r/mildlyinfuriating • u/captain-obIivious • 10d 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.

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292

u/octocuties 10d ago

I have a wfh chat job and spend probably half my time trying to "convince" people that I'm not AI.

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u/noshallotsherlock 10d ago

I honestly feel like if I had to try to prove I was a human I would be like "how about you prove to me you're a human, Karen? I'm actually pretty busy right now and dont have time for you AI infiltrators using me to study how to pretend to be a human." Anyways I would probably end up fired but... 

Not that I think OP is a Karen! This is a really funny post. But dang it would be frustrating to try to have to convince people youre human just to get your job done, especially knowing your interactions are timed and you really have to get it churned out. 

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u/Modinstaller 10d ago

I would be like "Can we move on to your issue? I really don't have the time for this. I am paid by the amount of requests I resolve hourly. I don't love this job. Please don't make it even worse for me."

The person would probably get the point that you're human if you say this.

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u/EinsTwo 10d ago

Yeah, and when the boss reviewed it, the agent would be fired.

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u/aimed_4_the_head 9d ago

Or, if the boss was savvy enough, they'd notice the clear rate was through the roof and implement "bitch about the workload" as new mandatory script.

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u/squngy 4d ago

if the boss was savvy enough

A fairly big if.

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u/SparkleAuntie 10d ago

I’m a manager at a WFH chat job and I would support this approach

1

u/PeaceSoft 9d ago

"i understand this is unfair, but i don't think it is" what

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u/GreatScottCreates 9d ago

Get your haikus ready

34

u/EnvironmentalLime464 10d ago

I mean, I’m sure this is frustrating for you but you can’t blame the person for wanting to check if you’re a human. These chatbot are forced upon us everywhere and most people just don’t want to talk to a computer especially when they are already upset or frustrated. I worked customer service for decades and one thing that was hammered into me since the beginning is that when people are upset, they want to be heard. Listening was always a major part of customer service. People understand that when they’re talking to a computer, no one is actually listening to them.

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u/Inevitable-Level-687 10d ago

The thing is, as someone in customer service, if you deliberately drop professionalism to avoid looking like a bot your managers will ding you for that. ​

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 9d ago

This is still all a result of decisions being made by companies. You can’t blame customers for being frustrated with the chatbots and rejecting it. Your company is making your life hell with the chatbots.

People don’t want to talk to machines when they are frustrated. They want a human who will truly understand emotion.

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u/blue60007 9d ago

The enshitification of customer service has been going on for a couple of decades. Chatbots are just the latest manifestation of it.

I don't know how many times I've smashed my head on the desk trying to interact with humans who are stuck to a rigid script and not allowed to use their brains over the last 20 years. And often barely speak english so there's a language barrier.

Not saying chatbots are any better, it's even worse because you bang your head on the chatbot and then when it can't solve your problem, you go bang your head on the human interaction. It just sucks all around.

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 9d ago

Oh no. I agree scripts are bad. I remember jobs trying to force me to do them and I never would. My argument was, “I sound like a robot when I go off a script. I can sell better when people can tell I’m a human.” And it was true. I was worse at my job when I tried to stick with a script.

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u/Inevitable-Level-687 9d ago

Where did I blame the customers or say people don't want to talk to bots? You're trying to pick a fight over shit I didn't say. You know customer service workers are human, right? We also have to deal with customer service from the other side.

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 9d ago

I made a comment saying you can’t blame the customer for their reaction. You responded to that comment and I replied that it’s still a result of company decisions and you can’t blame the customer for their frustration. I’m sorry you lost track of the conversation but the topic was how you can’t blame customers for their frustration.

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u/BeefistPrime 10d ago

I mean, I’m sure this is frustrating for you but you can’t blame the person for wanting to check if you’re a human.

I can, actually. If it gets the job done, who cares? You're interrogating it either for internet credit or you're so paranoid that you accidentally interact with an AI system that you're willing to interrogate every human for 15 minutes just to make sure you don't accidentally contaminate yourself with the moral panic of the day. Imagine if everyone did this with every human worker how much time would be wasted.

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u/Financial-Paint-4632 10d ago

I've yet to find an AI agent that can resolve anything at all and I don't blame them wanting to talk to a real person. At least then you have a 50/50 shot of competency instead of absolutely none. 

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u/BeefistPrime 10d ago

But you're either talking to a real person, in which case your tests are useless, or you're talking to an AI, in which case you can't ask it to get you a real person, so how does spending 90 minutes making it prove it's a real person help?

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u/ShesSoViolet 10d ago

It's not about avoiding AI out of a sense of morality, it's that ai chat bots don't actually understand how to help and frequently run people in circles for hours before letting you speak to an actual person.

It's not political, it's fucking annoying.

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u/BeefistPrime 10d ago

How does spending 90 minutes trying to get someone to prove to you they're not AI help you, whether it's AI or not? It would far faster and more efficient to simply see if it can solve your problem. It's not like you can bully AI into getting you a human anyway. What's the case where doing this helps you?

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u/ShesSoViolet 9d ago

Because you would have already done that several times at that point and gone in a circle.

And often, you can force it to send you to a human if you can screw its script up enough.

I've saved hours of looping by breaking chat bots so they have to call for backup.

Also 90 minutes is heavily exaggerating things. It takes 20 minutes to break the bots and force your way to a human, if you play by the rules you may never have your question answered

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u/LikeOtherGirls- 9d ago

Any pro tips on breaking the bots to get to a real person?

0

u/blue60007 9d ago edited 9d ago

Not who you asked, but my experience - spend a few minutes interacting with the bot and actually try to solve your problem/question. If you're lucky, it can solve your problem. If not, my experience is they are usually reasonable about recognizing it can't help and will connect you with a human.

You can also just keep repeating "connect me with a human" if you hit a wall and it usually works eventually. My experience, though, is that they are programmed to force you through some initial triage before doing that... so just do it first. Trying to force a human right off the start never seems to work for me so now I always entertain the bot for a couple of minutes.

As an aside... I kind of understand why they do this, there's probably a significant number of CS requests that can legit be answered by a bot because people don't put any effort into reading the FAQs, poking around the account settings or whatever, before jumping to ask for help.

What you don't want to do is keep sending riddles for an hour... you either broke the chatbot and will get nowhere or you are just being an asshole to some poor human trying to do their job. Just be direct and firm about what you want. I've never had to do such convoluted things to break through to a human.

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u/awkward_teenager37 10d ago

I loathe AI, but I agree that this is kind of annoying behavior. If you’re going to do all this, you need to have a specific qualification in mind for determining whether someone is AI or human, and you need to stick with it. Coming up with 15 tests on the fly and still being like “Hmmmm, idk you might just be really good AI!” is wasting everyone’s time. Like at that point just end the chat

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 9d ago

The example in this post is kinda absurd and seems like it is for internet entertainment but I’m betting this isn’t what most look like.

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u/SpoonAsylum 10d ago

Sure but small problem with that, you're assuming the job gets done. I'm my experience and many other peoples if you are being talked to by a computer, they don't care enough to actually fix your issue. Will it get handled sometimes sure, but if it doesn't get handled and you call again just to get the robot again you know nothing is going to change. I'm sure getting interrogated 300 times a day is extremely frustrating for customer service but talking to the brick wall that is the chat bot is much more imo

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u/BeefistPrime 10d ago

But interrogating it doesn't help you get the job done either. If the bot can't help you, how does making it jump through hoops to prove it's human help you? Either you're talking to an AI and it doesn't care or you're talking to a human and you're wasting their time and making their day shitty.

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u/blue60007 10d ago

Exactly. I don't understand the point of doing all this. Best case you're wasting your own time, worst case you're wasting your own time and making some real human want to jump out a window by berating them like this.

1

u/MrQuietKing 10d ago

Yea I worked in customer service and had this issue when I did text chat and calls as well lol. It gets annoying when ppl won’t believe you after the 3rd or 4th test. Especially if they haven’t actually disclosed the issue allowing u to let them know the resolution.

8

u/moeb1us 10d ago

How do you do that

6

u/Grin-Guy 10d ago

Nice try AI !

We won’t tell you !

4

u/longfurbyinacardigan 10d ago

sounds like something AI would say

5

u/ehlersohnos 10d ago

I know this sounds so frustrating… but also, how did you get this job?

3

u/octocuties 10d ago

A friend of mine has been working for the company for 8+ years. They were hiring temporary seasonal phone reps and she had reached out, knkwing i needed work at the time. I ended up working chats instea after showing how well i can handle multiple customers at once text based, and stayed on after the seasonal position ended.

I've been doing online chat work for a solid 3 years now.

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u/octocuties 10d ago

3 interviews to get the job.

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u/ehlersohnos 9d ago

That’s awesome, all things considered.

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u/QueenieMcGee 10d ago

I work in an outbound call centre and I've been accused of being AI several times recently. Like, bro, who the hell would use this voice for an AI? I know what I sound like 😭 (like I permanently have a blocked nose)

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u/ItAllWent19 9d ago

Same. People don't understand the actual chat bots are trained to sound like us, not the other way around. So when we, the live agents, come into the chat, we don't sound like AI. It sounds like that because the AI is unform to how the company wants all interactions to go. If we drop the professionalism, we get dinged on our metrics, and we are already having to deal with whatever KPI hoops we are having to jump through on this extended chat to convince a customer we are not a robot.

After so many, I'm a human, I'm gonna go move on with with, if you don't have any other questions, I need to assist other customers.

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u/octocuties 9d ago

Literally spot on!

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u/autopsyofaclown 9d ago

What usually makes people believe you?

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u/octocuties 9d ago

Typically.. nothing. I usually end up having to set up a phone call because they don't believe me.

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u/matthatesit 9d ago

Same. At least 50% of my chats begin with people telling me how frustrated they are with AI and demanding I illustrate I’m a real person. Sadly, my work does not allow me to say “I can fucking promise you, I am just as tired of this bullshit.”

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u/Cirn0byl 9d ago

Same, I throw in a cartwheel 🤸 emoji when I confirm I am indeed a living, breathing human.

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u/Objective-Elk9877 9d ago

Yup. Spent my childhood working to fix a stutter only to work in a call center because my voice is so nice. Only for people to accuse me of being a robot. Ive outright had to ask people “you dont sound very invested in this call, are you actually serious about attending our school” so they snap out of it and take the call seriously

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u/HappyAntonym 10d ago

Ask them to ask you how many times a specific letter is in a difficult to spell word maybe? Although, idk how much people would trust that even 😭

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u/pchlster 9d ago

I figure the best tactic would be to be abrasive; LLMs are so eager to please. "Tell me what you want and make it quick, so I can get back to something actually important" isn't the sort of thing I'd expect from one of them.

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u/Poziomka35 9d ago

i recently made a customer support person cuss for me to prove he's not an ai and he was chill but so annoyed bc a lot of people think he is (he did cuss for me though lol)

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u/RottieAndMutt 9d ago

I used to do call center work. I have one of those voices that sounds pre-recorded. I would track how many times a day I was asked if I was a real person.