Suumit Shah, the CEO of Bengaluru-based Dukaan, said the chatbot answered customer queries in 2 minutes — a task that took the humans over 2 hours.
Because according to Reddit and Twitter, CEO = Bad. More than likely people are just knee-jerk reacting to the headline without reading the headline that says 90% of a company’s staff lost their job to a chatbot.
The guy employed 60 people, almost half of which were support staff (26 people, less the 23 that got laid off). I’m assuming this was a text-based support link, so yeah if this guy could get his customers better support (2 min via chatbot vs 2 hours via live person), and the results are satisfactory, I’d do the same thing.
Some people on the internet seem to think that companies are supposed to be job charities, while failing to realize that put in the same position, they’d do the exact same thing.
Edit: Clearly this didn’t go over very well. I’m not trying to say that letting those people go is a win for society, or that I welcome our AI overlords to displace our jobs. My point is that from a business standpoint, if an effective solution saves the company money, any company would be somewhat foolish not to implement it. And truth be told, this is only the beginning of the labor market in the coming years. It would be in everyone’s best interest to develop skills that are much more difficult to be replaced by a computer.
job charities
So can we then dispel the capitalist notion that they are “job creators”?
Clearly this is not the case as we see here, you even seem to cheer this sacking jobs on as a good thing.
No, I do agree that capitalists are job creators, for better or worse (and I do wish our society wasn’t constructed the way it is, but that’s a different thing all together), but that isn’t the point I was intending on addressing. My implication on this particular instance is that, as a business owner, the guy found a solution to improve customer response time (2 min vs 2 hours), and that it was apparently successful enough that he felt that those jobs weren’t necessary. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a major bummer to those 23 people who now have to find new jobs, nor would I ever celebrate someone losing their income. But if they’re were that easily replaced by a computer, it’s hard to say those jobs were in fact necessary. Almost a bullshit jobs conundrum (David Graeber). Hopefully they find something more fulfilling. I know this sounds very anti-human, and that is not my intent. I’m saying all this from an objective business standpoint.
I believe you’re simplifying the situation a bit & overlooking all aspects of ‘job performance.’ I do agree w/ your sentiment that jobs are/should not be a given, but from what I know about AI I’m struggling to believe it’s ready for nuanced roles in customer service.
I was thinking technical questions about the software or UX, like “where is setting X” or "how do I achieve LMNOP, or perhaps questions with billing and such. I did a customer support job years ago after high school, and most of the questions were basic RTFM type things that people had either overlooked or just didn’t read the manual, and left me bored out of my mind. Sure, for more technical or in depth questions, it makes sense to talk to a person, and I’d assume that’s why the guy kept 3 people. Clearly my previous comment ruffled some feathers.
