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I know someone who works on the voice response system for $LARGEBANK. She says that more than 95% of calls are just to find out a checking account balance.

That's fine, and there's no need for AI pretending to be a human, or to ask me to talk to a computer as if it is a human. Routine decision trees work really well here.

In fact, decision trees are nice because they tell your more or less up front what they're capable of.

What really sucks (AI or decision tree, either way) is when they don't let you easily speak with someone.


I'd argue a well designed AI assistant would be considerably better than a decision tree for that use case. Decision trees are slow because you normally need to wait through several options before getting to the one you're interested in. (Though sure, perhaps not if your call is literally for the most common thing.) But with an AI you could jump straight to what you're interested in.

"Hi, I'm the LargeBank AI Assistant. How can I help you?" "I'd like to know the balance of my checking account."

And then authenticate and get the balance as usual. Simpler and faster. Agreed that it becomes a problem if it's seen as a replacement for human agents though. In an ideal world it would actually free up the human agents for when they're actually needed. In reality it'll probably be some of each.


I'd counter with the following:

por espanol marque beep

if you have a quest beep

for beep

beep*beep*beep*beepbeep*

The account balance for account ending in NNNN is: $375.86

I shouldn't have to navigate a conversation in a situation where muscle memory will take me through the phone system decision tree in seconds.


I believe that. Probably 95% of my support calls to online shops are about order status (aka: the website shows "in preparation" for a week already, I need to talk to a real person).

Funny, it doesn’t look jooish

uh no idea what jooish would look like..


ah TIL...

Same. My assumption, before seeing this, was "ok, I'm going to guess land in a city is worth 100 or 1000x land anywhere else", and I guess I overestimated a bit.

The Bronx isn't "anywhere else", it's a region of New York City (one of the five boroughs), just like Manhattan is.

Having grown up in NYC, I’m well aware. I’m also well aware that the Bronx is rather different from Manhattan.

Weird. I see lots of people in that thread have this issue, but I personally can’t reproduce it at all, and I just spent an hour trying.

> the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel.

I recently was in a 45 minutes Uber ride where the driver had the stereo set to the Sirius XM self-advertising channel - the one you get if you haven't subscribed. For 45 minutes, all he listened to was an ad for XM.

Most people just don't care.


Tales from HN techies interacting with regular people.

> Most people just don't care.

So proceed as normal.


Or perhaps his free trial ran out and he can't justify the extra expense. Driving Uber isn't exactly a path to riches.

I realized that we may soon live in a reality where that's not an option, but I bet the car he had still allowed him to turn off the radio with the ad.

(I'm sure there would have also been countless ways to make the thing play actual music, but turning it off is the most obvious course of action.)


ok ... but why would you listen to the ad - and nothing else, jsut the ad - for 45 minutes straight? it's not like there aren't a billion other options.

Is it possible that he was paid to play such add to his passengers?

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I've definitely seen behind-the-front-seats screen ad placement and other weird things in ride shares in the U.S. so this doesn't seem out of the question.

This looks great, but I don't understand what it's supposed to do. I assumed the idea was "remove the lyrics" but of the 5 songs I tried (from Cry Cry Cry, Indigo Girls, and Suzanne Vega), none seemed to have any change from the original at all - it's showing the words on the screen (and the timing is perfect) but it's not removing the singing at all. How do you turn off the singing?

hey!

you can use + / - buttons on the keyboard to change the level of guidance according to your preference, generally there is a controls legend in the top right corner

https://nightingale.cafe/docs/controls


Yeah, I did that. I think the problem is when there are multiple singers harmonizing it only removes one.

indeed! the stem separation model is not ideal. you can try to change the stem separation model in the settings and reanalyze the song (make sure to click the trash button and then analyze, refresh button does not refresh the stems, only the transcript/alignment)

it's easy just /etc/init.apt-get/frob-set-conf --arc=0 - +/lib/syn.${SETDCONPATH}.so.4.2 even my grandma can do that

Do rulings like this actually have any effect, or will the administration just ignore it?

I would generally put “stability” and “quality” as attributes of mass production far more than that of handmade things. Yes, an expert can make a quality product by hand, but MOST handmade things are far more likely to be shoddy. The whole point of mass production was that suddenly you could make a million identical perfect products.

True, but motivations for mass production also are motivations for making things worse off overall.

That's the cool bit - you don't have to. CC is perfectly well aware and competent to implement it; just tell it to.

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause.” - Padmé Amidala

s/liberty/knowledge


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