Where’s the AI customer service dividend?

by philg

ChatGPT (launched November 2022) and similar LLMs were supposed to make customer service agents more efficient. Has this happened? From what I can tell, the opposite has occurred. If I call a company that is supposed to be providing service the inevitable greeting is “we are experiencing higher than normal call volume” (i.e., demand for service exceeds agent capacity, despite the agents now being augmented with AI). When an agent does pick up, he/she/ze/they immediately asks, “What is your phone number?” In other words, the smartest computer systems ever devised cannot use caller ID.

(If Trump gets elected this fall and then, as predicted by the New York Times and CNN, ends American democracy, I hope that he will issue a decree that companies aren’t allowed to announce “we are experiencing higher than normal call volume” more than 5 percent of the time.)

My favorite company for customer service is Hertz. They recently hit my credit card for $262.41 for a 24-hour 29-mile rental of a compact Ford Edge in El Paso. I never signed anything agreeing to pay $262 and their app was quoting $76 including all fees (I picked up the car at an FBO so there wasn’t the fully array of Hertz computer systems on site). When I called Hertz to try to figure out why they charged so much I learned that they’ve eliminated the option of talking to a human regarding any bill. A human will be happy to make a reservation, but not to answer questions about what could be a substantial credit card charge. Hertz funnels all questions about past rentals to a web form, which they say they will respond to within a few days. Of course, my first inquiry about the bill yielded no response. My second inquiry, a week later, yielded a “everything was done correctly” response. I finally pinged them on Twitter private message. They admitted that they had no signed paperwork with an agreement to pay $262 and issued a refund of about half the money.

Circling back to AI… if LLMs make customer service agents more efficient, why has Hertz needed to shut down phone customer service? And if LLMs are brilliant at handling text why isn’t Hertz able to respond to contact form inquiries quickly?

Here’s an example pitch from the AI hucksters:

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Identifying as Asian in an elite Maskachusetts school

by philg

From a friend in the Boston suburbs:

[Asian-American son] applied to be a student advisor and was turned down. He was perplexed as he has the highest GPA in the [expensive private] school of 500 students and gets along with everyone. He is a volunteer for the Special Olympics and helps people without being condescending. Everyone likes him. Even girls invite him to their birthday parties. He later found out that two of his black friends who didn’t apply got it. They said the school reached out to them and talked them into doing it, so they applied and were selected.

(Deplorable failure to capitalize Black in original. I can verify the father’s high opinion of this kid’s personality. He’s super smart, relaxed, athletic, and never brags.)

Different friend in the Boston suburbs:

guys, after several months of constant assault by [the wife], [the son] got himself a date to the prom

his sister tried everything – called him an incel

what’s the difference between [my wife] and a pitbull?

at some point, the pitbull lets go.

The future prom king is tall, fit, and looks great by my standards (i.e., is not old). I had previously asked him why he wasn’t exploring the public high school female population. He said, “I don’t agree with their value system. They say that you’re not sophisticated if you haven’t slept with at least five people before graduating high school.” I replied, “Well, if that’s all it takes then we can go down to the nearest bathhouse tonight and you can have sex with five guys in a couple of hours.” (The family has not invited me back into their home.)

Related… (NBC)

Helms Ategeka, a top Head-Royce School student, was accepted to 122 colleges and received $5.3 million in collective scholarships.

“I feel really lucky that there are people out there, that there are institutions out there that see the value that I have to give,” Helms said.

Helms believes it was his nearly 10 extracurriculars, spanning from choir to theater to starting his own club, along with his 3.9 GPA that set him apart on paper.

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Was anything new revealed by the New York Democrats’ trial of Donald Trump?

by philg

Some friends who are Democrats have been obsessively and gleefully following the New York trial of Donald Trump. When I asked them what they’ve learned, however, they’re unable to offer anything beyond what was already fairly alleged prior to the trial, i.e., an American got paid for having sex and then the same person got paid some additional money as a result of that sex act. A “dog bites man” story, in other words, since (a) the U.S. has for many years been the world leader in the percentage of GDP devoted to compensating people for prior sex acts, and (b) a ruling party putting a political opponent on trial has been conventional in many nations for more than 100 years.

Readers: Have you learned anything new or interesting from press coverage of this trial?

My dream: A South Park episode in which the entire trial happens in South Park so as to ensure an unbiased jury pool.

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Memorial Day here in Jupiter, Florida

by philg

Our town’s Memorial Day ceremony is about to begin (live stream):

The speaker is Brian Mast, a veteran who represents us in Congress and who has been at odds with the Biden administration regarding U.S. support for continued Hamas rule in Gaza.

I arranged a brick for my father, who was drafted and served as a corporal in the NYC area (my dad was born in 1930, so he was 23 years old when he went into the Army, a late start due to a college deferment).

My dad was not killed while serving in the military (unclear how that could have happened other than via a car/bus accident or if a filing cabinet had fallen on him) so, fortunately, he is not one of those for whom the day was established.

Readers: What are you doing to observe Memorial Day?

Related:

Post-ceremony update…

About 250 people showed up.

My father’s brick is in the top left corner of the engraved-so-far bricks:

Brian Mast kept his remarks nonpartisan and patiently met with constituents afterwards:

The police bloodhound was popular:

At least one person arrived in style (Pontiac GTO; possibly circa 1965):

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Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 7 (Kentucky to Great Barrington)

by philg

I was delighted that the brief trip from the hotel to the airport included a view of the following car:

Not sure if I love the reference to Talladega Nights or “I Identify as a Problem” more.

A powerful politician directed a river of federal tax dollars into the KSME airport back in 2006 to build a world-class commercial airline terminal:

It has never been used.

We fired up and vaguely followed the Ohio River to Parkersburg, West Virginia (KPKB). We enjoyed tailwinds of up to 30 knots, but combined with the terrain that also made for bumps so we once again climbed as high as 7,500′. Note the Tesla charging station, below.

Parkersburg features a sometimes-used commercial terminal, thanks to continuing applications of your tax dollars into the Essential Air Service program. We enjoyed some breakfast there and got a lesson in philately as well as in how wrong people are in their perceptions of inflation. A luxurious four-seat piston-powered aircraft, the Beech Staggerwing, cost $9,250 and first class postage was 32 cents in 1997 (the stamp is now worth about 1.75 Bidies).

A photo of the Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains about 20 minutes before descending into KGBR:

Here’s Torrance’s finest product with 30.7 hours on the collective meter:

The happy owner supplied us with an Enterprise rental car, pre-tuned to NPR, for the trip to Boston/Cambridge.

As previously noted here, we were offered free samples of healing marijuana within 30 minutes of our arrival in Maskachusetts:

Every crosswalk in Great Barrington is painted in the sacred colors:

Retailers post signs for the world’s smartest humans:

They also worship the Sacred Rainbow in Stockbridge:

The world’s smartest humans are provided with instructions for how to use the devices depicted above:

Except for the final trip down the Mass Pike, including an inflation-free $15/person meal at McDonald’s, that was it!

Related:

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What are you doing to act in George Floyd’s memory?

by philg

From our President:

George Floyd changed the world and we should “act in his memory”.

Readers: what have you done today (or recently) to act in George Floyd’s memory? What did this American hero do that we should also do so that our children can see an ideal way for an adult to act?

Some other things that happened on May 25 that Joe Biden isn’t talking about (source):

  • 1241 1st attack on Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • 1784 Jews are expelled from Warsaw by Marshall Mniszek
  • 1787 Constitutional convention opens at Philadelphia, George Washington presiding
  • 1927 Henry Ford announces that he is ending production of the Model T Ford
  • 1942 First commercial fluid catalytic cracking facility begins production at Exxon – now produces half the world’s gasoline, developed by the “Four Horsemen” research team at Exxon
  • 1945 Arthur C. Clark proposes relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit (also on May 25, 1945: final U.S. fire bombing of civilians in Tokyo)
  • 1961 JFK announces US goal of putting a man on the Moon before the end of decade
  • 1961 NASA civilian pilot Joseph A. Walker takes X-15 to 32,770 m
  • 1968 Gateway Arch in St Louis dedicated
  • 1973 US launches 1st Skylab crew Kerwin, Conrad, Weitz
  • 1977 Original “Star Wars” movie (Episode IV – A New Hope), directed by George Lucas and starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, premieres
  • 1979 Israel begins to return Sinai to Egypt
  • 1986 Hands Across America – 6.5 million people hold hands from California to NY
    1991 Israel evacuates 14,000 Ethiopian Jews
  • 2017 Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg receives an honorary degree from Harvard University, after dropping out in 2004 (a Harvard commencement without a pro-Hamas component!)
  • 2018 Harvey Weinstein turns himself in to New York police to face charges of rape, a criminal sex act, sex abuse and sexual misconduct (conviction overturned in 2024)
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Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 6 (Abilene to Kentucky)

by philg

We didn’t start quite as early as planned in Abilene, but we managed to crank shortly after 8:00 am:

We flew over the Promised Land of free wind energy and then straight over the top of DFW:

You might think that it is rude to fly directly over one of the world’s busiest airports. However, that’s often exactly what the best controllers want you to do because airplanes don’t take off or land vertically and, therefore, a helicopter direct overhead doesn’t present a separation challenge.

We stopped at Galaxy FBO at KADS, one of the busiest general aviation airports serving Dallas. There, I received the happy news that inflation has been conquered by our wise leaders and their appointed technocrats in Washington, D.C. It is just that our used minivan keeps going up in price because it is so rare and desirable.

If you don’t like California’s lockdowns and 13.3% state income tax, it seems that they aren’t going to run out of houses in the Dallas suburbs any time soon:

From there, it was on into Arkansas and over the mountains to Mena (KMEZ) for lunch at Cruizzers Drive-In (better for sculpture than food):

Our next leg took us to Jonesboro, Arkansas (KJBR) for fuel and then across the Mississippi river to KCKV (“Outlaw Field” in Clarksville, Tennessee):

Our final leg was to KSME, Somerset, Kentucky, a truly magnificent facility:

At the Marriott, I wondered if they wouldn’t get more people to cooperate with their environmental goals with a sign reading, “Like Jeffrey Epstein, these towels aren’t going to hang themselves.”

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Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 5 (trying to get through all of Hell and half of Texas)

by philg

Discouraged by reports of low clouds at various points along Interstate 10 and Interstate 20, but encouraged by forecasts of improving conditions, we launched from El Paso (KELP) to Van Horn, Texas (KVHN). The airport was deserted, but we managed to get the FBO guy on his cell phone and he popped right over to help us fuel the R44 from the pumps. The big users of this airport have been the U.S. Army with some drones and Blue Origin/Jeff Bezos with Gulfstreams and helicopters coming to see rocket launches (not stopping to chat with anyone at the airport).

We departed after refueling and, sure enough, the forecast great weather hadn’t materialized. As the highway climbed, the cloud deck didn’t move, which meant that the ceiling kept getting lower and lower. We hadn’t gone more than 10 minutes from KVHN before making the decision to do a 180-degree turn. We then called our FBO guy back to get the keys to the crew car and went into town for a truly great early dinner in a classic hotel:

After dinner… the same damn clouds. But they certainly didn’t look very high. Maybe we could go over them at 7,500′ and… we did! It’s unusual to fly over a cloud deck in a helicopter and if we’d had to do an autorotation to the highway it could have been challenging, but I have done autos on instruments in training. Anyway, the faithful Robinson never hiccupped so we made it over the last of the mountains and the broken cloud layer without incident and landed at Abilene just as it was getting dark. Abilene Aero lent us their crew car for the overnight hotel stay.

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Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 4 (El Paso Interlude)

by philg

In Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 3 (They Built the Wall in Texas) we saw that man proposes and God disposes with respect to flying weather. Unable to proceed over the next batch of mountains, we enjoyed El Paso, Texas for about 26 hours.

Downtown El Paso seems to have been set up to serve Mexicans who came over for a day of shopping and then returned over the bridge. Here’s what it would look like to arrive from Ciudad Juárez:

After our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters from south of the border get through the 1950s-style shopping district, they arrive at the Square of the Sacred Rainbow Flag:

On the way they might pass this multi-story mountain lion (64 feet high!), fashioned from recycled trash by Bordalo Segundo of Portugal:

Inspired by the street art, it was time to duck into the (free) art museum. Meanwhile, I checked the radar to see whether we’d made a good decision (“sunk cost fallacy”?). From 2:30 pm:

The art museum had the usual stuff, plus an exhibit on Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, murdered by an embezzling employee who tried to hide her crime by claiming to have been sexually assaulted.

Here’s another temporary installation, a sculpture by Vanessa German:

Black Girl on Skateboard Going Where She’s Got to Go to Do What She’s Got to Do and It Might Not Have Anything to Do With You, Ever, 2022. Lemony things: vintage French beaded flowers, a yellow skateboard like I never had when i was a fat little Black girl in Los Angeles when riding a skateboard meant that you could fly, Capidomonte Ceramic Lemon Center piece, a dance in my thighs, high yellow so-flat paint, porcelain bird figurines, decorative resin lemons, papery yellow flowers, meanness transmuted, love, oil paint stick, rage, self-loathing transmuted, a joy-bitch, masturbation, plaster, wood glue, black pigment, giddiness, freedom in the body, freedom in the Soul, wood, tar, wire, a distinct and purposeful healing, hope, yellow flood light, heart, yellow decorative ceramic magnolia figurine, acceptance, abandon, not being afraid to be full of your own self in your own divine body, divinity, fear transmuted, plaster gauze, magic, silicone, tears, epoxy, water, tomorrow, now, yes.

Wandering around after the art museum, we happened on the Paso Del Norte, a hotel that put our Marriott to shame:

Some images of downtown, including the very first Kress store (part of the fortune built turned into the art museum and its collection). See if you can spot the Science-following photographer:

We enjoyed dinner at Tex-Mex institution L&J Cafe (1927), preceded by a walk in the grass-free graveyard:

Then it was time to enjoy El Paso by night, including a minor league baseball game (packed with enthusiastic spectators) and fireworks from our hotel’s pool deck:

The next morning I did my annual visit to the gym and also looked out from the pool deck:

Speaking of the gym, they still had their coronapanic signs up. Is there any kind of procedure for taking these safety notices down?

To undo any negative effects from the gym, we hit the Glazy Donut on the way out of town. Note how easily Internet content can be corrupted:

Then it was back to the airport where the skies were clear at least to the next stop (Van Horn, Texas) and forecast to improve beyond Van Horn:

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New York Times: Cash-strapped consumers get “relief” via higher prices

by philg

“Inflation Moderated Slightly in April, Offering Some Relief for Consumers” (NYT, May 15):

The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.4 percent in April from a year earlier, down from 3.5 percent in March, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. The “core” index — which strips out volatile food and fuel prices in order to give a sense of the underlying trend — rose 3.6 percent last month, down from 3.8 percent a month earlier. It was the lowest annual increase in core inflation since early 2021.

The report followed three straight months of uncomfortably rapid price increases that rattled investors and worried policymakers at the Federal Reserve. Economists cautioned that one month of encouraging data was far from enough to put those worries to rest. But they said that the data should ease concerns, at least for now, that inflation is re-accelerating.

If you couldn’t afford stuff previously, therefore, you’ll be “relieved” to learn that prices are yet higher.

Even more confidence-inspiring… an 81-year-old who never took an economics class is tackling what non-NYT readers might perceive as a problem:

“I know many families are struggling, and that even though we’ve made progress we have a lot more to do,” Mr. Biden said in a statement released by the White House. He called bringing down inflation his “top economic priority.”

If you don’t like higher prices, it’s “progress” when prices are higher every month. Maybe it doesn’t matter that the president hasn’t taken economics because he/she/ze/they is advised by expert economists? Let’s look at the chair of Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors:

Bernstein stated he grew up in a “musical family” and aspired to be a professional musician as a young person. Bernstein graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied double bass with Orin O’Brien. Throughout the ’80s, Bernstein was a mainstay on the jazz scene in NYC.

He also earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College as well as a DSW in social welfare from Columbia University’s school of social work

(He’s so old that he could get to class at Columbia without pushing through a thicket of tents and Palestinian flags!)

The NYT deceptively charts CPI since 1965 without noting that the definition has changed dramatically over this period. The reader is left with the impression that things were far worse during the Jimmy Carter “malaise years”:

Larry Summers and friends, though, show us what the chart would look if you simply undid the big change from 1983 to use a fictitious rent measure rather than actual housing costs. In fact, Bidenflation is roughly comparable in intensity to the inflation that Americans suffered as a consequence of the Kennedy/Johnson expansions of the welfare state and the Kennedy/Johnson decisions to enter the Vietnam War (Carter gets blamed for this, but the seeds were sown in the 1960s).

Mostly I find the above fascinating as an example of journalism that purports to be neutral and skeptical yet in fact is primarily propaganda about the great job that our rulers are doing.

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