CEO FIRES 90 PERCENT OF SUPPORT STAFF, SAYING AI OUTPERFORMS THEM

The Byte ^ | July 12, 2023 | Victor Tangermann

[Reno89519]

Suumit Shah, a 31-year-old CEO of an e-commerce platform called Dukaan based in India, is getting torn to shreds online for firing 90 percent of the company's customer support staff after arguing that an AI chatbot had outperformed them.

It was an unusually callous announcement that clearly didn't sit well with plenty of netizens, as Insider reports.

"We had to layoff [sic] 90 percent of our support team because of this AI chatbot," he tweeted. "Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely."

In a lengthy Twitter thread laden with screenshots from action movies such as "iRobot" and "Limitless," Shah argued that response times plummeted from over two hours to less than two minutes thanks to the AI chatbot.

[Reno89519]

My first thought is Fantastic, no more Indian support that don't know American English and cannot answer questions or solve problems. Second thought is that those fired Indians will now rush to the Mexican border to enter the US illegally.

[Red Badger]

And so it begins....................

[Codeflier]

Third thought...

All of the support answers will tell you to change your behavior for climate change, wear a mask, and get vaccinated.

[NWFree]

Here come more H1B foreigners to steal American jobs

[Delta 21]

Hope you kept the janitor on. Those damned computers just wont dump the trash no matter what you do for them.

[CodeToad]

This doesn’t tell you that AI is great. It tells you that Indian customer service deserves their terrible reputation.

[no-to-illegals]

I talked to a chatbot today regarding a warranty issue. These chatbots are fully company boys and girls

[gov_bean_ counter]

Agree. When I get a AI voice box I immediately ask for a real person…

[ClearCase_guy]

The standard concern is that AI will become “awake” and have a “personality” and will then “plot against us”.

I’d say we are many, many years away from anything like that.

But that’s not the real point. AI, as it stands right now (which is fairly low level) is already transformative. Look at this. In some cases, you can fire 90% of the staff because AI is “good enough”. There are so many industries where this is true and where it will become more true every day. That kind of AI doesn’t know anything about anything. But it can do your job.

AI isn’t about to “take over the world” but it is already transforming the world. Hold on to your hats.

[butlerweave]

so his support staff are there to steal peoples data because that’s what AI does

[Fido969]

I got a spam call the other day, and I hung up after 15 seconds because I thought I was talking to a chatbot.

So is that what happened here? Was this guy was running a telemarketing company?

[no-to-illegals]

And they are nicer than real people at stealing your data

[Fido969]

Is this where you end up in the enternal logic loop where there is no possibility it will address yur problem?

[Reno89519]

Who needs a janitor? I work in IT and my desk often looks just like the software engineer in the first Jurassic Park movie. All is fine.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

The company from which I retired contracted out their IT help desk to India some years ago. It was as bad as you would have expected, but someone told me a good workaround. When you’d place a call, you would choose Spanish instead of English. Then when an IT person would come on and start speaking Spanish to you, you’d apologize and say you pressed the wrong button, and you’d get transferred to someone who spoke American English. Worked every time.

[Zack Attack]

Any word on whether the AI outperforms the CEO?

[Amendment10]

Thank you for referencing that article Reno89519.

"CEO FIRES 90 PERCENT OF SUPPORT STAFF, SAYING AI OUTPERFORMS THEM"

---

FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument

On the other hand, there's this disturbing thread about "not ready for prime time" AI.

Eating Disorder Helpline Fires AI for Harmful Advice After Sacking Humans (5.31.23)

[Bikkuri]

I can never understand what they are saying.

[rightwingcrazy]

I think an AI chatbot might do particularly well as CEO. Much cheaper, too.

[Augie]

This doesn’t tell you that AI is great. It tells you that Indian customer service deserves their terrible reputation.

^^^That right there.^^^

I work for a very large, global tech company. We were told last week that most of the US help desk operations, along with tier 2 desktop support would be moving to India asap. That will not be good for our customers, but the stockholders want that extra penny per share on their dividend checks so that's how it's going to be.