If you watch the actual video[0], you'll see that it's not that dramatic. Man says "18 thousand water cups", the AI appears to transfer the customer to an employee, who immediately picks up and takes over.
There was never an actual order of 18,000 water cups. The AI did exactly what it was supposed to do in order to prevent malicious abuse of the system.
I don't think that's what happened at all. It sounds like somebody was monitoring the 'AI' and then cut off the software right as it was about to respond. You can hear it start to say something, that sounds a whole lot like 'okay', before the mic swaps over to a person.
If users can always fail out the AI, why have the AI? Users will learn and socialize how to obtain a human. The human did exactly what it was supposed to do in order to prevent malicious abuse of their time.
If you're asking seriously... Because, as the AI continues to improve, more and more users will choose not to fail out intentionally, reducing the required level of human staffing for a certain number of customers / orders. It's just like today - there are some users who will keeping "hitting 0" to get to a human, but many others who won't.
As a human who always hits 0 or bails out, I think this is yet to be proven. There are even products to help with this. If legislation is required to always provide a human for customer service, that can be done.
People use the phone tree not because they want to, but because they have limited alternatives. Companies deploy them for line goes up ("how can we provide as little value as possible for as much profit as possible without the customer leaving"), not for the benefit of the customer.
Yes - and the point is, if everyone availed themselves of the alternative (e.g., escaping the phone tree), as previous post implied, then "line wouldn't go up" and companies would stop.
That would be the customer of the phone tree software...
Of course it exists for their benefit. But, if all customers escaped from it, then it would be pointless and companies would stop - why spend money on something the doesn't reduce costs? So, since companies do, in fact, implement and retain phone trees, they are undoubtedly benefitting from doing so. And, to loop back to the start of this branch, if AI-driven "phone trees" do a better job than traditional ones (and there's no reason to suspect that they won't, over time), then fewer customers would opt out and it would be more beneficial to companies.
Because I don't want to touch the same screen that 1000 other people have touched since it was last cleaned and because I dont want to learn how to navigate a new menu every time I stop at a new fast food place, I just want my chicken chalupa without needing to navigate menus. If you've ever stayed in line at the order kiosk at mcdonalds you'll quickly realize how slow people are to place an order, now imagine that in the drive thru
> I don't want to touch the same screen that 1000 other people have touched since it was last cleaned
How do you handle doors in public spaces? People have been touching door handles to enter fast food restaurants for decades and we've been fine.
> you'll quickly realize how slow people are
This, I think, is the real reason we won't see screens at drive-throughs. Screens can work in-store because you can have many screens to compensate for slow people. To apply the same for cars you'd either need the screen move with the car as it moves through the line, which would likely mean placing the order on your phone, or you'd need significant infra to create many stalls where cars can place orders. For the latter, Sonic is well positioned for this with their drive-in stalls but most other fast food restaurants don't have the physical space for that.
> How do you handle doors in public spaces? People have been touching door handles to enter fast food restaurants for decades and we've been fine.
I go to the wc and wash my hands before touching my food, can't do that if I'm ordering in the drive thru and I dont always have hand sanitizer around and don't really like using it either
McDonald’s and Taco Bell actually have a great, working solution to this. You order in their app, and they provide a code you give to the drive thru attendant (to pick and place the order into the queue). The customer places their order on their own mobile device at their own pace, but you still have a human for people who don’t use the app or don't have a mobile device. They provide free food and other incentives when placing your order with the app, which I think is fine from a behavioral economics and price discrimination perspective. No AI required.
Cars? If you put the touch screen close enough to where people can reach it, it's close enough to be hit with the car. It'd need to be on a moving arm or something, and seeing the car stop. (In-n-Out just sends a person out with a tablet when the line gets longer...)
Our CEO was boasting about new speech to text technology recently. They said something that I found extremely objectionable:
"I can speak a lot faster than I can type."
The fact that I found it objectionable doesn't mean that he said something untrue. For him and most others, it probably is true.
But for me, a keyboard warrior by trade for 30 years who has high functioning autism and crowded teeth and actually doesn't like talking, I can type WAY faster than I can speak aloud.
In spoken conversation, I am usually a man of few words. But sit me in front of a text prompt and I will TL;DR the fuck of you with a 5 page essay on a topic you probably don't really care about.
My point is that everyone has their own preferred method of communication, and most people like talking just to hear the sound of their own voices. A lot of people say they prefer interacting with a human at restaurants - I avoid going to restaurants because I don't like interacting with people and will DoorDash to my home instead. To asocial introverted keyboard warriors, it's sometimes difficult for us to relate to the baseline human experience.
Why have an automated phone system if someone can get a human operator by pressing 0? Because the automated system works for typical interactions, and reduces the labor load of the human to only handling edge cases.
Right. It could just be the usual suspects of misinformation (Reddit, click-hungry "journalists", certain YouTube/Tiktok creators) amplifying each other in a circle. Just like that "16 billion passwords data leak" earlier this year.
There is probably something going on. It could very well just be a bad batch of SSD controllers from one manufacturer failing.
The protocols already exist. Deploy an I2P router for an effective darknet on the internet, or set up Yggdrasil for a next-generation decentralized & private internet alternative.
An even easier start, just set up unfiltered encrypted DNS on your devices. E.g. Njalla DNS or Mullvad DNS. Or get a good VPN such as Mullvad.
At the same time, keep voting for privacy. And send letters to your politicians!
Absolutely true. 100%. Step 1 should be a cut-off age of 40 for being a politician, and a strong 2 term limit for both politicians and political parties.
This is not an age issue, despite looking like one. This is a matter of agressive lobbying, and putting tons of cash on the case. Major ISPs also offer sports (football) subscriptions, so they are also interested in applying the block.
40? Do you happen to be 18-25? I ask, rhetorically, because when I was that age, I thought 40 was old. Now, I'm 30, and 40 seems a bit younger than it did +10 years ago.
I do agree that there should be a cut-off age, though.
Yggdrasil is a decentralized mesh IPv6 network. It automatically forms one big network as more people connect together. It has end-to-end encryption, it's fast (unlike darknets), and it's pretty simple.
In such a "splinternet" scenario, it'd be a matter of setting up PTP links across borders. As long as a few people do so, it becomes one big network again.
4chan got hacked because of some outdated dependency used for uploading PDF files, which was some obscure feature only available to some boards. The actual website does get maintained.
> The main problem now is that the product I bought now appears as a completely different product on that site, which is baffling, how can a product that’s been sold be “updated” with having a completely new photo, title, description, etc (now it’s basically a car Bluetooth adapter for 5 euros), which makes me unable to start the return process.
It's to buy fake reviews. They "sell" something very cheap so fake reviewers can buy it and write a positive review. Once done, they change the page back to the actual scam.
By the way, you should contact Kingston and notify them that you have a fraudulent drive. Chances are they'll exchange it for a new drive so they can investigate it.
"Heated discussion" sounds like any comment voicing legitimate concern being hidden as "off-topic", and the entire discussion eventually being locked. Gives me Reddit vibes, I hope this is not how open web standards are managed.
If there ever was a place on HN for someone to say “try christianity” with a small and easy to scroll past comment, it would be in the thread where the OP says “I feel empty. Does anyone have advice?” Sure, christianity might not be the answer, but what we want in this situation is for as many people as possible to give their ideas, and then maybe one will appeal to the OP. I’ve bumped into a lot of christians, and a lot of them seem happy. If it works for some people, and helps them feel less empty inside, maybe it will work for other people too.
If someone said “buying a big plot of land and mowing the lawn every week has filled the empty place in my soul, you could try that” and I had a very different experience with lawn mowers, then I would relate my experience and add to the conversation. I would explain the fact that lawn mowers are extremely dangerous and I have lost multiple toes to them perhaps. But I wouldn’t say “Did you mention lawn mowing on HN? Get out of here with that.”
You are very close to adding value to the conversation, but you have failed again to do so. Please describe what negative effects christianity shares with “heroine” (which I assume is a misspelling of the drug.)
Agreed. I'd actually like to buy an EV, but so far there are no candidates which meet my minimum requirements, which are pretty much what you said + serviceable by any mechanic with aftermarket parts + using Na-ion, not Li-ion batteries. And it shouldn't be super ugly like most new cars are today (e.g. Rivian, VW ID Buzz).
Though I'm pretty sure you can't even legally make such a car anymore, at least in Europe, where certain "smart" features are required for new cars. Perhaps a manufacturer of such an EV could put all of that into one box which the user can simply pull out and discard.
There was never an actual order of 18,000 water cups. The AI did exactly what it was supposed to do in order to prevent malicious abuse of the system.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDZj6DCWlfc
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