m on hold for this department, the payment is charged and cleared. When the rep picked up the phone, she was able to quickly confirm the payment had just cleared, so I could no longer stop the charge but stop future charges.
So, this AI system, took a trained operator’s job and provided a service of such poor quality that would get a human fired.
The other occurred via e-mail. One aspect of a video game annoyed me enough that I finally went hunting around the Internet to find out how to provide feedback to the game’s publisher. For those who have not tried, this can be a bit of a challenge as most, if not all, video game publishers bury, if not eliminate, such information. After all, they know better than the customers on what makes an enjoyable video game.
I compiled the details and the recommendation and sent the e-mail. In 29 minutes I received a response. The speed alone was unusual, but the response’s contents contained a strange regurgitation of the information I provided as if someone painstakingly rearranged each sentence with the help of a thesaurus. So the response read as if it tried to explain to me what I reported. That, too, was odd. Then it ended with a blatant inaccuracy about the game as if the response’s author only had access to information about similar games and not the specific game in question.
Collectively, this sat uneasy with me as an odd interaction. Then, I was able to capture supportive video and submitted that as a separate report. And the response I received was a similar regurgitation of my report with each line rearranged and riddled with synonyms.
This ticked me off. I quickly surmised that this publisher had turned their customer service into an automated response AI, and someone decided to fool anyone who would send an e-mail by making customers feel heard by repeating them and had the AI do just that. All the while, the bosses could reduce payroll by replacing “customer service” staff with an unnatural response machine to blow off customers. Besides they have your money, making them richer and you poorer, and they are in no way obligated to deal with peasants.
This AI replacement has been happening for some time and is becoming more prolific filling our lives with unnatural, unsympathetic, disrespectful interactions.
Even more and more shady advertisements have very similar, oddly paced, dull-toned voices. Another suspected replacement so fraudsters can keep more of their take.
Just another nail in this society’s collective coffin. We will unmake ourselves one way or another.
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