alt Hacker NewsDwarkesh had a good interview with Zuck the other week. And in it, Zuck had an interesting example (that I'm going to butcher):
FB has long wanted to have a call center for its ~3.5B users. But that call center would automatically be the largest in history and cost ~15B/yr to run. Something that is cost ineffective in the extreme. But, with FB's internal AIs, they're starting to think that a call center may be feasible. Most of the calls are going to be 'I forgot my password' and 'it's broken' anyways. So having a robot guide people along the FAQs in the 50+ languages is perfectly fine for ~90% (Zuck's number here) of the calls. Then, with the harder calls, you can actually route it to a human.
So, to me, this is a great example of how the interaction of new tech and labor is a fractal not a hierarchy. In that, with each new tech that your specific labor sector finds, you get this fractalization of the labor in the end. Zuck would have never thought of a call center, denying the labor of many people. But this new tech allows for a call center that looks a lot like the old one, just with only the hard problems. It's smaller, yes, but it looks the same and yet is slightly different (hence a fractal).
Look, I'm not going to argue that tech is disruptive. But what I am arguing is that tech makes new jobs (most of the time), it's just that these new jobs tend to be dealing with much harder problems. Like, we''re pushing the boundaries here, and that boundary gets more fractal-y, and it's a more niche and harder working environment for your brain. The issue, of course, is that, like a grad student, you have to trust in the person working at the boundary is actually doing work and not just blowing smoke. That issue, the one of trust, I think is the key issue to 'solve'. Cal Newport talks a lot about this now and how these knowledge worker tasks really don't do much for a long time, and then they have these spats of genius. It's a tough one, and not an intellectual enterprise, but an emotional one.
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Zuck is just bullshitting here, like most of what he says.
There is zero chance he wants to pay even a single person to sit and take calls from users.
He would eliminate every employee at Facebook it it were technically possible to automate what they do.
Zuck also said that AI is going to start replacing senior software engineers at Meta in 2025. His job isn’t to state objective facts but hype up his company’s products and share price.
> Most of the calls are going to be 'I forgot my password' and 'it's broken' anyways. So having a robot guide people along the FAQs in the 50+ languages is perfectly fine for ~90% (Zuck's number here) of the calls.
No it isn't. Attempts to do this are why I mash 0 repeatedly and chant "talk to an agent" after being in a phone tree for longer than a minute.
I like the analogy of the fractal boundaries.
But there's also consolidation happening: Not every branch that is initially explored is still meaningful a few years later.
(At least that's what I got from reading old mathematical texts: People really delved deeply into some topics that are nowadays just subsumed by more convenient - or maybe trendy - machinery)
Let's watch your mood when AI answers your call.
Sorry for the acidity, just training my patience while waiting for the mythical FB/AI call center.
Weird to find out that some people still believe a thing that guy says.
I worked in automated customer support, and I agree with you. By default, we automated 40% of all requests. It becomes harder after that, but not because the problems the next 40% face are any different, but because they are unnecessarily complex.
A customer who wants to track the status of their order will tell you a story about how their niece is visiting from Vermont and they wanted to surprise her for her 16th birthday. It's hard because her parents don't get along as they used to after the divorce, but they are hoping that this will at the very least put a smile on her face.
The AI will classify the message as order tracking correctly, and provide all the tracking info and timeline. But because of the quick response, the customer will write back to say they'd rather talk to a human and ask for a phone number they can call.
The remaining 20% can't be resolved by neither human nor robot.