Training Day
A classic example of today’s industry-standard AI experience, for the record
Curious how often human beings are the last resort after technology.
You’d think the tech industry would have built it the other way round. We the human people do our best, and then — ta daaa! — the machines show us how it’s done.
But no.
Here in the real world, we waste our time trying to work with the “Artificial Intelligence”, as we’ve been taught to call it, and then, when the going gets really rough, we try to get through to the human beings on the helpdesk.
And all too often, the tech “solution” sabotages the helpdesk.
Identifying myself to my friend
I’ve spent the morning trying to sign a contract. Give somebody money, in effect. The kind of task that used to be accomplished by writing my name on two sheets of paper and keeping one.
Showing ID as well, of course, but I’ve never found it difficult to identify myself to somebody who knows me well. As in this case.
Started at 10am, first attempted to get through to the helpdesk at 10.30am.
By then, I’d opened the online form twice, uploaded the supporting documentation at least four times, deleted surplus copies of the supporting documentation, restarted my computer once because it just froze, and laughed aloud once.
I laughed aloud at my first attempt to get help.
Pick up the phone, maybe?
I called the helpdesk number hidden — I mean, given — on the form. After the recorded bit about the call being recorded “for training purposes”, and the invitation to press 2, it told me that I needed a PIN number before I could speak to a Customer Service Representative.
That was a new twist.
Hadn’t seen that coming.
To get the PIN number, I needed to open the text they’d sent to my number, ha ha, click on the link to get to the helpdesk, ha ha, and find the PIN number at the helpdesk. Ha ha.
Nothing so simple as, you know: I call; they pick up.
Oh, no.
This “solution” must have been really expensive to install.
When I got to the helpdesk — this is when I really laughed — I had to fill in all my details, type my query into a box, and be presented with a long list of answers to same-broad-subject-but-not-my-question FAQs.
If — I’m guessing now — I could convince it that those answers didn’t help, I might have a shot at a PIN number.
Speaking to a human being
I called the person with whom I was trying to sign the contract. We’re just amateurs, you understand. Friends. The professionals — hired by him — had inserted all this tech wizardry between us.
[He has since apologised, although we agree that such experiences are unavoidable in today’s world.]
“The online form’s not behaving,” I told him.
“I’ll get somebody to call you,” he said.
Nothing. I called him again.
“I’ll get somebody to call you,” he said again.
An email came. It was a link to the online form that I was already trying to fill in. Got that. Not helpful.
“I’ll get somebody to call you,” he said for a third time. At least, that’s the cleaned-up version of what he said.
And this time — a young woman did call me. She was wary at first, aware of why she was calling me and how I might be feeling, but I wasn’t hostile — none of this was her fault.
[In passing: one could mutter under one’s breath at the colossal stupidities that customer-facing staff, typically junior, typically young, have to defend these days. Where are the people who arrange these idiocies?]
She read out the obligatory bit about the call being recorded, then asked me some obligatory questions to confirm that the person she’d called directly on my phone using my phone number — was me.
We weren’t exactly laughing at the system yet, but there was that tone in our voices. We understood each other.
Then I looked at the form on my screen and she looked at the form on her screen. She agreed that I’d uploaded everything correctly. She agree that I’d filled it in correctly.
So we started again. We (I) uploaded. We (I) filled in my details. This time, the form co-operated.
Progress at last. The Continue button lit up.
There were two possible versions of the actual contract. One that applied to me and one that didn’t. We agreed that I should read the version of the contract that applied to me.
[If you can guess where this is going, buy yourself a coffee. Except: if you’re in the tech industry and you can guess where this is going, take a long, hard look at your life choices.]
She waited while I scrolled down the contract in a reading kind of way. I’d read it already, before she came into my life, but, y’know. Do things properly. She was being recorded too.
I pressed “sign” and typed my name.
Then I pressed “submit”.
Up came a pop-up saying “Read the contract before signing.”
I scrolled up and down some more.
I signed again. Submitted again.
“Read the contract before signing.”
And again.
“Read the contract before signing.”
And I could go on like this for a while — but you may have better things to do than go on reading for as long as I spent signing and submitting.
So…
The end came when I had an idea.
“Let’s open up the contract I’m not signing and I’ll scroll up and down — I mean, read — that. As well.”
And that was it.
I had to scroll up and down — sorry, read the contract I wasn’t signing, the contract that was nothing to do with me, before the idiot-bot in the machine would let me sign the contract I was signing.
Neither of us was surprised. We congratulated each other like we’d just solved an escape-room puzzle. Parted friends.
And what I have to say is this:
We talk about AI and we have a day-to-day experience of AI. The gap between the talk and the experience continues to surprise me. Even now.
Yes, they have just emailed a request for feedback.
Here’s a link to a BBC review of an exciting new “pocket-sized AI gadget”. It’s bright orange and cute, apparently, but it doesn’t do much. “It’s good at getting stuff off the web. But so am I,” says the reviewer.
On a related issue, how do we know that Vladimir Putin isn’t using ChatGPT to invade Ukraine?
It’s a Large Language Model, right, and don’t they base their decisions on being fed large amounts of text? The invasion started with tanks rolling across the border, which is straight out of a WW2 textbook. Now they’re bogged down in trench warfare, which is textbook WW1.
I never ask myself “What would ChatGPT do?” but maybe Putin still believes in catching up with the West.
