> Like getting Google on the phone.

It’s really depressing how bad Google is at this. All that money and they can’t have a same customer service setup?

The messed up part is in Googles case it might actually be an improvement.

Whatsapp has this problem before AI. They scaled without regard for the feasability in handling customer service for everyone, so their solution is to just not do it. I have a personal phone number in Hong Kong which I can't set up for Whatsapp for some reason. No idea why, I've tried figuring it out, only to learn that Whatsapp basically has no customer support. And yet Whatsapp is treated as critical infrastructure in a lot of places these days (as in you have to coordinate on whatsapp).

At this point I might be grateful for an AI if they give it enough permission to tell me why my phone number is impossible to verify, or why they think I'm a malicious actor for using a VPN to protect my traffic.

> The IRS, for a time, would cut off your call if their wait system was too busy. That's a critical system in kafkaesque hellscape.

Now you're just on hold indefinitely, and eventually the offices will close, so you can either hang up and wake up early to call or just stay on hold overnight maybe? I had to call them for something back in March, and even waking up and calling at like 7:01 AM (a minute after their phone lines opened) I was on hold for half an hour.

Please Hold (short film 2020) is on this topic and brilliant.

> The IRS, for a time, would cut off your call if their wait system was too busy. That's a critical system in kafkaesque hellscape.

I had to call the IRS this spring and it was hell. I repeatedly was on hold for 1+ hour(s) then get hung up on. Or someone would finally answer, I'd explain, they'd put me on hold for another hour, then just hang up on me. A total of 10+ hours collectively waiting to finally have my questions answered in 10 minutes.

That said, I'd love if the IRS had an AI, where I could send my AI to go deal with it on my behalf. Then if it truly requires a human in the loop, we schedule accordingly vs me on the phone for 10 hours.

This problem started before AI hit the mainstream. Make the company “more efficient” (i.e. cut costs) by outsourcing to contractors in areas with lower labor costs. Then, remove escalation paths, then remove abilities from them so that can’t do crazy things like refund a customer. Finally, automate the whole thing and be certain there’s no option available that could possibly return money to the customer.

Yeah, that's one of the points of the EU AI Act, I don't have the specifics, but for some critical sectors decision making cannot be automated by AI and you are obligated to get a human explanation if you request it.

AI has no problems. Just properly follow proper procedures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ

There was a game that was Jev trolley problem PVP. The meta appears to be that you need to make the most mainstream journalism victim case. The more holocaust adjacent the better

https://trolley.typememetics.institute

It was an interesting experiment. I got to top 50 without a racial or religious based prompt but couldn't beat the top tier grievance folks.

I think this has already happened.

Yes, I agree -- if we ever give up this decision making to ai models not only will their actions sometimes be misaligned, but there will be no one accountable.

I am in no way making the case for this and can understand the million ways in this can go wrong, but my experience with AI so far has been to make things far LESS Kafkaesque, because it allows you to insert a "human" in the loop far more than our previous systems. Hand rolled software had to boil down to hand written conditionals that tried to account for edge cases, but if you find yourself in an edge case it didn't account for you often just hit a wall. An agent in the loop can immediately understand "oh I see how this doesn't exactly fit into that category but this is clearly ABC."

ah yes kafkaesque. the one with the bug

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