On: If AI chatbots are the future, I hate it

[beeboobaa3]

Yeah, that's how it is now. Didn't used to be that way. But think of the shareholders, we must maximize profits at all costs!

[sofixa → beeboobaa3]

Were there entirely ad-powered business models with customer facing support before the Internet?

I can think of magazines and radio, but by definition they had localised reach, and there was no actual "users" that might need support, unlike many Internet ad-funded freeware.

[beeboobaa3 → sofixa]

You're ignoring that the support situation has gotten significantly worse the past decade, while the internet existed.

Try contacting AliExpress support. You used to immediately get a human agent. Now you're trapped in LLM hell.

[sofixa → beeboobaa3]

> You're ignoring that the support situation has gotten significantly worse the past decade, while the internet existed.

Because much of the Internet has scaled up drastically?

To your example of AliExpress, how many more users do you think they have now compared to a decade ago? How much do you think their support volume has increased? Therefore it's entirely natural that they've looked at avenues of cutting costs.

[beeboobaa3 → sofixa]

More users = more users buying stuff = more revenue = more support requests. Support costs scale roughly linearly with the amount of users you have.

The only reason they are looking to cutting cost is to increase profit/user.

[sofixa → beeboobaa3]

> Support costs scale roughly linearly with the amount of users you have

Yes, but when you're starting you're usually losing money in the short term and you need to leave a good impression while growing.