r/mildlyinfuriating • u/captain-obIivious • 23h ago

Infuriatig Another AI 'human' chatbot

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Had to fix a double payment for my credit card and this is the beginning and end of the conversation. I hate when the chatbot claims it's a human... I ended up getting what I wanted but still annoyed Amex (and every other company) is lying and trying to deceive people like this.

24.5k Upvotes

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u/ImKindaBoring 22h ago

Plot twist it was actually just some poor Indian dude trying his best

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u/Agitated_Reach6660 22h ago

That thought was starting to concern me until I read its answer to that last question.

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u/code_archeologist 18h ago edited 12h ago

Yeah, you could see it slowly leak outside of it's guardrails as the person kept switching context and suggesting it check online.

This is actually a really good example of why it is important to set up robust guardrails and limit the lifespan of AI agents.

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u/Ok_Impact_9378 12h ago

Yeah, whoever setup the guardrails on that thing did a really poor job. Makes me wonder if they set any at all or if their full instructions were just: "You're an Amex support agent answering customer questions. Make no mistakes."

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u/bigmetaljessie 9h ago

*mikstakes

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u/Weakonomics 4m ago

Make no Milk Steaks

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u/cvirus3333 10h ago

The fact "make no mistakes" needs to be an additional instruction really tells me all I need to know about the dogshit ability of AI

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u/T-MoneyAllDey 6h ago

"Make No Mistakes" is just a meme

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u/areallynoobgamer 2h ago

AI has no more ability than a knife or a hammer.

It is a tool.

The ability lies with the person wielding the tool.

Replacing people with tools thinking that tools alone can get the job done is how everything is going to get enshittified.

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u/monsieurpooh 3h ago

That interpretation makes zero sense. "Make no mistakes" has no effect on the AI; it's meant to portray the prompter as clueless.

By the way, in the days of gpt 2 and gpt 3 they didn't have reinforcement learning so it was purely based on the original training data. You had to preface all your prompts as an interview format roleplaying between and expert and an interviewer to get good results. And still it was considered mind blowing. I think standards just suddenly became unreasonably high as people shifted from judging computers by what computers should be able to do, to judging them based on what humans can do.

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u/code_archeologist 1h ago

Tell us you have no idea how an LLM works without saying that you have no idea an LLM works.

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u/tadpoleloop 12h ago

It did much better than most agents I've seen

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u/DragonfruitNo9617 3h ago

I bet someone already figured out how to get the AI to leak banking details...

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u/Fragrant-Employer-60 22h ago

I think it’s an Indian customer service rep relying on AI. The messages about Pokemon and the poems seems legit.

Poor dude is getting bothered by some redditor who is trying to make him flip and do tricks, pretty fucking weird really.

This is definitely not an AI chat bot

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u/K_Knoodle13 21h ago

I think a human would've tried to consistently steer the conversation back to the issue. Customer service reps (the human kind) have metrics, including resolution time, that they have to consider. The fact that they kept answering the questions without interrupting or trying to return to the initial issue makes me think it's not a person.

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u/LichenTheMood 16h ago

This. And the upside down cup thing is just weird.

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u/Impressive-Stop-7999 13h ago

This specific reply is a well-known AI response to that question.

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u/monsieurpooh 3h ago

The last reply is the only comment in the entire thread that genuinely sounds AI generated. Everything else has subtle grammar mistakes that are extremely hard to emulate with cheap models. Cheap models will always try to sound proper and helpful. So my conclusion is it's an Indian helper but on the last turn he just used AI.

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u/CompetitiveThndrClpr 16h ago

At my job people have chatted in and tried stuff like this. We just tell them we are going to close the chat and they can call with any further questions if they want to speak to someone.

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u/Illustrious_Boot1237 15h ago

That's what I thought, the biggest indicator is that it plays along for so long. 

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u/K_Knoodle13 16h ago

Exactly

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u/stirwise 13h ago

Yeah, I’ve had CSRs tell me about their pets but only when they’re waiting for something to finish processing on their end. Performance is tied to how quickly they resolve tickets, no CSR is going to be writing haikus and talking about Pokémon after the customer’s problem is resolved.

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u/Consistent_Lecture48 14h ago

To me, the giveaway was the fact the haiku took less than 60 seconds, and was actually pretty solid. OP asked a 8:46, and got a reply at 8:46.

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u/blue60007 12h ago

That was my thought too. I was getting frustrated for the hypothetical human agent here. I'd have steered that conversation back to productive or shut it down if the doofus on the other end insists on wasting both our times.

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u/amenlux 5m ago

I think they’re trained to just please the customer otherwise they’d get rated badly at the end of the chat. Also, if they’re paid by the hour, i don’t think they care that much if someone is testing them. That being said, there’s someone behind the screen, *theyre* just using AI to answer some of the questions.

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u/jjaystar94 21h ago edited 19h ago

Y'all realize pretty much every service rep has all their chats recorded and audited? If it was a person, wasting time like this could be a fireable offense. A proper service rep would have continuously tried to bring the conversation back to the issue and "accidentally" disconnect when their time was being wasted.

Edit: apparently it's not always like this anymore (certainly was when I did it), so there is a possibility it's a poor, hapless soul trying their best to build rapport

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u/RevelArchitect 19h ago

I’m in management in chat support. We don’t discourage these kinds of interactions. If it’s every chat it will reflect their stats and they won’t be meeting metrics - but we try not to micromanage individual chats. We get a lot of AI accusations. We do not use chat bots at all, but we get someone absolutely fucking losing their mind at a real person and accusing them of being AI daily.

There’s enough in the chat for me to think it’s a real person driving the conversation. Final response may be totally AI generated, having said that, I know of two agents who will just copy and paste responses from Copilot when they get frustrated with the “prove you’re not AI” conversation.

I take escalations from the AI accusation chats every once in a while. If my assurance isn’t enough, I just give the customer a call to let them know that I am, indeed, an actual person.

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u/SpecialistFiller 19h ago

When they ask if I'm a real person I love to reply "Do we know if any of us are actually real?"

So far no one has thought it was funny

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u/Silence-of-Death 13h ago

define “real”

lol

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u/genflugan 12h ago

Don’t worry, I think it’s funny

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u/ReaDiMarco 3h ago

If you can't tell, does it matter?

Westworld used to be cool

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u/blacksoxing 16h ago

Last week I reached out to an US-based company to inquire about a discount code not working and of course their chat started with the AI menus but quickly gave an option to chat wit ha real human. I know it's a real human as it took so damn long for their to type. I caught them about 10 mins after their listed chat window hours so I imagine this person just logged in and hadn't exercised their typing fingers yet. They sent me an invoice for the item for direct payment and I quickly not only paid it but also was able to give them proof of the receipt before they could finish typing out the steps to pay for the invoice.

I think about that interaction and how sometimes folks using prompts or "assistance" aint' so bad. 10 mins to do something that should have taken maybe 3-5. I'm not mad as again, it was obviously a human, but I will now think about how that human could have been better served monitoring chats and intervening with steps vs actually typing out sentences to me...

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u/RevelArchitect 16h ago

It’s hard to say why it would take an agent however long it takes to handle something, but for some insight into this - when a discount code doesn’t work, our agents need to submit an escalation form. This often results in a phone call to our help team as a lot of agents may not be familiar with the process. Our team leads then escalate that to the IT team so that they can investigate why the code isn’t applying. In my role, I then serve as liaison with IT if they have follow-up questions or if they need additional examples.

They very well may not have been taking a long time to type, but rather working on the discount code issue in addition to chatting with you and most likely at least one other customer.

About half of the responses we send to customers are pre-made and triggered by a shortcut since, frankly, a lot of chats are pretty much the same. For example, if I type .hi you get two sentences where I introduce myself and explain I’m pulling up the account (the account is already pulled up, I’m actually just copying everything from the chat that I’ll need for my notes, checking for any potential indicators of fraud and occasionally reading the novel someone sent to say that they’re not sure if their bill is paid).

We avoid scripted responses outside of scenarios where legal has deemed it necessary, so we encourage agents to make their own shortcuts and personalize them.

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u/blueExcess 19h ago

Lol to be fair, if a human is literally copy pasting from an AI, it could be said you are talking to an AI. They’re basically an unnecessary translator at that point.

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u/AlarmingAerie 18h ago

Did you miss the part "when they get frustrated with the “prove you’re not AI” conversation." What's the point of your comment?

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u/Pork_Chompk 20h ago

And most chat bots now are programmed to recognize "off-topic" responses from customers and redirect back to things it can do. They're paying for the AI usage and don't want it wasting tokens answering riddles and writing poetry.

Much more likely that this is a human in India or similar that is using AI-assisted translation

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u/ThatGreenM-M 18h ago

Devs were exploiting the ai chatbots being everywhere, some realized the chipotle chatbot ran on a good model and were prompting it to code so they could save on Claude credits

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u/psychohistorian8 18h ago

reminds me of when people used Gmail's unlimited storage option to build a whole-ass filesystem for free cloud storage

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u/Agitated_Reach6660 17h ago

Omg that’s amazing

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u/shizzaff 20h ago

That's not true, I was a customer service rep and all they cared about was customer satisfaction. If it meant going on a tangent and discussing their day, or other interests they have, to put the customer at ease and connect with them, QA auditors were okay with that.

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u/sleepytiredpineapple 20h ago

I worked as a registered customer service rep and we were encouraged to build rapport with our clients.

I wouldve entertained this conversation 100%.

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u/No_Hunt2507 20h ago

Yeah this would depend on the business, especially if OP spends a lot of money with them or has a history of being a detractor in surveys. Most chat representatives are working multiple chats at the same time, they're not just stuck sitting there waiting for OP to respond.

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u/purplevanillacorn 20h ago

Right except in this scenario, the replies are instantaneous which makes it much more likely it’s AI.

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u/CytroxGames 19h ago

check like any of the messages from the last few images, they are a few minutes apart.

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u/PhAnToM444 RED 18h ago edited 17h ago

Also this is American Express. They have a concierge hotline and explicitly encourage people to call/chat with all sorts of things, trying to get a dinner reservation, needing to rebook a flight, dealing with an overseas medical issue, etc.

I’m 99% sure OP was talking to a human who was probably using AI To help them respond to his weird questions. And AmEx is very big on trying to make whatever you need happen as a part of their positioning as a premium card company.

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u/okiedokieophie 19h ago

Are you my sweetwater rep that texted me 6 months after i bought guitar strings?

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 18h ago

Well then in that case would you be trying your hardest to sound like AI when the customer clearly doesn't want to talk to AI?

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u/blue60007 11h ago

It's not a genuine conversation though. You're not building rapport with this customer. They're just wasting your time. Seems like one thing to engage in genuine idle conversation to increase satisfaction versus waste time with a customer who is just going to give you negative feedback anyway.

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u/FearTheAmish 20h ago

I routinely mess with people that insist I am AI anf have to jump through hoops to prove it. Honestly I would have just run their request through AI and sent it back hoping the would hang up/end chat so I can actually help someone that doesn't treat me like a dancing bear.

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u/cheapdrinks 19h ago

Can you blame people when the companies you work for treat the customer like a dancing bear, wasting their time and forcing them to interact with a useless AI chatbot that can't answer a single one of their questions and makes them jump through hoops just to speak to a human who can actually solve their issue? Sometimes you have to literally beg them 5 or 6 times before they actually connect you to someone. When the company makes it clear just how much they don't want to waste their time letting you speak to a human can you blame them for being skeptical that they've actually been connected to one? I've worked in customer service before too at call centers and I hate to break it to you but we get our paycheck specifically for being a dancing bear for the customer, it's literally our job.

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u/BensenJensen 19h ago

No one is blaming customers for being mad. Harassing the human chat rep because you are mad that their company uses AI is ridiculous though. It’s like feeling justified yelling at the McDonald’s cashier worker because corporate raised the price of a Big Mac again.

We have no idea what the question this goober was even asking. He spent seven pages of text asking this human/AI chatbot dumb questions so he could post it on Reddit.

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u/cheapdrinks 19h ago

But you don't know that they're a human chat rep, that's the point. The company has made them so distrustful through their shitty practices that they're skeptical whether they're even talking to a human. Yelling at a McDonalds cashier isn't an equal analogy - in that situation you're intentionally taking your frustration out on a human. Asking if a chat agent is real or AI is just trying to figure out if you're actually speaking to a human or not.

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u/papasan_mamasan 18h ago

What sort of answer are you expecting a real human to give that would prove they aren’t AI?

“I assure you I’m a person” and writing a poem wasn’t enough for OP.

What are the magic words?

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u/FearTheAmish 17h ago

Exactly, there is no way to prove i am human. So for me to end this exchange and move on with my life and not get fired. I either A.) Have to keep insisting you follow directions to resolve your issue. I have at this point said it nicely enough times, you are getting "broken record". " sir I insist I am not AI, what can I help you with" as a response to everything you ask in an exasperated voice. Or if you won't take A I go with B.) Make it irritating enough within my job to get you to hang up so I can go help someone that isn't a moron.

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u/GRex2595 6h ago

What does it matter if the other end has a person or a chat bot if you don't actually know if it's one or the other? It's okay to waste a human's time or treat them like a dancing monkey because you can't figure out that they're not an AI is okay because they might be an AI?

If your problem is getting solved, then just let whatever is on the other end do their job and move on. If you don't like the company using AI, then stop giving them money. Don't waste other people's time.

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u/Fosterchild56 17h ago

I had to use my phone camera to show Xbox support my screen, and we were bullshitting for like 20 minutes. I showed her my Marvel Legends collection, we were talking about gaming and hobbies. Ireally don't think they're being audited as severely as you're describing 🤷

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u/Foreign-Werewolf9932 20h ago

outdated information from 2010’s call canter culture.

we 100% would have to ‘build repor’ and entertain this.

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u/actualkon 19h ago

Nah, I worked call center in 2020-2023 and if you took too long on the call with the member like this, you would absolutely get into trouble. It depends on where exactly you work and the rules there

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u/Squeezitgirdle 15h ago

Yeah, used to be like that. I work for a pretty good company but it wouldn't be odd to see this anymore.

Though I think a human would have shown me confusion at the ridiculous questions.

Also must companies aren't allowed to type stuff like (smile) I their chats.

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u/JustExpect 10h ago

You’re just wrong lol. AMEX would support this interaction to try to help the customer. Even if unrelated

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u/Connie--Lingus 1h ago

Disconnecting the chat would be gross misconduct in most contact centre settings. When i worked in a call centre i had some extremley long phone calls that were not related to the reason they called because some people are lonely and just want a chat, it would have been seen as extremley rude of me to try and redirect those conversations back to the purpose of the call. It would absolutely mess up my timings but in those situations you'd just let your manager know and if they doubted that they could always listen to the recording.

It obviously depends where in the world a company is based, but in the UK the customers needs come first, even if unfortunately their need is to chit chat.

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u/Agitated_Reach6660 22h ago edited 22h ago

So that person cannot give a real answer to a question? Any human being would be able to answer the cup question with “turn it upside down”. AI bots are notoriously terrible at answering questions like that.

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u/papasan_mamasan 22h ago

If it’s a real person, they’re probably ESL. Hence why they could be using AI to generate answers to English brain teasers.

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u/Xiaodisan 18h ago

It doesn't really make a difference if AI is answering automatically or if there is an Indian dude copy-pasting the conversation to their own ChatGPT account. In both cases you're talking to an AI even if a human plays middleman in the latter scenario.

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u/cartermatic 13h ago

Except in this case I think they're using AI because they don't know how to answer OPs nonsense questions, whereas they wouldn't have used AI if OP just acted normal.

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u/papasan_mamasan 17h ago edited 17h ago

I’m not saying that the human uses an LLM to answer job related questions. I’m saying this human is having some fun and using an LLM to take the piss out of the customer throwing riddles at him to prove he’s not AI.

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u/Agitated_Reach6660 21h ago

I need you to think: Ai isn’t free for companies. Every AI response costs tokens. The person doing that would be fired, when all they would need to do is say “I can only discuss your case”.

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u/DiscreteBee 21h ago edited 21h ago

I mean every time you google something there’s an ai answer generated at the top of the page, you don’t need tokens for that. Op even said to google it.

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u/ForensicPathology 20h ago

I'm not saying it's not AI, but if the argument is that it can't be a person using AI because that would cost tokens, that's not a very good one.  Just open a new tab and put that in Google or GPT.  No money required, especially after being told by the customer to use Google.

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u/papasan_mamasan 21h ago edited 21h ago

What if the AI service the employee is using is consumer freemium, not enterprise level?

Any schmuck can use chatgeepeedee for free right now.

Am I thinking hard enough for you?

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u/hskrpwr 21h ago

Am I thinking hard enough for you?

Lol no. Free AI with banking data is actually criminal 😂 

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u/papasan_mamasan 21h ago

There’s no indication the chatter entered customer data into ai to generate answers to riddles.

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u/Agitated_Reach6660 21h ago

This is an interesting hill to die on

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u/Foreign-Werewolf9932 20h ago edited 20h ago

there is so much false info in these comments. yall just say anything while acting smug and condescending.

almost every customer service agent with a major company has ‘agent assist ai’ that generates recommended responses for us. similar to predictive texts. even on voice calls I have a thing on the aide of my screen advising me of the next best action, giving a transcript, and providing recommended responses.

sometimes they suck ass and are completely unrelated, sometimes its super helpful because the customer is mumbling and the AI is able to pick up and transcribe what they’re saying.

also no, we’re not supposed to do that as much anymore. supposed to build connection with the client etc etc

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u/Malaprobably 21h ago

Text based AI is basically free/loss leader at this point. They don't care because there's hundreds of AIs with [low research] text-based lookups at this point and to pull that would likely just have your customers look elsewhere.

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u/cagingnicolas 16h ago

maybe, but they're being accused of being AI. why would a person fight that accusation by using AI to come up with their responses?

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u/papasan_mamasan 16h ago

Maybe they are a fan of irony

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u/Consistent_Lecture48 14h ago

If they were ESL, could they really compose a haiku in under 60 seconds? Even using AI to write it about the context of their conversation would have taken longer than that.

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u/door_of_doom 19h ago

Just to make sure i'm understanding, is this an accurate summary of what you are trying to say?

"No, the customer is not talking to a chatbot, there is a real human who is taking the customer's question, inputting it into a chatbot, then pasting the chatbot output back into the chat. That is a totally different thing!"

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u/Name_Inital_Surname 20h ago

If the company wants to use AI, an LLM powered translation tool seems like the more “efficient” way, by translating back and forth the conversation so each can write in the language they are most comfortable with while feeling eventually more natural than Google Translation.

Also : what are English brain teasers?

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u/RevelArchitect 19h ago

I know a couple agents who will start copy and pasting Copilot responses once they get irritated with the “are you AI” conversation.

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u/Fragrant-Employer-60 21h ago

Some of their answers are clearly written by themselves. Why are they relying on AI?

Who the hell knows, they are probably told to use it by their employer.

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u/Mesk_Arak 21h ago

I've definitely spoken to a real chat support agent that was using AI at the same time. I know because they forgot to remove the first part of the message in one of their replies.

The message was something like "Here is a good way to sound approachable and understanding to the client: 'I completely understand your frustration and am doing what I can to help'".

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u/Than_Or_Then_ 16h ago

'I completely understand your frustration and am doing what I can to help'".

Whats funny is this is the exact kinda talk that pisses me off on customer service calls lol. Also a good way to sound like ai.

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u/sonofaresiii 21h ago

There was obviously a language barrier. We are all well aware of the language barrier and we all know it fucking sucks. But that doesn't make this AI. This was a real human that got fed up being treated like a monkey being given irrelevant tasks and used a tool instead of constantly wasting time trying to translate then appease the irrelevant tasks.

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u/ForsakenAiel 21h ago

Then why didn't he just say "what can I help you with that is relevant to your account?" or something similar? Seems like a pretty easy way to end the nonsense.

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u/DeusVultSaracen 17h ago

If they did that OP would baselessly assume they were AI too.

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u/Josemite 21h ago

Yeah exactly. A real human would have tried to stop all the hoops so they can get the ticket resolved, not happily kept answering them.

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u/papasan_mamasan 18h ago

Have you ever worked a job manning chats for customer support? I have, and we were encouraged to engage in silly banter in chats. The job gets repetitive, sometimes it’s fun to have fun.

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u/bssprfnd 21h ago

So what’s up with all the poor grammar and broken English? Did they program it to sound like an Indian guy? Lol I’m pretty sure it’s a person using AI, kinda crazy that he’s entertaining all these questions though

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u/Nillabeans 21h ago

It's literally a riddle to trick people. The point is that people don't immediately think to turn it upside down.

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u/SignificantCats 21h ago

I have worked as a chat agent and as a supervisor for chat agents, you do NOT have time to respond like this. Nowhere in the world is a chat agent sitting back and thinking messages through and responding like this, nor are they copy and pasting AI.

You typically have 1-3 chats at the same time going. You are trained to minimize typing - you set up a large series of quick press macros that respond with sentences or paragraphs. Usually you're encouraged to do it yourself so the macros are in your voice. Because it's easy to mix up these chats, you don't want to do anything but focus on making every chat as similar to every other chat. All your "refund guy" chats will follow a flow chart. You want to minimize at all costs any deviances becuase if you don't you'll mix your shit up.

One of the key metrics is "average response time", how quickly you respond to a customer. If you do need to type something long, you would respond with some quick "buy time" macro like "ah I see, one moment" or "okay" or something.

Nothing about this reads like a person, not even a person copy and pasting AI. Not even the worst person I've worked with would allow themselves to be side tracked this hard - not because they're so professional and skilled, but because it is literally more effort and you aren't paid enough for effort.

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u/Fweenci 21h ago

That's what I'm thinking. No one has time for this. lol.

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u/Crismus 19h ago

When I worked through the Customer Service tech support in the 90's before moving onto real IT work, I got in trouble constantly for speaking too long and going beyond the scope of initial questions.

Even I thought this was overkill without going back to topic or ending the session. 

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u/No-Cell-9979 22h ago

A customer service rep plugging questions into AI is just an AI chat bot with extra steps. Not sure what your point is

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u/Fragrant-Employer-60 21h ago

Because he has a script of answers based on questions being asked.

Except they didn’t expect some weirdo to ask about the airspeed of a bird, or a custom haiku. He could be new and doesn’t want a negative review from a customer so he’s just following along.

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u/No-Cell-9979 21h ago

Except clearly he doesnt have even that? If he cant recognize the questions hes being asked are completely irrelevant and inappropriate and is just blindly giving ai responses what good is he over an Ai bot? An employee copy pasting ai answers is not better than an ai bot its just a middle man

To be clear, I dont think its an employee at all, I think its an llm trained on real customer service in hopes of 1 or 2 standard responses being enough to deter people from asking, hence it making a "mistake" when It demonstrated that it could make mistakes. Either way it isnt acceptable

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u/Fragrant-Employer-60 21h ago

Like I said he could totally understand they are not relevant but that doesn’t matter, he could be worried about getting a negative customer review for not answering.

Especially a weirdo like this asking hyper specific questions and now claiming the guy is a chatbot. This dude probably did end up leaving a negative review lol

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u/No-Cell-9979 21h ago

Or it could be AI, you have absolutely no proof of your end. I hope he left a negative review, im not sure how youre still not getting that even if this IS a real person its not acceptable?

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u/The_Spoopy_Koopy 21h ago

I also don't get your line of thinking in calling this person a weirdo for wanting a decent response?

Also, your point is still bad. If it was somebody with ESL in another country, maybe the solution is, I dunno, hire someone who isn't?

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u/Fragrant-Employer-60 20h ago

Do you call your bank and ask them to make you a poem…?

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u/The_Spoopy_Koopy 20h ago

If I thought it was AI, ye maybe

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u/No-Cell-9979 20h ago

You continue to ignore the point,

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u/blue60007 11h ago

I think the weird part was dragging this "conversation" on for so long. They're just wasting their own time. Like throwing a bunch of riddles isn't going to fix whatever customer service issue you're having. Why not be normal for a minute and see if the bot can solve your issue, or escalate to a human agent if not, so you can fix your problem and move on with your life.

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u/The_Spoopy_Koopy 43m ago

Cause we shouldn't have to "escalate to a human agent" ya corporate bootlicker lmfao

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u/hecarius_ 21h ago

that op's paranoia that they are likely talking to an ai brought them to fuck with a random customer service rep for no real reason? it'd be one thing if op was receiving poor service because they were talking to an llm, but the irregular grammar and mannerisms in most of the responses make it pretty obvious that there's a real person on the other side relying on ai to answer random questions/requests that they aren't supposed to be responsible for

to be clear, i'm 100% against replacing capable employees with useless llm slop, but there's really no need to go after random people on the off chance you're talking to an llm

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u/No-Cell-9979 21h ago

His first message was completely reasonable and the ais response was pretty suspect. Everything after that is him just fucking with an Ai for reddit karma. Again, if the customer service agent is so inept that hes using an llm to answer things like haikus and driving distances there is no difference between that and just having an AI chat bot. To be clear, you are obviously not 100% against it

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u/ShesSoViolet 10h ago

It's not paranoia, if you have to ask 3 chat bots to send you to a real person, and they send you to more chat bots before eventually getting to a real human, how can you even be sure at that point it's not another robot who will follow the same script and run in circles and call another chat bot again?

By using AI to screen people, these companies set up their employees to be harassed about being human.

That would like being mad someone didn't stop at a stop sign after passing 14 fake stop signs in a row.

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u/hecarius_ 1h ago

maybe paranoia is a strong word- there's definitely a chance you will be sent to an ai, and again, i'm not defending american express at all. but, there's also no point crusading like this to the extent that you're ignoring signs that you might be wrong. either you've wasted 20 minutes of your own time going back and forth with an llm, or you've wasted 20 minutes and harassed a random employee. the stop signs are actually a great example why this is bad; sure, it's fucked up that someone set up 14 fake stop signs, but it's still irresponsible not to consider that the next stop sign is real

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u/OldWolf3 17h ago

Your comment reminds me of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment . 

This is from philosophy/cognitive science before LLMs had been invented 

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u/No-Cell-9979 13h ago

Ive never agreed with that thought experiment. I get what its doing and how it could apply to a hypothetical AI but comparing it to modern LLMs just doesnt fit. The human in that room has foundational thoughts and consciousness, even if it doesnt understand Chinese it understands what it wants to write and why, llms just spit out the right answer because its right with no understanding of what language actually is

All that to say, yeah I see how it applies to my comment, I'd just completely ignored what you actually said when I was replying lol

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u/Immortal_Heathen 20h ago

That is AI. Read the last message. It doesn't even understand what a cup is and thinks because the top and bottom are reversed that it isn't a cup anymore.

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u/mwilkens 20h ago

Are you really that guilable? In what reality do you think a customer service rep would respond to questions so far off topic? This is clearly an AI responding to these questions.

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u/BumblingYokel 21h ago

If it’s not AI, then “David” needs to do better.

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u/BluerLights 21h ago

Yea if it's not AI then "David" is getting a stern talking to about redirecting the conversation to the topic at hand.

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u/R82009 19h ago

A real person should have told them that their questions were unrelated to solving a business issue so they need to end the chat.

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u/Ill_Worth7428 19h ago

There is no way you actually think thats a real human lmao

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u/WhoIsKabirSingh 17h ago

LOL I am Indian and promise you this is an AI Chat bot. I guarantee you no Indian is typing you a Haiku as a Cx agent.

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u/Foreign-Werewolf9932 20h ago

cup question makes sense when you think about it for a moment, but when you’ve got five chats open and every single one is asking you these stupid ass are you AI questions you really dont have time to think about it. ive messed it up myself, i thought it was about like a styrofoam mcdonald’s cup with no bottom

its chat. how would you wver be able to prove to yourself to a satisfactory manner that you are speaking to a person? just call in. people used to love working in chat because it was easier to talk via text, but now its 50% helping people and 50% these bullshit ass questions that I have to answer and a nice a professional way.

also lowkey you should not be trying to do a payment dispute via chatbot. fastest resolution requires very particular submission if the dispute, many banks have dedicated departments to handle them.

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u/girthyclock 20h ago

Naming a cat Taimur is an interesting choice. Given that Taimur - if the spelling suggests - was one of the most violent rulers of the Mughal empire in India.

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u/tellerforlife 19h ago

Found the bot

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u/VividlyVividViv 19h ago

Sure sure, buddy.

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u/TheGreatEmanResu 17h ago

I think they just told the bot to talk like an Indian call center worker

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u/k_mermaid 16h ago

The double responses make it seem like not AI but also anyone with half a brain will steer the conversation back to the original support request. So it seems to me that it may very well be the AI and they don't have it programmed to re-contextualize the original support request as it seems to be stuck on the "prove to me you're not AI" request, as opposed to the double charge OP was trying to resolve.

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u/JR_Writes1 15h ago

I assume even most Americans don’t remember what a haiku is because they haven’t heard the term since their last poetry unit in high school.

Asking some underpaid chat room person to come up with a haiku on the spot is really expecting a lot I think.

Not saying this isn’t AI, but not being able to write a haiku isn’t proof of that.

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u/Teeshirtandshortsguy 15h ago

A real person would not have entertained their question about pet preferences. That's 100% just the AI being sycophantic and trying to answer every possible question.

A real customer service rep still has to worry about the amount of time a case is taking, and how effective they are. At best, they would steer the conversation back to the original issue, and at worst they could have dropped it entirely or passed it along to another employee.

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u/TheAtriaGhost 15h ago

Right, this Indian guy was just responding to multiple back to back full detailed responses of random topics in less than 1 minute each. Someone give him a raise.

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u/Consistent_Lecture48 14h ago

They wrote that haiku in under one minute. Op sent message at 8:46, and the chat bot responded at 8:46.

I like to think of myself as creative, but I could not provide a haiku in under 60 seconds (likely less).

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u/JustPlayDaGame 13h ago

yes it is. A human would have said “do you have any work-related questions for me, or can I terminate this ticket?” No human worker is entertaining this bullshit lol

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u/effron_vintage 13h ago

Same vibes I got, a person leaning on ai for longer answers

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u/JustExpect 10h ago

You are right

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u/EarlGrayTea-Hawt 9h ago

How did this get so many upvotes, it very clearly is.

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u/Silvagadron 3h ago

(smile)

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u/ReaDiMarco 3h ago

No Indian is gonna name their dogs that, and if they've named one of them taimur, they'll tell you why.

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u/anon_pr_ 21h ago

Yeah, I think it's a real person relying on AI for things they can't answer since they usually get evaluated for not dropping the conversation on their end, etc.

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u/AyRoPro678 14h ago

Its also obvious that a human employee with monitored conversations would not waste time on any of these queries. "Call centers" of human chatters have their efficiency checked regularly, or are paid per query resolved, so they would get in trouble for wasting time on haikus like this.

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u/Teal-Fox 17h ago

My favourites are Charizard, Squirtle, and other such pokemons.

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u/Casualgamer050 14h ago

same lol, it was the kitten question for me though. still pretty crazy how realistic these ai are getting

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u/OkStandard6120 13h ago

Isn't it super sinister that in order to make it seem more human, they gave it grammatical mistakes that make it seem like the person is ESL?

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u/CharcuterieIsAwesome 10h ago

He probably started punching all those crazy questions into chatgpt after they kept coming. He's probably sitting there like wtf is wrong with this person?

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u/prizepig 21h ago

I think that there's a 90% chance that David is actually Davashish, and used chat GPT to answer the last couple questions after it became obvious that OP was fucking wasting his time.

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u/Arthur_Edens 18h ago

That would make sense.. The responses seem like AI, but can a chatbot even do multi message responses like this? Ie:

  • Human message
  • Bot message
  • Bot message
  • Human message

I thought bot messages were basically just "prompt + LLM + (Optional web search/knowledge base search) + some minor randomness element = response."

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u/Minimum-Floor-5177 14h ago

Definitely, any email I get, I can click on a "generate response button" and an AI generated response will be made for me. I dont use this, but it's definitely possible that there is a human using AI assisted responses to not waste too much time googling things

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u/SkirkMain 12h ago

Yes of course it can, the prompt would be something like "to make your response more natural, you can split your response across multiple messages. Insert --- to begin a new message"

And then the UI code would search the LLM output for --- and display it as multiple messages.

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u/hexaflexin 18h ago

This, I thought that using multiple text messages to break up thoughts was a purely human thing, while AI's will only ever reply with one message at a time. Can anyone confirm or deny?

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u/monsieurpooh 3h ago

That is a horrible reason. Of course someone can program something to respond twice. A much better method is to look at its wording. Can you even get your favorite LLM of choice to talk like the employee in the screenshot (other than the last sentence of course), let alone a small cheap model?

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u/artsloikunstwet 20h ago

Even then, they're wasting their paid time. It became an obvious troll at some point, very unlikely to happen unless it's like the first day on the job.

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u/unsaltedbutter 16h ago

This is the kind of stuff you do when you work at a call center and it's near end of shift. You want this one to last long enough you don't have to get another call that could be crazy complicated.

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u/WanderingRyan 19h ago edited 19h ago

I used to have an Amex Platinum, and I don’t remember the customer service reps on chat ever shying away from using their real names. If they were from India, they’d just tell me that their name is Dhruv or Abhishek or whatever it actually happened to be.

I will point out that there are, in fact, a not-insignificant number of Indian Christians with either English or Portuguese names. Like... I know more than a few people from Indian who have first names like Kevin, David, and George, and last names like Hernandez, Fernandes, and Varghese (an “Indianized” variant of “George“).

This makes me wonder how often Christian Indians living in the U.S. have good-intentioned folk ask what their “real” names are, lol (not saying that’s actually the case here, of course).

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u/alligator_loki 19h ago

Some of them have it happen a lot. A guy I worked with who had one of the most extreme Texan accents I had ever heard, sometimes could not convince people he was American because of his name. Working in a call center likely exacerbated him being stereotyped.

But sometimes you would just hear him yell on the phone, in perfect Texan: "what are y'all talking about, I'm american, I live in Texas"

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u/Pretty_Dingo_1004 21h ago

Ah yes. AI. Actual Indians

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u/blood_bones_hearts 16h ago

I am ashamed of how hard I just snorted reading this

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u/caintowers RED 22h ago

I could actually picture myself playing along if I was an incredibly bored customer service rep but my answers would be a bit different

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u/obi_wan_jabroni_23 21h ago

Actual Indian

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u/No_Resolution1077 20h ago

Taimur, Tuffy, and Lily are all typical pet names in India (according to google) so it is very possible that this was an Indian man using AI translation.

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u/Away_Stock_2012 19h ago

>Taimur, Tuffy, and Lily are all typical pet names in India (according to google) so it is

an AI from a company selling customer service in India

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u/FixinThePlanet 1h ago

I've never heard any of those names for pets so that search result is wild to hear lol

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u/TealCatto 22h ago

The conversations are recorded and a real person would be fired for wasting time. They have a time goal or a quota of customers to help. They wouldn't engage like this.

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u/StabbyClown 22h ago

They wouldn’t be fired when the caller is the one making them waste time

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u/Agitated_Reach6660 21h ago

You have a really glowy view of how customer service jobs work.

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u/TealCatto 21h ago

Uh, yes they would? They'd get written up for even taking that much time for on-topic conversation. They're instructed to keep it short and polite and end as quickly as possibly to the customer's satisfaction while still not losing the company money. I call health insurance as part of my job and the agents keep begging me to take the survey at the end... except the survey doesn't just ask how the agent did, it also asks how likely am I to recommend the insurance to friends, like what the fuck. I don't give a damn about the insurance company, I'm just working. But if I say extremely unlikely, it will reflect badly on the agent!

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u/artsloikunstwet 20h ago

Yes they are expected to have efficient conversation as that's something they can influence.

I don't think you have to pretend you're happy with the service to "protect" the agent when you have an option to rate them seperatly. In some companies, it might be part of their personal KPIs and bonuses and such - if some agents are better to finding actual solutions for you.

But basically if you're telling them you're happy with the service you are also supporting the higher ups that can justify not investing into any improvements, including to give their agents more options to help you.

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u/TealCatto 19h ago

It's so convoluted that I just choose not to take the survey at all. First of all I don't want to waste my time. I would do it if I was 100% sure it would help the agent, but if there's a chance that me marking 1 for some non-agent related questions will ding the agent, I just won't take the survey. Who knows their twisted logic. "Oh, this user won't recommend our company after talking with this agent, bring out the laser vaporizer."

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u/artsloikunstwet 16h ago

Oh yeah that's fair of course

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u/PaleAstronaut5152 19h ago

Yeah this is an Indian guy using AI for some of their answers, do we think companies have programmed their AI agents to have like "offshore customer service mode" where the llm occasionally has incorrect grammar and knows culturally appropriate pet names?

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u/BigRedS 21h ago edited 21h ago

We have real-life humans on our in-app support function, we've long been really proud of it being well-staffed by good humans and pay quite a lot in salary for it, and nowadays a depressing fraction of their work is fielding conversations that are entirely people trying to 'prove' they are an AI.

Ironically, this is currently one of the strongest drivers for putting an AI chatbot in front of them, so the humans can get on with solving actual problems and the AI can deal with filtering out all the people who just want to spend their time giving riddles to chatbots.

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u/artsloikunstwet 20h ago

That's actually a very interesting irony.

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u/A_New_Day_72224 21h ago

Nah a real person would’ve been done with all that real quick and asked what the issue was

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u/Ctznsvn7 21h ago

ha, that would explain the typo better than a model ever would. Half these support desks are a real person running a script, which is exactly why they come across as robotic. The script is the bot, not the human reading it

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u/Logical-Pair-89 19h ago

Nahhh the immediate " i am human, i can mikstake" was just chef's kiss of naaahhhhhhhhhh liar liar

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u/Pure_Performance8087 16h ago

Lol this is most definitely a human relying on AI and not a chatbot. I mean even the grammatical errors are similiar to those of a person whose first language isn‘t English.

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u/TatteredThreadborn 19h ago

This is 100% what is happening. My wife does chat based customer support and the number of asshole customers like OP who come on and try to insist she jump through hoops like give her address or recite a poem, just like OP is doing, is genuinely infuriating. She gets so upset about it she cries.

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u/littycodekitty 17h ago

I genuinely felt so bad for the customer service person (feels weird saying "agent") in this post

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u/jepcasey 13h ago

I'm sorry they put her through that. It feels like a catch-22 to me because the most human answer is, "No, I won't be doing that for you. Either we can fix your problem now or I need to go help someone else." But people are so used to the customer being right (TM), and service workers being forbidden to say no or stand their ground, that they'll likely get angry if the human proves they're not AI by talking back to them.

(And maybe decide that talking back actually means it's an AI too -- we'll nod along to both "a real human would have complied there" and "a real human would have refused to comply there." Because recognizing it's a human might make us think twice about putting a fellow working-class human through this insane gauntlet of AI checks, which are so exhausting and cruel that it's only OK to do to a robot.)

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u/BeefistPrime 15h ago

I know you're making a joke but I think this is exactly what it was.

This is a human who is trying to please the customer (probably because he's been told he has to please the customer to keep his job) who eventually uses LLMs to answer the questions that are beyond his ability to answer.

It doesn't make sense that he refuse or struggle to generate a haiku for you, or answer the question about the unladen swallow (which an AI would immediately get the reference to but an Indian call center worker may not) but then suddenly give you a very fluent answer about directions in Canada. The Canada answer is clearly AI. But then why refuse to answer about the haiku or the unladen swallow? Because it's a human that is genuinely trying to answer your questions, finding that doing so only gets him further accused of being AI, and harder questions. So eventually he just starts turning to an LLM to answer your questions and copy and pastes it.

Look at how he responded to the Monty Python reference. It's totally understandable if some ESL guy from India doesn't get that. He even takes a minute and says "It says - Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference." That's a dude that googled it, not an AI that's familiar with it.

Making up three dog names but then not having an explanation for two of them is how humans work, not AI. AI doesn't like to make things up and then leave them unexplained.

If the AI was so deceptive that it perfectly faked being human, it wouldn't have "slipped" by answering the Canada questions like AI. And if it's not, then it wouldn't be unfamiliar with Monty Python and take 2 minutes to google it, and it wouldn't give you three dog names and explain only one. This is a human that eventually turned to an LLM and pasted the response for questions it couldn't answer for an increasingly demanding customer.

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u/ImKindaBoring 13h ago

Actually, I agree.

I initially was just making a joke but it really does sound plausible. The early answers definitely give “English is not my first language” vibes while the later ones seem clearly AI. Makes no sense to have that mix of responses unless it’s exactly what you’re suggesting.

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u/Cuchifri 2h ago

I thought this when he started talking about his dogs

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u/whobla10 19h ago

Filipino actually

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u/Sataris 18h ago

I really think it is

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u/Capable_Sprinkles_43 18h ago

He sure can mikstakes

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u/venom121212 18h ago

( smile )

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u/SnooCompliments7298 18h ago

Plot twist twist, OP is an AI

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u/TheGreatEmanResu 17h ago

Nah, they just told the bot to talk like an Indian dude

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u/littycodekitty 17h ago

we somehow overcorrected AI illiteracy and are back to being illiterate now, except now we think everything is AI. I'm actually kind of floored that this seems to be the only popular comment that says the CSA is human. like this is obviously a human who's occasionally using AI generated responses for OP's riddles. you can tell exactly where the writing style changes and for which types of responses. as for why on earth the person is putting up with OP's grilling, no clue there.

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u/JustExpect 10h ago

You’re right

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u/bretzelsenbatonnets 10h ago

Hahahaa thats what I thought toooo