By Charles Hugh Smith

OfTwoMinds.com

The latest PR claim is that abysmal customer service will all be fixed by AI-based chatbots and digital assistants. Based on my experience, I beg to differ: the chatbots simply add another layer of incompetence and complexity to the wretched, time-wasting, frustrating mess.

All the work that once was performed by agencies and companies has been offloaded onto the customer. This is called shadow work: work we perform that isn’t paid or even counted as “work,” though it eats up our time and energy, leaving us less leisure and more frayed.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb24/shadow-work2-24.html

One wonders what we’re paying for via taxes, products and services, when we end up having to do so much of the work ourselves for nothing.

Let’s look at a day-to-day reality that is so ubiquitous it doesn’t attract the attention it deserves:

Digital services–the foundation of the digital economy–are dumpster fires we’re supposed to put out ourselves. The services are broken, dysfunctional rubbish, and yet somehow the agencies or corporations that are responsible for the endless dumpster fires of their digital interfaces have shifted the burdens of this incompetence onto the consumer / customer, who is supposed to put the fire out ourselves and make do with the smoldering sludge at the bottom of the dumpster.

Digital services are everything relating to customer service or customer portals / interfaces. The latest PR claim is that abysmal customer service will all be fixed by AI-based chatbots and digital assistants. Based on my experience, I beg to differ: the chatbots simply add another layer of incompetence and complexity to the wretched, time-wasting, frustrating mess.

All the work that once was performed by agencies and companies has been offloaded onto the customer. This is called shadow work: work we perform that isn’t paid or even counted as “work,” though it eats up our time and energy, leaving us less leisure and more frayed.

The ever heavier burdens of shadow work are a major reason modern life is increasingly stressful and harried: what was once done for customers as part of the service being paid for is now the customer’s responsibility.

I just spent–or shall we be honest and say “I wasted”– significant time navigating AI chatbots and a smartphone app which is touted as an AI assistant. The corporate entity is Xfinity (previously Comcast), one of the nation’s cartel of Internet-telecom providers.

The internet-service AI chatbot is SMS-based, and it works by offering the consumer-customer a limited menu of options, often only two but occasionally up to four. If your issue isn’t covered by the options, then you must begin a wild-goose chase in which you select whatever option you hope might be a way station to resolving the actual issue.

As for the iPhone app, it certainly excels at looking useful, and in pitching an endless scroll of upselling, but in actually identifying the problem and resolving it, the app was a complete failure, misleading, inaccurate and frustratingly limited–in a word, dumb, the opposite of useful and intelligent.

The situation is I’m responsible for a rarely used Internet-Wi-Fi “gateway,” what we used to call a modem and router, that’s 2,500 miles from my home. So all management of the account and hardware/software must be done remotely. Theoretically, AI-enhanced apps are tailor-made for remote management and trouble-shooting.

The gateway wasn’t working, and the source of the problem required an actual human technician to visit the site, for the problem could have been a cut cable, a loose connection, the modem, or any number of other causes. The technician arrives, our friend meets them, and the tech installs a new gateway: problem solved, Wi-Fi works great.

Until the next day, when the Wi-Fi stops working. Turning to the AI app, I test the system, and the app reports that everything is working perfectly: the network connection and the Wi-Fi to our friend’s phone and laptop are all strong. Only the Wi-Fi doesn’t work, and power-cycling the gateway and restarting Wi-Fi on the phone and laptop accomplishes nothing.

The chatbot generates a series of “verification codes” which don’t restore Wi-Fi, they only direct our friend to download the corporate app, which after she does so, fixes nothing and offers nothing.

After wasting a frustratingly large amount of time fiddling with the app on my end, I give up and ask to get a callback from the chatbot. A polite rep (based in the Philippines) calls me back, and after hearing my description of the issue, he reports that he sees the source of the problem right away: an update to the gateway’s software did not load properly, and so no amount of restarting would get it to work properly.

One would think the AI app’s troubleshooting script would include a check on whether the gateway’s software was actually functioning or not, but you would be wrong. The app said everything was nominal even when it didn’t work.

While he re-installed the software, I chatted with the rep about his working from home–a real boon as it eliminated his commute and enabled him to help with the family’s infant. He said we’d have to restart the gateway and then it should work. For good measure, I changed the Wi-Fi access password, and to my great relief, our friend once again had Wi-Fi.

Let’s consider the productivity gains / losses resulting from the chatbot and phone app’s troubleshooting and menu of fixes. The AI-enthused analysts only consider the corporate side’s measures of productivity: did more profitable work get done by employees and capital / computers, etc.?

See the rest here

Be seeing you

It takes a village idiot to live in an information Potempkin village.

In this peculiar epoch being a “conspiracy theorist” is no longer a part-time hobby for self-amusement and pub fare chatter. Ditching the hobby for full-time post-doc level conspiracy theorizing is a matter of life and death. It will keep one skeptical, observant, healthy, wise, and with less likelihood of any sudden misfortunes befalling them. It will keep their instincts sharp and the batteries inside their bullshit detectors at full strength.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/141559770

Good Citizen

Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

Becoming a conspiracy theorist is not for everybody, though today it should be a primary pursuit for billions of Good Citizens who value their lives. It can be a stressor, and cause hardship that eventually progresses to seeing things that others cannot see, which may or may not be there. Like the kid who sees dead people in the movie The Sixth Sense, but without a dead man believing him there would have been no movie and he would have been all alone.

The stress comes from sharing this newfound vision, or this secret with others. People need a Bruce Willis to guide them in the process of seeing things and expressing what they see. Still, in a world where all the trusted guides have been captured by a controlled, laughable, alternative media hawking vitamin formulas, wellness scams, phony dream teams, and magic pillows, there are few options available. Certainly, no dead sherpas will materialize to help make the journey.

In this peculiar epoch being a “conspiracy theorist” is no longer a part-time hobby for self-amusement and pub fare chatter. Ditching the hobby for full-time post-doc level conspiracy theorizing is a matter of life and death. It will keep one skeptical, observant, healthy, wise, and with less likelihood of any sudden misfortunes befalling them. It will keep their instincts sharp and the batteries inside their bullshit detectors at full strength.

There’s a joke in a comment section somewhere beneath a video of an undertaker describing the autopsies he’s conducted for the past three years of unfortunate victims of vascular calamari caused by the things everyone knows are causing them, that goes like this: I used to be a conspiracy theorist. But now my pronouns are told/you/so.

Be seeing you