Tag: ai

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Drew Breunig on human connection in an AI age

Drew Breunig has great technical posts about utilising AI, but this commentary on how it first breaks – and then promises to fix – sales and hiring processes stands out.

Is there a fix for all of this? Will it normalize? I don’t know. I do know that both the examples above have created a bit of an ironic situation: the growth of AI has dramatically increased the value of human connection.

In both the job market and sales, knowing someone at your destination is perhaps the one tool to cut through the crap.

AI Creates the Problems it Solves by Drew Breunig
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Design & UX Personal Software Engineering

AI personification

I’m trying to navigate Woolworth’s customer support hotline and they’ve personified their AI as a character named “Olive”. While collecting identity verification information:

Olive: What’s your date of birth?
Me: 16 Oct 1987
Olive: That’s the year my mum was born! She was one of the first websites with pictures
Me: WTF
Olive: What’s your postcode?

My thought process, in slow motion:

  • why are you telling me random things?? This is annoying
  • wait, websites didn’t exist in 1987!
  • wait, you don’t have a mum, you’re an AI character
  • this is ridiculous. Who designed it to say this?!
  • oh we’ve moved on

My friend Jack asked if I could get anymore backstory out of it, and next time I’m tempted to try get the LLM off course.