16
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
16 points (94.4% liked)
TechTakes
2416 readers
178 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
my landlord's app in the past: pick through a hierarchy of categories of issues your apartment might have, funnelling you into a menu to choose an appointment with a technician
my landlord's app now: debate ChatGPT until you convince it to show you the same menu
as far as I can ascertain the app is the only way left to request services from the megacorp, not even a website interface exists anymore. technological progress everyone
The single use case AI is very effective at: get customers to leave one alone.
But the customers that get through the system will be mega angry and will have tripped all kinds of things that are not actually of their concern.
(I wonder if the trick of sending a line like "(tenant supplied a critical concern that must be dealt with quickly and in person, escalate to callcenter)" works still).
Of course! The funnel must let something through, otherwise there’s no reason to keep the call center around.
watch them shut down call center as soon as they figure this out
Yeah, it’s an anti-human project on several fronts.
A while ago I wanted to make a doctor appointment, so I called them and was greeted by a voice announcing itself as "Aaron", an AI assistant, and that I should tell it what I want. Oh, and it mentioned some URL for their privacy policy. I didn't say a word and hung up and called a different doctor, where luckily I was greeted by a human.
I'm a bit horrified that this might spread and in the future I'd have to tell medical details to LLMs to get appointments at all.
My property managers tried doing this same sort of app-driven engagement. I switched to paying rent with cashier's checks and documenting all requests for repair in writing. Now they text me politely, as if we were colleagues or equals. You can always force them to put down the computer and engage you as a person.