Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people after it laid off 700 people::undefined

  • ???@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    You don’t think a big company like Klarna has metrics to follow the efficiency of their workers? Even small businesses where I live that and every single big corporation. What makes you think Klarna would be different?

    I never said they have no KPIs. What I said is their KPIs are likely broken, just like almost every other large company in existence.

    You misunderstood. I said try to make most money out of the resources, so efficiency. That’s what we’re talking about…

    I think you’re the one who misunderstood. So for reference again, I am talking about this: about the belief that Klarna has sufficiently motivated this decision to lay these people off and actually has good KPIs that measure the performance, specifically that of customer care agents…

    I don’t see why or how I would want to discuss that a company is an entity that makes money through products from resources… think that’d be a bit too basic, no?

    Lol.

    ?

    It’s not very hard to believe what they’re saying here and they’d be the ones to have those metrics. So simple 1+1.

    But can you explain what makes you trust them? What gives a company like Klarna a high trust ratio in your eyes? They don’t seem to have provided those metrics in any way, just spelling it out in words. So how can we trust them?

    It’s not very hard to believe what they’re saying here

    Maybe not for you, but the rest of us are skeptics and would like to know what exactly makes this easy for you to believe. Thanks for explaining in advance.

    • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      You started the discussion off from my joke comment saying that they deserve a study for them to be laid off. Consider where this started.

      It’s not very hard to believe what they’re saying here and they’d be the ones to have those metrics. So simple 1+1.

      But can you explain what makes you trust them?

      would like to know what exactly makes this easy for you to believe

      butwhymalemodels.avif

      I just explained why their claim isn’t hard to believe. You even quoted it??

      Maybe not for you

      Well no shit, not like I’m claiming to speak on someone else’s behalf

      • ???@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I just explained why their claim isn’t hard to believe. You even quoted it??

        Sorry, let’s pretend I’m a total idiot, could you quote it for me?

        • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          It’s not very hard to believe what they’re saying here and they’d be the ones to have those metrics. So simple 1+1.

          Easy to believe them when the claim itself is easy to believe and they’d be the ones to have those metrics. So you take the easy to believe claim (1) and you take them being in the position to have those metrics (another 1, but let’s call it 2 to differentiate) so simple 1+2.

          • ???@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Easy to believe them when the claim itself is easy to believe and they’d be the ones to have those metrics. So you take the easy to believe claim (1) and you take them being in the position to have those metrics (another 1, but let’s call it 2 to differentiate) so simple 1+2.

            Ummm, sorry but how is this an explanation?

            “Why are they easy to believe?”… “Oh, it’s just not very hard to believe, they have the metrics, they said so! 1+1!”

            It’s easy to believe because they are a big company and big companies have metrics?

            But, what about the trust part? How does that make you trust them? What part of that is “enough” evidence for you to rationalize that they have a good motivation for laying off 700 people?

            • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              It’s easy to believe because the claim (AI replacing the work of tons of workers) is easy to believe and out of anyone they’d be post positioned to know how well the AI compares to their workers. So not much of a leap to believe them here, that the AI can, could or has replaced the work of 700 people. Klarna seems to have something like 7000 workers so 10% being replaced by AI, for a company like Klarna? Yeah, I can see that happening. I’m honestly not sure why you are having such hard time with this. Maybe you don’t understand those two as separate things, the claim (AI could replace a ton of workers) and the data the company would have (knowing exactly how many it could replace).

              But, what about the trust part?

              You’ve been the only one talking about trust.

              • ???@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Hmmm, okay, but let’s take this one step further, what makes you believe that an AI can replace 700 customer care agents?

                Yeah, I can see that happening. I’m honestly not sure why you are having such hard time with this.

                I have skepticism about all large companies, especially having worked for many, and especially having seen how far they will go with lies to lay people off. Klarna lays off hundreds of employees as a frequent occurrence.

                In my opinion, both as an ML professional and as a chatbot professional who has built such systems or finetuned them for such tasks, it’s extremely unlikely that chatbots would be able to replace 700 employees unless those employees were just doing simple zombie tasks.

                The only sentence we get from Klarna in the article is this:

                with the virtual assistant earning customer satisfaction ratings at the same level as human agents. Klarna

                But nothing to elaborate. What was the satisfaction rating prior? No idea. So excuse my doubt when I don’t want to believe a large company that lives to make money.

                The idea of AI fully replacing a large workforce seems to be a bunch of BS driven forth by big companies like Klarna. Others in the field seem to be more careful about what AI can “help in” vs “replace”. Have they A/B tested this? What is their KPI? Can we trust that KPI?

                You’ve been the only one talking about trust.

                I invite you to read the rest of the comments under the thread. I think you’re wrong.

                • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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                  9 months ago

                  what makes you believe that an AI can replace 700 customer care agents?

                  Simple job + having ton of examples of it already + it’s just another case of automation taking jobs that has been a thing for centuries + predictions from 4 years ago that automation would take away one third of jobs by the end of the decade and so on.

                  with the virtual assistant earning customer satisfaction ratings at the same level as human agents.

                  But nothing to elaborate. What was the satisfaction rating prior? No idea.

                  The number doesn’t really matter if they’re fine with just achieving the same result with less workers (less money). Customer care especially in English is already dogshit so AI achieving dogshit results is not hard to believe.

                  The idea of AI fully replacing a large workforce seems to be a bunch of BS driven forth by big companies like Klarna

                  It’s customer care we’re talking about. Chatbots have already replaced a lot of it. First they outsourced to the who knows where and didn’t care if the customer service sucked, now they just give it to AI and don’t care if it sucks.

                  • ???@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    Simple job + having ton of examples of it already + it’s just another case of automation taking jobs that has been a thing for centuries + predictions from 4 years ago that automation would take away one third of jobs by the end of the decade and so on.

                    Okay, thanks. I think I understand your opinion better now.

                    The number doesn’t really matter if they’re fine with just achieving the same result with less workers (less money). Customer care especially in English is already dogshit so AI achieving dogshit results is not hard to believe.

                    I guess we disagree here. If the number doesn’t matter, then they could just make it all up and move on. Seems like Klarna had no real number to share anyway, and depend on people believing that “it’s easy for AI to take over any such job”.

                    It’s customer care we’re talking about. Chatbots have already replaced a lot of it.

                    Yeah, but only to its detriment. Tricky problems go unsolved and chatbots are used by companies to create a wall between themselves and their clients. Revolut is one example that comes to mind. If customers cannot ever even reach a human being to tell them what’s going on, then there’s no problem!

                    I suspect Klarna is doing a similar thing. I also suspect that the worker unions in Sweden will not be satisfied with this reason for layoffs. Not sure if these layoffs are taking place globally or in Europe.