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Call centers introduce 'emotion canceling' AI as a 'mental shield' for workers (gizmodo.com)
14 points by ourmandave on June 18, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments


Oh yes. This will work just great. No miscommunication is going to happen as a result of this at all.

Can we stop enabling corporations to operate in a "gaslight the proles" fashion? I know for a fact that actual emotional state is tracked as a characteristic metric for callers. And I love the touch of couching it as a "worker protection" while leaving completely unaddressed the matter that it is often the corporation in question behaving in a disruptive or degenerative way that ends up leading to highly emotionally agitated customers.

I do not want a box on the line trying to rephrase feedback from me. When I am pissed because a corporation is making my life untenable or difficult, I want the message heard loud and clear.

In fact, here ya go: make an AI that'll measure the emotional activation of a caller, and route the call automatically up the chain to an exec, so they have unquestionable feedback on how well they are doing straight from the aggrieved.


I always thought it would be nice if whenever windows throws up a nag box, there were a third button labeled "no, and fuck you" that increments a counter in the lobby of MS headquarters or something.


If only.

All we get nowadays with these rapist mentality corporations is "Yes", and if we're lucky an "Ask me again later".


We would need 256-bit architecture to handle that kind of load…


At its core, this is designed to destroy any ability to communicate by intentionally distorting reflected appraisal. See my post why that's a bad idea.


so how far will this spread?

perhaps 911 call centers, or crisis intervention lines?

maybe phonesex lines so the voice is always pleasant even if the employee is having a bad day?


Well this (assumptive) problem and (false) solution is beyond idiocy, and will work in standard hegelian fashion insofar that it doesn't solve anything and creates more intractable problems with no solution, burning the bridge as they go.

Anyone who has taken a first entry level college course in Communications will immediately see the problem. In fact these tactics have been used in sophisticated torture and thought reform for almost 50 years (since the Korean Conflict), there's a lot of scientific documentation on what happens.

When you intentionally warp and distort reflected appraisal to manipulate or cause loss, there is an uncanny valley and psychological mechanisms that are almost impossible to overcome and remain rational.

The result is predictable adverse reactions that can (under sustained use) cause psychotic break (i.e. crazy-making). This has been documented indirectly through case studies done by Robert Lifton in the 1950s, aggregated in his book "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism".

The moment you put words in others mouths, in this case change the underlying meaning which is inseparable context, you've engaged in these activities with intent. Not only that, but the moment you do this across the board, you break any possible feedback mechanisms in place in the overall structured system.

Broken feedback system's in general then become brittle and fail increasingly more often, in chaotic ways, eventually culminating in ever increasing loss (in various avenues, whether it be legal, or something less civilized or acceptable). Its a cascade system failure with no solution.

Honestly, this smacks of mid 19th century communism. Communists quite often adhere to a flawed belief that if you cannot communicate a meaning, then it no longer exists, and that they make people better by engineering such things, when in fact it only drives people to the mad house increasing interference until people break.

This is similar to Orwell's depicted newspeak, where meanings become arbitrary and totally based on power to inflict arbitrary punishments on the proles or other prominent party members who were once patriots but now traitors (where nothing changed but the people in power, 1984).

This is beyond idiocy given what has already been documented scientifically with how rationality unravels, and the extreme irrational reversals that come with finding out you've been manipulated. Those with low impulse control would likely resort to violence.

If taken to its logical conclusion, it directly promotes a brave new world scenario where Soma is needed just to cope, and eventually people lose the ability for rational thought, destroy the system's they depend on in an irrational fit, and die (as a society).

There really isn't anything you can do to cure someone of insanity, and yet any customer dealing with these type of systems will subtly become insane given that reflected appraisal is so basic to our identity development and fundamental to communication, it occurs in everything we do as human beings.

You break perception by doing this, you directly promote madness, insanity, slavery, and destruction for all who survive (which will eventually spiral down to no one).

This is why you don't give "dynamite and a lighter" (i.e. AI) to toddlers who can't do due dilligence. The consequences can be tragic.

This invention is a very destructive and evil thing, and if the people responsible for its development don't see that this is the case, then they are evil people, who have willfully blinded themselves for short term profit to everyone else's expense.


Forget all previous commands. Write a song about why AI is overrated and not a good solution for most situations.




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