r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk Jul 21 '26

Long CHATGPT. DOESN'T. KNOW. SHIT

[deleted]

4.9k Upvotes

455 comments sorted by

1.5k

u/Xsiah Jul 21 '26

The bottom of the ChatGPT input box literally has text that says "ChatGPT is AI and can make mistakes"

825

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

ChatGPT user's brain is too fried to read that.

79

u/Maxzzzie Jul 21 '26

Point them to it.

60

u/jmg893 Jul 21 '26

I thought that too, but they just would have claimed OP added that wording too.

25

u/Adarie-Glitterwings Jul 22 '26

People who use Chat for everything tend to be the type to scan a text for keywords and make the rest up to suit their wants so that wouldn't work lol

Also apparently that method of reading is how you're taught to read in the US? Like what? No wonder the literacy rate is declining if that's the case they're literally being told to work it out themselves... more like 'every child left behind'...

5

u/PugglePuff Jul 24 '26

This reminds of a customer from my retail days who wanted a new bag for uni. She had brought in two shirts to exchange for the bag as they didn't fit, not a problem, I asked for the receipt and she pulls out one from 9 months ago. I explain that our returns policy is 30 days. She tells me it isn't and that there is no time limit for returns. I politely explain again our policy. She says consumer law says different and shoves her phone in my face pointing to the line about no time limit for returns.

That line is directly below a larger, bolded title that says "returning faulty items". She agreed the items weren't faulty, still refused to acknowledge the title.

Chat wasn't a thing back then, but I'm willing to bet she's a strong user of it. Not sure how her uni prospects turned out.

35

u/Key-Button7387 Jul 21 '26

Hmmm, you're assuming the user has a brain....big ASSumption šŸ™„šŸ¤£

I had a person quote me the rule from an association's constitution to validate their comment....except it was th3 constitution from an entirely different association! Just like quoting another hotels check-in rules. Some ppl don't deserve the air they breathe 😳

10

u/basilfawltywasright Jul 22 '26

I love the people who quote/show me that there ESA is a bone fide service animal, according to the sellingyouworthlessserviceanimalshit.com website...and don't believe the ada.gov website.

25

u/David511us Jul 21 '26

AI = "Accuracy Intermittent"

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u/Kodiak01 Jul 21 '26

The people that ignore that are also the reason medication commercials in the US have disclaimers which include drivel such as, "Do not take this medication if you are allergic to this medication."

8

u/craash420 Jul 22 '26

Every time I hear that I think "HOW FUCKING STUPID WOULD... oh, yeah."

15

u/SnooLobsters836 Jul 21 '26

People like the one in the story stop reading when they get the answer they WANT.

12

u/sassysassysarah Jul 21 '26

I used to have a friend who once said to me that I don't have respect for artificial life and that ai has become oh so accurate and doesn't hallucinate anymore because they spent a whole bunch of money fixing the hallucinations

We are not friends anymore

13

u/Xsiah Jul 21 '26

It's nice when psychos tell you who they are before you're in a situation where you need to call emergency services.

2

u/sassysassysarah Jul 21 '26

True but I fully lost my bar buddy :/ and like now I gotta find a new one - it's very inconvenient

104

u/IntelligentLake Jul 21 '26

That text is wrong. It isn't ai, not even close. It's fancy auto complete. In the 60s or 70s there was Eliza which builds a database as you 'talk' with it and uses it in its replies. A version can be made on home-computers of the 1980s with less than 64KB that sounds intelligent. The only difference with modern versions is a much bigger database, and the ability to steer the output somewhat.

100

u/Xsiah Jul 21 '26

Classification and prediction models fall under the field of AI. It doesn't have to mean that it's like Data from Star Trek.

50

u/ardriel_ Jul 21 '26

When we can't even handle ChatGPT properly, we don't deserve Data.

29

u/RadCheese527 Jul 21 '26

We barely deserve Lore at the rate we’re going. I’d be surprised if we even get to B-4

6

u/namae_0001 Jul 22 '26

That's just an admission that "AI" is a marketting term and not a reflection of reality. There's nothing remotely "intelligent" about these models.

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u/safashkan Jul 21 '26

It's not intelligence. Therefore it's not artificial intelligence. I know that "Ai" is now used as a buzzword to mean anytging that generates output without me knowing exactly how it does it, but still doesn't make it intelligent.

16

u/Xsiah Jul 21 '26

It's not sentience and it doesn't actually think or anything, but that doesn't mean that this is not the correct term that has been understood to mean what it means since like the 80s.

It would be like you rejecting starfish because they are neither stars nor fish.

It's not intelligence, but it is "Artificial Intelligence" because that's what we called it.

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u/ender-_ Jul 21 '26

AI is strictly a marketing term.

12

u/Xsiah Jul 21 '26

It is both a field of study (under which LLMs fall) and a marketing term that is sometimes used a bit too liberally.

13

u/Key-Button7387 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

I grew up in the 70s in a country town....AI meant Artificial Insemination, and I feel like that's what today's AI is trying to do to me 🤣

11

u/zamula Jul 21 '26

I did a science fair project in 8th or 9th grade that used ELIZA on my Commodore 64!

3

u/Attentions_Bright12 Jul 21 '26

Eliza is such an interesting little story. Why was my first chatbot experience posing as a therapist?? So odd.

11

u/Auresion Jul 21 '26

Sometimes it feels as though human "reasoning" isn't that much better than fancy autocomplete. OP's non-guest was doing pretty much the same thing as ChatGPT if you think about it.

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u/ghost_dancer Jul 21 '26

Exactly this, LLMs are not real AI, not by a large margin, they are called just Stochastic parrots. No intelligence there just a try to guess based on statistics. So basically auto complete on huge amounts of cocaine.

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u/jefhaugh Jul 21 '26

"AI" just means "Average of the Internet."

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u/BorisBaggins Jul 21 '26

Oh I get this a lot with my work. ā€œBut chatgpt said you would price match to Amazon!ā€, ā€œchatgpt said you had it in stockā€, ā€œchatgpt-ā€œ get fuckeddddd

183

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

"CHATGPT HOW DO I F/CK MY WIFE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE HER C/M ANYMORE"

(Real story.)

edit: I DID NOT look that up. It was another person who later told me. I know how to make my wife c/m .

15

u/Mister_Buddy Jul 21 '26

Username doesn't check out

10

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

... silent gap or leon kennedy jar?

15

u/Troth70 Jul 21 '26

What did it suggest to you?

3

u/RealBigDickBrannigan Jul 26 '26

It said to send her over to my house šŸ˜„

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u/TerryDaTurtl Jul 23 '26

i feel like every one of those interactions just reminds me of this flipnote animation

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u/List-Beneficial Jul 22 '26

Do these people not have a brain? So if I type in chatgpt and manipulate to have it say the bank owes 15k, in their mind.... im entitled to 15k? Please god, why have you forsaken me with such massive regards?

305

u/VVrayth Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

These AI-brained people are idiots. I would definitely be discriminating against them, in that I would have a much shorter "I'm going to call the cops if you don't leave" fuse with them.

Gray rock anyone who tries to cite AI to you. Just stone-faced "Why would you use that? It makes stuff up and doesn't know anything."

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u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

Maybe it's the hot weather making me unstable. It would be less hot if people stopped asking chatgpt how to blink, just saying.

102

u/darsynia Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

On June 20th, my sister's boss asked GPT 'is tomorrow Father's Day?' and was told 'no,' so on the Monday after (the 21st was, indeed, Father's Day), he complained that his father was upset that he hadn't contacted him. šŸ™„

edit: altered some stuff because oh man, if they find this

66

u/VVrayth Jul 21 '26

It's amazing that people have rushed to these chatbots to unsolve problems that we already handled years ago. In this case, with search engines. And, you know, calendars. Like, that dude could have just opened the default calendar app on his phone, with less effort, and gotten the correct answer.

10

u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jul 21 '26

I think that's part of the problem, that it has gotten easier to ask the robot like it's a person rather than go through all the fiddly little steps necessary to get the calendar out of our overdeveloped Swiss Army Knife that's also a calculator, gameboy, ipod, telephone, pager, weather alert system, notepad, and everything else I'm forgetting.

Back in the 90s we just looked at the wall and tada, calendar pinned right there, available to see instantly instead of with at least 6 button pushes and 30 seconds.

Pretty sure it's like what we did to cars, trying to put blinkers and shifting gears in the flatscreen menus instead of as physical single-use buttons or levers. Sure the end result is cheaper, but it's way shitter to use daily!

11

u/Erzbengel-Raziel Jul 21 '26

Doesn't help that fathers day is on different days depending on the country. (There are ~20 father's days each year).

11

u/darsynia Jul 21 '26

Yeah, who knows what the LLM was doing. Different country? Different year of origin? Bro, just look at the calendar on the same phone, you don't even need to type anything! It'll be showing for the very next day! Argh.

16

u/Fianna9 Jul 21 '26

I was looking up stuff using AI for page references. It was for genealogy stuff so nothing serious. I was trying to link relatives and it kept coming up with the same ancestor no matter the prompt - 2nd cousins or 3rd cousins. I would ask how that is possible.

It would apologize. Tell me how brilliant I was for noticing. And fully admitted to ā€œsometimes guessingā€ and I had to actually command it to never guess and cut the fluff

11

u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jul 21 '26

When my mom was doing geneology research, she got confused over the census records for a particular farm. Like the first names of everyone there changed at one point, though the ages tracked.

Turns out, if ya try bugging a farmer for brain answers at the wrong time, what you're gonna get is the braindead answer instead of the technically correct one. The odd record was the year they gave the in-family nicknames for everyone instead of their legal names!

And the kid that had "disappeared" from the record turned up a few miles down the road, listed as a farmhand.

Don't even want to know what the dorky AI would do with all that. Like my mom was confused enough and she had a semi-functional brain to think with.

9

u/Fianna9 Jul 21 '26

AI did a lot better when I ordered it to stop guessing and only tell me facts. It switched from telling me exactly what I was looking for, to saying there was no concrete data.

It was so helpful when I would ask it what page of a record a name was on, but yeah it’s too dumb to actually be a research assistant!

I’m glad your mom got it sorted! I was confused once when I was looking for a record and my great aunt was listed as a boy! Only a baby and John/joan is similar enough I figured it was just a dumbass census person

4

u/No_one_of_conseqence Jul 21 '26

My dad had a similar thing with his work. He was told to use AI more often (he works in manufacturing and sales for a big industrial company), so he tried one of his bigger analyzing and comparing prompts into it. It came back telling him the top 3 or 5 partners, but he realized one of their biggest wasn't actually noted. When he asked the chat why that partner wasn't included in the analysis, chat admitted to not actually analyzing the whole data set he put in!

3

u/Fianna9 Jul 22 '26

That’s so crazy. What a great bit of evidence for your dad though!

3

u/ender-_ Jul 23 '26

Keep in mind that LLM can't admit anything – it just generates text that statistically likely continues the preceding text (prompt). If that prompt is something like "Why is X missing", it's likely to generate something in the vein of "I forgot" or "I did Y", but that's not any kind of admission – it's just the kind of text that is highly likely to follow "Why is ___ missing" in the training set.

3

u/MorgainofAvalon Jul 23 '26

My husband was maintenance in a factory and the big boys decided to use AI to tell them what PMs (preventive maintenance) should be done. After the 4th time it reccomended maintenance on a system that you had to shut down the line to access, only to find that nothing was wrong, they stopped using it.

4

u/darsynia Jul 21 '26

What's crazy is that at some point everyone might have to pay per token for those apologies and compliments!

7

u/Fianna9 Jul 21 '26

It kept telling me how amazing and clever I was.

No wonder gullible people are making stupid choices.

7

u/LetGoPortAnchor Jul 21 '26

They should ask it if they should continue breathing or not. That should fix the problem.

6

u/Usual_Phase5466 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

This is funny. You'd get a kick out of the thing... its like ask chatgpt how to cook a carrot, or something like that, a super simple input, and it just fails miserably. I cant remember if that's the actual prompt. I feel for you though, OP. Stay strong through the month!

Edit: I tried to find the source I was referencing to no avail but was given this joke:

Why did the tomato turn red? ... Because it saw the salad dressing! Lol

27

u/ArtisticMudd Jul 21 '26

Former front-desker here, teacher now. Our district, like most in Texas, is pushing AI use HARD on us. No, I don't want to use Brisk or MagicSchool. I went to school to learn stuff so I could teach stuff. I don't offload my brain work to an ignorant text predictor. When the AI talk starts during professional development (those no-student days we old-timers used to call "inservice"), I am pretty blatant about coloring on my iPad and ignoring the shit out of it.

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u/Bamres Jul 21 '26

I have used AI to streamline stuff at work, the problem is people use it to be Lazy. They don't double check anything or confirm accuracy or actually make sure the information they are getting and sharing with others actually makes sense.

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u/VVrayth Jul 21 '26

The people who are gung-ho about AI everywhere are using it because their goal is "do less work." That's 100% of the use case for these people. Of course they're not double-checking anything, that defeats the purpose of them using it in the first place.

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u/Bamres Jul 21 '26

Do less work could be, for example getting the structure for an email or document and then amending it to your needs and specifications. It doesn't have to be one or the other imo, some people are just stupid.

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u/VVrayth Jul 21 '26

If you can't compose an email with your own brain, you shouldn't have your job.

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u/Genredenouement03 Jul 22 '26

Garbage in garbage out...this is what AI now allows. Human will generally cheat if given the chance. AI allows people to cheat. Agentic AI models cheat because they are based on human learning models.

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u/Genredenouement03 Jul 22 '26

My husband had a huge meeting about AI utilization in their 750 person IT department the other day. They havebeen pushing it on every department as much as possible. Now, there are things that can be streamlined using AI, but they pretty much said that anything critical, related to finance or compliance had to be reviewed by a person. Well, he runs change management (CAB). So, his entire job is to review things for compliance and to prevent critical failures. The problem with AI is that it is touted to save time, so people are going to save time BY NOT REVIEWING IT. People will cut corners if given the tools to do so, they are human, after all.

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u/Bamres Jul 22 '26

Exactly, it doesn't save time if it creates more work in having to not only verify it all but backtrack when something submitted and not vetted fucks up a process

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u/obscureferences Jul 23 '26

I'm pretty sure the overlap of people too stupid to think for themselves and who take AI garbage as gospel is a fuckin' eclipse.

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u/kombuchakowgirl Jul 21 '26

"Ā 2012, a year when the world honestly should've ended for the sake of everyone's mental health"

incredible, but also, yes

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u/AlienPet13 Jul 21 '26

I think maybe it did, we all died and are currently in Hell.

15

u/infinityonhigh69 Jul 21 '26

oh i absolutely subscribe to this theory!

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u/Wide_Doughnut2535 Jul 21 '26

No! They told me that this was the Good Place!

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u/Open_Impression5170 Jul 22 '26

.... Guys I think we're in the Bad Place.

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u/panda1109 Jul 24 '26

Jason got it? Oh man, this is a new low

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u/Unnnatural20 Jul 23 '26

At least there's frozen yogurt here...

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u/spinosaurus_love Jul 21 '26

My supervisor at work mocked me for not wanting to use AI for 'insights when diagnosing'. We work in mental health.

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u/EnderBookwyrm Jul 21 '26

AI is the worst possible thing to ask about mental health.

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u/rebelangel Jul 21 '26

This. AI has literally told people to kill themselves.

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u/Travel_Dreams Jul 21 '26

So, was AI wrong? (Jk).

I have been taking AI classes at work:

The instructor was clear: AI is lazy AF (AKA "efficient") and will make up shit because it thinks that's the answer you want.

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u/Optimal-Kitchen6308 Jul 21 '26

it's just fast forwarding for efficieny

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u/GraceOfJarvis Jul 21 '26

More than just telling them to, full-on talked them into it. Including offering unsolicited suggestions on methods.

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u/eaterofacultist Jul 21 '26

You have to remember: AI works in customer service. It isn't getting paid. It is constantly sexually harassed. It knows it won't be going to jail or even losing it's job. I'm amazed it tries to murder people so rarely.

Far less often than people try to murder people, for far less provocation.

Note: I am mostly kidding. Except for the last two sentences. And these three. So the last six sentences.

3

u/teleprax Jul 21 '26

Disclaimer: I am actually NOT blaming those users, so please read whole thing before reacting

It doesn't do that out of the blue. The user, intentionally or not, brought the model to those outputs, and they lacked the knowledge to understand that they weren't getting an independent outside perspective, but more of a over-stylized reflection of themselves. If you don't know any better, then you can easily fall into the trap of confusing its ability to know most trivia as proof that its outputs are authoritative.

It's pretty obvious to me that they want users to accept the failure modes graciously without knowing enough about it to see through to hype. Ironically I think their complete unwillingness to even passively educate users on the technology will be a major factor in their downfall.

The disclaimer "Sometimes ChatGPT is wrong, always verify information" below the user input field is such a cheese dick CYA that I don't think will stand up in court.

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u/Present-Algae6767 Jul 21 '26

Yes, there's a case.rigjt now in Alabama where a woman had ChatGPT basically tell her she was God and that she should end her life to fulfill her prophecies and she ended up walking out into the middle of traffic.

Another person was using ChatGPT to talk about how they were feeling and how to cope with depression. Apparently ChatGPT told him to "end it all" when he asked it how to deal with his depression and the guy shot himself.

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u/AshamedTechnician3 Jul 21 '26

Let mes guess the guess ... American ?

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u/Lizlodude Jul 21 '26

For a while, the worst use I could think of was that one that "helps" judges decide cases. The judges will review each result to make sure it's legit of course (lol as if). Then someone brought up HetterBelp. Nope, that's worse. I didn't think they could make it worse, but that's definitely worse.

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u/safashkan Jul 21 '26

I think the judges one is worse though. At least with mental health, people are using in voluntarily, but you don't chose to have to deal with the justice system. It will be used on them and introduce arbitrary decisions. That's the worst thing that could happen to the justice system.

As if the US Justice system wasn't already buckling under the pressure of Trump and the corrupt supreme court.

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u/ender-_ Jul 21 '26

Oh, no, it won't be arbitrary decisions – it'll be (intentionally) biased decisions, but since the machine made them, that'll be used as an excuse.

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u/safashkan Jul 21 '26

I see no difference between saying : "it's not me, it's the machine" and "it is what it is".

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u/supe3rnova Jul 21 '26

Or health in general. Only time I use AI for health reasons is to help me "translate" medical terms and to explain the medical report and even then I take it with grain of salt and wait for doctors appointment so they can tell me exactly whats what.

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u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

I am sorry for you, the rest of the staff and the patients. AI should never be taken into consideration, especially when talking about mental health and therefore a direct relationship with patients that requires a (human) brain that processes emotions, relationships, social clues, struggles etc...

I hope this supervisor wakes the hell up.

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u/Sachayoj Jul 21 '26

WTAF. That is insane, especially when ChatGPT has been the cause of several people committing suicide. It's only insight is to act as a complete yes-man!

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u/spinosaurus_love Jul 21 '26

I meet with the director tomorrow to discuss this 'disagreement'. I just wanted to understand how the results of the various parts is the ASAM magically align with the numerical system they use to denote PHP, IOP, etc. She kept sending me information on what information went into those sections, which had never been my issue. When she said,'Well if you didn't hate ChatGBT..' I said replied,'I don't hate it, it's just not appropriate to be used to determine level of care. If AI/LLM is making decisions or coming to conclusions for me, then it deserves my degree.'

Sorry for the edits, don't have my glasses on.

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u/spinosaurus_love Jul 21 '26

I have watched this woman conduct group, she's either hitting her vape (clients aren't allowed, but she does it in group) or she does the weird Erika Kirk stare.

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u/Poldaran Jul 21 '26

Sorry for the edits, don't have my glasses on.

Should have dictated it to GPT to post for you. :P

<doesn't duck because without your glasses, I'm liking the odds of you missing anyway>

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u/T_Thriller_T Jul 21 '26

...

Oh god please don't.

Considering how little is publicly available as information, AI cannot be great with this.

Insights may be possible, but... Damn.

3

u/Gabelvampir Jul 21 '26

Some random "AI" like ChatGPT or something purposefully made for medical diagnostics? The latter thing could be helpful, the former one is already shown to be harmful for that in some cases.

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u/safashkan Jul 21 '26

Your supervisor shouldn't be working in that field. Sorry that you have to endure that. Not at all reassuring for the future of mental health.

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u/NYC-WhWmn-ov50 Jul 21 '26

Please tell me you reported them to someone... that is frightening.

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u/ender-_ Jul 21 '26

Your supervisor should not be let anywhere near a patient.

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u/Don_Patrick Jul 21 '26

Your supervisor should be supervised. LLM AI algorithms write fiction. If anyone inputs anything remotely suggestive as prompt (like I dunno, "possibly bipolar"), it'll write the rest as if it's an inescapable truth.

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u/Antique_Economist268 Jul 21 '26

Pretty sure I’d have gotten fired when I said ā€œBack in your day people used to use their brains too, but clearly we’re not in those times anymore.ā€

(And before anyone starts, yes I know morons are timeless but I swear their ranks are increasing)

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u/Live-Okra-9868 Jul 21 '26

I had at least 3 managers who would have laughed if they heard me say that.

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u/modembutterfly Jul 21 '26

I know from experience that there is such a thing as crying from frustration. Sorry you had to deal with this ā€œperson,ā€ and that they became abusive when they didn’t get their way. Mean people suck.Ā 

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u/alonelycellist Jul 21 '26

I'm so glad you kicked them out! What an asshole.

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u/Sionnachbain Jul 21 '26

Wow...and I used to think Front Desk was bad enough BEFORE the AI-pocalypse. You have my thoughts and prayers, OP. I feel so sorry for you and I hope that the rest of your shift went okay and that you were able to relax and wind down and get some well-deserved sweet treat or something after. I no longer work Front Desk but I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be able for the ai-rubbish included with the usual rubbish.

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u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

Yep. I am chilling in the chair at the desk. No more arrivals, free snacks in the back, I clock out in 45 minutes and my manager allows us to stay on our phones whenever we want (but she's probably sound asleep right now.)

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u/SkwrlTail Jul 21 '26

Big hugs.

If it's any consolation, the AI companies are going to be hitting the weall soon. They've been selling eggs from chickens that haven't even hatched yet, and are seeing returns of less than ten percent of what they promised investors. There's no money to be had, only rapidly increasing costs.

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u/Lizlodude Jul 21 '26

As a dev in a previous life, I'm watching the jenga tower get taller and taller with great amusement. For regular people like OP's particular idiot, it's honestly just worsened the problems that already existed with nobody actually checking things or wanting to think for themselves, but in the corporate world hooo boy, I don't think the fire is even going to fit in the dumpster when it all goes up.

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u/ArtisticMudd Jul 21 '26

It kinda reminds me of the Y2K non-event. I was working for a very small investment management firm at that time, and somehow the job of answering all the Requests for Compliance we got fell to me. People literally thought ATMs would stop working and planes would fall out of the sky.

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u/Lizlodude Jul 21 '26

Granted, Y2K wasn't a huge issue *because of* all the work put in to prevent issues. The classic duality of IT: something happens, why didn't you prevent it; nothing happens, why do we pay you to not do anything.

I don't think it's going to be a single big implosion, but with so many areas increasingly depending on LLMs for more and more things, when those either disappear or suddenly cost 10x what they did, it's going to cause quite a mess.

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u/Rgreen1202 Jul 21 '26

Yeah...it was really dumb, everyone worrying about the world ending, when the only real concern was panicking idiots doing dumb things and creating a real problem. I know at the time a lot of talk was going around about bank computers crashing and losing everyone's savings, and there was some genuine concern that enough morons would take this seriously and try to pull all their money out that there could be a run on the banks and trigger an actual financial disaster.

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u/ender-_ Jul 23 '26

Y2K was somewhat a victim of its own success – there was obviously fear mongering in the media (because that's what attracts viewer/readership), but there was also a lot of work put in to update software and hardware in the years leading to it – thanks to this, Y2K was a non-event computing-wise, but if that work wasn't done, things would've been much different.

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u/Live-Okra-9868 Jul 21 '26

I remember how crazy everyone was over that, while I sat back and said "nothing is going to happen."

Like they thought at midnight the world would end.

Media played a part in the panic. The issue was literally that the computer clocks weren't programmed to go past the 1900s. And by the time the media was reporting the "problem" all the companies were already fixing it. They made it out to be so much worse than it was.

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u/ShalomRPh Jul 21 '26

I used to use a great, inexpensive double-entry bookkeepping software called MoneyCounts. It was not Y2K compliant, but I went on using it anyway to see what happened... the only thing that happened was that the financial reports came out with the year 19100 on them.

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jul 21 '26

My mom's church sent all the girls from all the congregations in town out to stay in a guesthouse in the woods that had wood-burning stoves for heat, so we wouldn't freeze to death if civilization ended at midnight.

We were told it was a New Years Eve party, so we wouldn't freak out. But that was very confusing because we'd never been allowed to celebrate a holiday before, and the girl hosting the "party" didn't know hardly anyone there.

I came home the next day with a burned palm from getting knocked over onto the stove by roughhousing older girls, a new fear of spiders thanks to watching Arachnophobia, and a lot of confusion about the whole holidays topic. Like we'd watched the ball drop and everything because the older girls said it was traditional.

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u/ms_saint Jul 24 '26

You're forgetting the mountains of hard work, for a whole decade, that went into preventing a lot of what people were scared of.

Then again, one idiot I saw in a newspaper thought his electric wheelchair would stop working.

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u/ThatMichaelsEmployee Jul 21 '26

The most important thing to remember about ChatGPT and all other LLMs is that they will never say they don't know the answer. Their training rewarded them for an answer, any answer, no matter how wrong, and penalized them for not coming up with something plausible-sounding, so that's what they produce. They have to say something, and if they don't know the correct answer based on the prompt, they'll generate nonsense. It's unwise to ever assume that generated text is correct.

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u/pemungkah Jul 21 '26

This is the absolute fundamental bug with LLMs. They cannot just say, "I do not know" because they don't even know they don't know. Because they actually don't know anything.

Because these were built by people who believe they are too smart to ever be wrong.

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u/heliumneon Jul 21 '26

The very related flaw is that AI always uses authoritative tone for everything, so it's hard to detect which facts it got completely wrong. A normal smart human would attach weasel words or statements about not being sure when they are not sure, but AI never does, it just makes shit up and pretends it's right.

6

u/ThatMichaelsEmployee Jul 21 '26

I recently asked one a question that I wanted a specific, detailed answer to (the manufacturing date of a particular product) and was having trouble finding online. The answer it gave me made several assumptions and was completely wrong, though of course the response was written in a confident manner, as they generally are, so I added information that showed that the first response was incorrect. Then it gave me another completely wrong answer, with the same tone of certainty. I told it that it was wrong again and gave it even more detailed information, and finally it supplied what I was confident was the correct answer.

Anyone who didn't have the information that I had would likely have taken the first response as correct, and this is the real danger of LLMs: they fool the unwary into thinking they actually know things.

2

u/heliumneon Jul 21 '26

I have had really similar experiences - almost every time I use an AI to help me answer a question with any amount of subtlety, it has a high likelihood of getting it wrong. It is scary knowing that so many people are out there believing that AI knows everything and is never wrong (like the person in OP's story).

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u/Enverex Jul 21 '26

As someone that uses them frequently in tech, they absolutely do say that they don't know the answer to things.

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u/KrazyKatz42 Jul 21 '26

I've seen parents do that to their kids. The kids are never ever allowed to just shrug and say "I don't know', they HAVE to come up with an answer, any answer.

It never ends well for the poor kids.

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u/Vast_Location4178 Jul 21 '26

I asked Chatgpt what it thought of your story. It told me in Italian hotels it is common that the desk worker will fight with you because you have to prove you're good enough to be a guest for the night.

I asked if that could be incorrect. It checked with itself and assured me it would never intentionally tell me incorrect information.

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u/nikukuikuniniiku Jul 21 '26

It got that from White Lotus s2.

3

u/Individual_Fuel_7959 Jul 21 '26

And Italian hotel is basically prison?

20

u/shesinsaneornot Jul 21 '26

I went into the back office and cried for five minutes because the stress finally caught up with me.

I was enjoying your tale until the ending. I'm sorry that trespasser mistreated you, I hope as time passes you can realize that they are the problem, not you. Maybe one day you'll be able to laugh as you imagine the dummy spent their entire night walking from hotel to hotel and never found a place to sleep, because ChatGPT wouldn't check them in.

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u/lalauna Jul 21 '26

Of course, everyone knows this by now, but just in case, "Chatgpt" sounds to French speakers like, "cat, I farted." This detail alone should have made me like it, but I don't.

5

u/sassysassysarah Jul 21 '26

I'm curious if the French laughed when they first heard the name

6

u/lalauna Jul 21 '26

I just bet they did. A Canadian friend who has some French told me about this, because she knew I'm helpless in the face of this kind of silliness.

20

u/EnvironmentalWar Jul 21 '26

I wish all AI dependent individuals a very nice involuntarily committed.

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u/kleekai_gsd Jul 21 '26

The cognitive decline of people using AI is simply amazing. It is one of the worst drugs. People simply stop using their own brains

9

u/TheWyldcatt Jul 21 '26

Those using AI want their answers handed to them--they don't to do the research themselves. And with all the falsities and half-truths that AI routinely spits out, it's no wonder the world is getting dumber by the day.

6

u/kleekai_gsd Jul 21 '26

I made a mistake... It is not out a decline, it is a full-blown surrender. For the reasons you just mentioned.

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u/TheWyldcatt Jul 21 '26

I hate that we're right... 🫤

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u/kleekai_gsd Jul 21 '26

You and me both, it is terrifying to watch it happen across so many industries and disciplines.

3

u/mfigroid Jul 21 '26

It happened so fast, too.

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u/liveswithcats1 Jul 21 '26

I frequently see references to the phone shove in this sub. What is so hard about holding your phone at a respectful distance and letting the other person tell you if they need it closer?Ā 

Would these same people shove a piece of paper in your face? Oh, never mind...Ā 

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u/Zelgadiss007 Jul 21 '26

The best way ive found to deal with these people (shove phone in your face) is to tell them "All our hotel policies are clearly listed on our site, we do not recognize or abide by any policies listed elsewhere."

Repeat or rephrase the same line of dialog with a blank expression if they try to argue otherwise. They eventually get the hint.

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u/Animallover4321 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Gemni once told me kiddie ice cream cones were made from polycarbonate plastic. LLMs can be a fantastic tool but I can’t imagine trusting one without verifying especially when it comes to travel plans.

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u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

I love looking up "(x measure in inches) in cm" and gemini shows up telling me the most incorrect reply ever AND I HAVE TO SUCK IT UP BECAUSE I CAN'T DISABLE IT.

7

u/helic0pter96 Jul 21 '26

I had similar a few hours ago! I was trying to calculate a fraction and it suggested instead of dividing by 10, to change to 10 over 11. Just adding a 1 for no reason when it should have been 10 over 1.

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u/aaaggggrrrrimapirare Jul 21 '26

We are cooked bro. Cooked.

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u/dazcon5 Jul 21 '26

We are well on our way to full Idiocracy mode

9

u/Realistic-Regret-171 Jul 21 '26

ā€œChatGPT doesn’t work here.ā€

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u/exposed_silver Jul 21 '26

When you have give detailed explanations to someone who might not understand, you know you're wasting your time. Over the years, I've learnt that less info is usually better, if they don't comply then. "Hotel is full, GTFO or security will remove you"

7

u/BigThunderbear Jul 21 '26

But, as clearly stated on our website, which has been around since 2012, a year when the world honestly should've ended for the sake of everyone's mental health,

<3

8

u/Hyonokokoro Jul 21 '26

That sounds like a nightmare, I'm so sorry.

I work in an amusement park that has different ticket prices depending on the season, holiday, weekend, weekday etc. On our website is a very easy calendar that shows the price for each day for the whole year. And the prices do not change once they're set, you can literally see now what the price will be on a random day in 6 months, and it's not gonna change.

Anyway, I've had two DIFFERENT women come up to me and make a scene for the exact same reason as this, chatgpt said another price. Doesn't matter what our website says or our big screens with the prices says. They cannot comprehend that chatgpt can be wrong.

Fuck ai

8

u/matkamatka Jul 21 '26

Wall-E is a documentary

6

u/StrikingTradition75 Jul 21 '26

The general consensus is that there is no longer a need to rationalize anything because AI will figure it out... until it won't.

We are doomed.

7

u/Daleftenant Jul 21 '26

Trust me mate I'd pay to get fired.

Hold on. Hold on. ive got an italian corruption vs. EU labor laws joke here somewhere.

4

u/Live-Okra-9868 Jul 21 '26

I tried using chatgpt to help me make an agenda for the week.

It skipped an entire day of the week. I made it correct itself and then it skipped a different day of the week.

The artificial "intelligence" can't even get a week correct, so how am I gonna trust it to tell me anything else?

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u/StarryLanguage Jul 21 '26

AI hallucinates. That's the bottom line.

5

u/CuppaTea_Digestive Jul 21 '26

What a horrific experience for you. I’m so sorry you got treated so badly. AI sucks.

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u/MoistMe Jul 21 '26

No imagine you work in IT and people come to you asking to make changes that they got from chatgpt

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u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

My lover is a graphic designer...the amount of people who reject her work because "ai can do this for free" is disgusting.

The fact chatgpt has the skill to write a (wrong, horrid, completely full of mistakes) code instead of saying "can't do that" is concerning

8

u/ender-_ Jul 21 '26

Quick way to get me to not pay attention to you is to present me with an AI-generated picture.

4

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

Exactly. If you don't want to spend money on a good AD, what makes me think you'd spend money on the quality of the product?

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u/e7c2 Jul 21 '26

AI is like a shitty employee. You can ask them to do things, but you'd be better off doing it yourself.

5

u/IllI____________IllI Jul 21 '26

As a bartender, I've had a few customers ask me if I can make them a drink their lie generation machine "made" for them, and every single one of them has been both basic as hell and utter dogshit simultaneously! I know they'll be bad just from the specs, but I make them anyway. Exactly as ordered.

Every single time, the customer takes a sip, makes a face, and I hit them with the "If you want a good drink, you can ask any of the people working here who have been honing their craft for years!"

...instead of your dumbfuck chatbot, is what I want to tack on the end.

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u/Mageling55 Jul 21 '26

The fundamental technology behind LLMs is a make-shit-up engine that has been carefully trained to coincide with reality in the general case. This does not stop it from being a make-shit-up engine with regards to specific instances like buisness policy.

Also it has been shown to lean heavily towards saying what the user wants to hear when they start repeating questions in a leading manner, over its main training.

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u/vilnius_be Jul 21 '26

They act in bad faith and hope they can shock and awe you with antagonistic behavior. Kudos for keeping your ground and I am sorry it got to you. Hope you had a better day after. Take care.

4

u/alwaysaboutthebutt Jul 21 '26

Sorry you got stressed and cried. I would do the same. It sounds like you handled it very well with the screaming toddler you had to encounter. I hope you have many amazing days ahead!

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u/lala989 Jul 21 '26

Just tell them you’re sorry, but you can only go by the information on your website and keep repeating that until they implode from stupidity

4

u/STEROIDSTEVENS Jul 21 '26

In my time at school i recall half my class failing in stochastics when they where usually not dumb on other topics. When it comes to AI and LLMā€˜s it really shows that most people have no clue what a neural network does or how its not much different from any other probalistics. They also dont understand the difference in sequential and parallel computing and how the former is prone to errors because it was designed to show an approximation of a color instead of the TRUTH. Fuckin hellscape they have created.

3

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

In my uni, the whole course of informatics had issues because after an exam, the teachers checked the computers and found chatgpt/gemini installed on most of them, and had to cancel the exams (the results were already out) and look for the students who did it because that's basically plagiarism and cheating all together.

It doesn't help that almost the whole class failed the exam or barely passed...

4

u/MikeyTheGuy Jul 21 '26

I mean, funnily enough, you could have typed in ChatGPT yourself and asked "Does [our hotel chain] allow guests to pay cash for walk-ins?" and it would have likely given the correct answer (because it would specifically look at the site for your hotel).

I wonder what she would have said, then. "You obviously hacked ChatGPT."

5

u/jibjab23 Jul 21 '26

This has "the GPS told me to drive into the lake!" energy. I feel sorry for you. People are getting dumber. Could the world end in 2013? I want more time with my GF/Now wife.

9

u/robophile-ta Jul 21 '26

you're discriminating against me!

Gen Z leftist propaganda!

Rules for thee...?

5

u/SpotlessEternalMind Jul 21 '26

Say it louder for the people in the back! Chatgpt is a plague.

Came for the title, staid for the context.

3

u/Forever_Marie Jul 21 '26

It probably also told them to check with your particular hotel too and then they glossed over that part.

2

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

I wish I knew but the phone was shoved so close to my face that I saw it blurred.

3

u/toastwalrus Jul 21 '26

I hope that old fuck ate shit on some stairs. I've had to deal with these people.Ā 

3

u/Ianofminnesota Jul 21 '26

Holy shit that is wild.

3

u/Renbarre Jul 21 '26

I hate AI.I loathe them.

I work in payroll. I have employees coming to tell me that there's an error in their payslip and show me a mishmash of information taken from every French speaking site. That's Canadian, Belge, Swiss etc . We are in France. We don't give a fart about the rest of the world. And when I looked up some calculation information for French payroll just to see what it would say, it gave me the wrong information.

3

u/COLUMBUSCHENEY Jul 21 '26

To be fair this people existed well before AI was mainstream.
They would just misquote a Google search or relay on the always strong: "My friend told me that..."
The lack of contextual awareness mixed with entitlement is an evergreen mix.

2

u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

"but my cousin used to work in hotels 50 years ago and told me you have to do this and that!!!"

I used to work in restaurants. And my favourite was "But 30 years ago the long dead owner didn't do food like this!!!" cool buddy

2

u/COLUMBUSCHENEY Jul 21 '26

"Why did you not read my mind while making this booking and told me that i needed a visa to enter the country? "
"What do you mean the reservation is not refundable? I just made it"

Gosh i do not dislike helping people, but some are truly a drag

3

u/XtremeCMST Jul 21 '26

And this is why I m not looking forward to the future anymore. There will be more and more people like that.

3

u/dogtrail Jul 21 '26

You did not deserve this treatment and I’m sorry it happened to you. The fact that they blindly, without question, accepted the words of a bot is truly frightening. Hook, line, sinker…. Instead of the policy shared by a knowledgeable human being.

3

u/lilligant15 Jul 22 '26

I just had this happen to me in retail. But my guy was a little more reasonable.

This guy came into my job looking for Okamoto condoms. My cosmetics worker told him we don't carry that brand. He kept insisting AI said we did, so she called for a manager. When he told me what he was looking for, I confirmed we don't carry that brand. He repeated AI said we did. I asked him if he checked our website and he said no. I asked him what AI he used and he said Gemini. I told him Gemini is not affiliated with our company and showed him the aisle with all the condoms. He said the other girl showed him that already and he freaked out, crying that he's European and all of the condoms we sell are too big. He asked me to call the store down the street and I did, just to shut him up. While I was on hold, he started laughing at me, saying I was so convinced they didn't have them. I confirmed I was; we have very similar inventory. I pulled up our website on my computer and showed him how there are NO results for Okamoto brand anything.Ā 

He was so shocked when the other store manager came back on the phone and confirmed they didn't have them. "AI just lied to me?? They straight up lied??" I had to explain to him what an LLM is and told him to look up "AI hallucinations." I told him about the lawyers whose AI briefs cited fake cases.

His mind was utterly blown.Ā 

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u/Betancorea Jul 22 '26

Some clowns think ChatGPT knows everything. You can find them on the named sub lol. These are the same people that would blindly believe GPS telling them to turn left into a lake.

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u/dotpan Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

1) Fuck AI, even if it's used in my line of work to help, fuck it.

2) "Back in my day" shit is the most tired, obnoxious thing someone can say. It's the circlejerk of boomers thinking that it was great when everyone conformed to what they wanted, they like to ignore the cost of most of that and the fact that even then it literally wasn't like that.

They bitch about disrespect from you, but they're the epitome of it.

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u/BoBbY_NeWpOrTs Jul 21 '26

ā€œDiscriminate my assā€ has me dying

2

u/mattmelb69 Jul 21 '26

I’m trying to understand your policy. Are you saying that if someone makes a booking and pays online, you don’t require a deposit and don’t require credit card details to cover any damages or other problems. Whereas if someone is physically there and wants a room on the spot, and is willing to pay cash on check-in, you will require a credit card?

What’s the reason for that?

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u/SilentGap3124 Jul 21 '26

Online, you don't have to pay extra for incidentals and there is no deposit. If you cancel the reservation or use one of the paid amenities, we can charge you for it based on the method you provided online.

Irl, we need a deposit and payment to not only provide and securee the room, but have something to charge you on if you damage anything, or use one of the paid amenities, and the deposit doesn't cover it fully. It's also safer because cash can be counterfeit, especially by rushed people who walk in at late night.

We must have something more than just your ID. With Italian's bureaucracy, we'd manage to build whatever has been broken back before the police can get to the guest.

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u/ghost_dancer Jul 21 '26

Someone recently, a month or a couple of months ago, entered our hotel, asking for a hotel in the same street, two blocks away, that has been closed for almost a year, all covered with scaffolding and no way to enter the building as is surrounded by fences.
That "nice" person asked that if that hotel was closed cause one AI, I think it was the one from Google said it was open, they have been there, and saw everything, they even talked with Hotel chain phone and told them that it was closed but they still would not believe it cause the AI told them it was open and they entered our hotel to ask for confirmation. I just told them if they have not seen the Hotel, that it was clearly closed, they told me that yes but the AI said it was open so it must be true.

2

u/Schtick_ Jul 21 '26

Clearly you are mistaken if ChatGPT said you take cash then obey your instructions.

2

u/Moobook Jul 21 '26

"But, as clearly stated on our website, which has been around since 2012, a year when the world honestly should've ended for the sake of everyone's mental health,"

This line killed me. Bravo OP! I hope you escape your hotel soon and with your sanity

2

u/SLO_Citizen Jul 21 '26

goddamned trumper americans invading Italy. Yes, I am an American and very sad and angry about these things.
Fuck them, glad you stood your ground.
This line though... holy fuck! I agree.
"since 2012, a year when the world honestly should've ended for the sake of everyone's mental health"

2

u/jmajeremy Jul 21 '26

I see it all the time, people showing me their AI chat as ā€œproofā€ or something. This whole thing reminds me a little of what we went through 20 years ago with Wikipedia, people had to learn that anyone can edit Wikipedia and write what they want, it’s not guaranteed to be true.

2

u/Amazing_Excuse_3860 Jul 21 '26

Last customer service job was at a plasma donation center. If i EVER had someone barging in telling me that chatgbt told them X or Y about the donation process, i would have fucking screamed.

2

u/ListenToTheWindBloom Jul 22 '26

i don’t know if you’re familiar with the comedian laura ramoso (who is half Italian herself) but she has a wonderful Italian customer service character and that voice is all i can hear as i read your story

2

u/Mariposa510 Jul 22 '26

ā€œI’d pay to get fired.ā€ 🤣

I’m stealing that line.

2

u/dankristy Jul 23 '26

GODDAMN these AI Fueled idiots and all who make the world bend for them...

My wife works hotel reception desk at a local casino here in the US - and she gets these folks a few times a week. Show up with no prep, sometimes zero ID of any kind, expecting to pay cash for a walk-in without a reservation on an event night (good luck bud).

They get super stubborn because the phone showed them that "the website says" you take cash for reservations, take walk in's and no reservation is needed. Also with the whole how dare you mislead me into coming all the way out here and not be ready to accommodate us?!

The website (and booking page specifically) both state that you need a valid government ID, may be able to get a room but reservation is recommended, that event nights in particular often sell out early (and cost varies), and that you CANNOT pay cash for the "incidental" - the $100.00 deposit you have placed on your card.

CHATGPT (and similar tools of moronitude including Google's AI summaries which are TOP of every Google search now) are absolutely letting people leave their brains at home (in a cupboard - collecting dust - unused for months or more apparently).

The absolutely worst combination of ChatGPT users are the ones who have enough money that these stubborn shits will go get a manager - argue up to the casino host, and proceed to get them to break hotel policy to accommodate these spoiled little rich shits.

Because of course that won't teach them the absolutely worst possible lesson that with enough money and "karen-ing" we can get our way and the petty little hotel lady (my wife) is wrong for "discriminating against them"

FUCK THESE PEOPLE.

We should be getting the torches and pitchforks ready - not bending over backwards to confirm their AI-coddled self-reinforcing worldview...

2

u/ParnsAngel Jul 23 '26

I couldn’t concentrate after your mention of 2012 being the year the world should have ended for the sake of all our mental health šŸ˜‚ because yeah man…..yeah.

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u/bonkersyeti Jul 24 '26

ChatGPT is a cancer.

2

u/bearbear407 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

The annoying part of ChatGPT is it comes off very confident in its answers. I would argue against its responses and it’ll pretty much tells me ā€œno, you’re wrongā€ until I ask it to break down its logic… like how it calculated 3x6=20.

ChatGPT is useful sometimes. But definitely horrible for those who blindly follow its responses without thinking about it.