It doesn’t wholly replace the need for human support agents but if it can adequately handle a substantial number of tickets that’s enough to reduce headcount.
A huge percentage of problems raised in customer support are solved by otherwise accessible resources that the user hasn’t found. And AI agents are sophisticated enough to actually action on a lot of issues that require action.
The good news is that this means human agents can focus on the actually hard problems when they’re not consumed by as much menial bullshit. The bad news for human agents is that with half the workload we’ll probably hit an equilibrium with a lot fewer people in support.
I already know of at least one company that's pivoted to using a mix of AI and off-shoring their support, as well as some other functions; that's underway, with results unclear, aside from layoffs that took place. There was also a brouhaha a year or two ago when a mental health advocacy tried using AI to replace their support team... did not go as planned when it suggested self-harm to some users.
I have to assume this is entirely because American architectural practices are ultimately derived from England’s, where courtyards are not particularly helpful.
They make perfect sense in warm, sunny regions like the Mediterranean because they provide a shaded and comparatively cool area on hot sunny summer days.
The courtyard giving shade is a negative in England since it seldom gets very hot and so people are actively trying to enjoy the sun, not hide from it. And as a double whammy a courtyard means more exposed walls so a home that’s harder to heat in colder winters.
Of course plenty of Americans live in places much hotter and sunnier than England - but their English heritage has left them with standard building practices unsuited to their environment.
The mercantilist economic policy of the UK was an abject failure that made its people poorer and prevented the import of cheap food.
But the UK’s unwillingness to provide sufficient aid once the famine had already started was motivated by laissez-faire politics and a Malthusian belief that the famine was the Irish’s own fault for overbreeding.
Remember that the government with the support of the Whigs and Radicals actually repealed the Corn Laws, it was just too little too late. Ironically the Whig’s free market beliefs if enacted in policy much earlier might have prevented the famine from happening in the first place, while simultaneously meaning they weren’t interested in properly mitigating it once it did happen.
The blame has to ultimately be placed at the feet of the mercantilist policies. Once they restricted trade, they were responsible for the welfare of the Irish. So, these arguments that they made, that the Irish were responsible for overbreeding, were not a product of laissez-faire ideology, just their bastardized understanding of it.
Maybe if the North Korean people had the most basic of civil liberties and could communicate in any way with the outside world people would be less inclined “stereotype/orientalize”.
The problem isn't that we fail to apply the same rules for software development in safety-critical and non-safety-critical contexts. The problem is that we do apply the same software in both contexts.
Gatekeeping the entire industry isn't the answer unless you want to cripple it... but if someone wanted to issue regulations along the lines of "Don't steer your nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a Windows app," I wouldn't object to that.
Yes absolutely. Being found not guilty of a crime or being pardoned has no bearing on the evidence that exists which is presented in a separate civil case against you.
There’s no double jeopardy in a civil case - it’s a matter of if someone has a claim of damages.
Arguably not, but once revolution and civil war break out you don’t really have the option of just going back to how things were. It’s certainly better than if the civil war had gone on for 13 years as it has in Syria. We also don’t know how brutal Gadaffi’s crackdown and reprisals would have been had he won.
Libya’s been at peace for 4 years now, but it’s politically a mess. Syria has seen 18 times as many deaths as Libya with only 3 times the population.
Anyways the question wasn’t “will Syria be better than 13 years ago” it was “will a Syria become an Islamic state” - and it’s a fact that Libya hasn’t ended up that bad in that regard.
You don’t just press a button that says “war economy” and then everything turns out fine. You drive massive inflation, weaken consumer markets, take on
massive debts and eventually run out of young men.
Pretty much every nation bar the US was on the verge of economic collapse by the end of WWI (and Russia’s did). The financial burden of two world wars killed the French and British empires. Germany’s WWII war economy was totally unstainable and the USSR’s was bankrolled by the US lend-lease program.
It’s not a panacea - it’s just what you have to do to drive enough military production to sustain a near-peer conflict.
Russia’s ability to implement a war economy isn’t unique - the last time they did it (WWII) so did the UK, Germany, and the US.
More recent examples include the both sides of the Iran-Iraq war and Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan.
GDP has implications for the productivity of an economy and the budget of the government.
41% of Russia’s government spending at the minute is on the war which means they have to either cut spending on other things weakening the state or drive massive debt and inflation.
There’s a reason you can only run a war economy for so long - eventually you win the war or bleed your economy dry. Russia’s had the advantage of huge legacy reserves of equipment from the USSR days and a larger population. We’ll see how long they can last tapping the well.
It doesn’t wholly replace the need for human support agents but if it can adequately handle a substantial number of tickets that’s enough to reduce headcount.
A huge percentage of problems raised in customer support are solved by otherwise accessible resources that the user hasn’t found. And AI agents are sophisticated enough to actually action on a lot of issues that require action.
The good news is that this means human agents can focus on the actually hard problems when they’re not consumed by as much menial bullshit. The bad news for human agents is that with half the workload we’ll probably hit an equilibrium with a lot fewer people in support.