HUMAN_FALLBACK
March 8, 2023 5:10 PM Subscribe
"When Brenda went off script, an operator took over and emulated Brenda’s voice. Ideally, the customer on the other end would not realize the conversation had changed hands, or that they had even been chatting with a bot in the first place." HUMAN_FALLBACK by Laura Preston, published by n+1 in late 2022 (a shorter version is in The Guardian), details the job Preston did from early 2019 to early 2020, "impersonating a chatbot that’s impersonating a person" for an real estate leasing platform.
WOW.
That was disturbing and evocative.
Preston's way with words and images really shines here and there ("The days did not arrange themselves in a sequence but gathered in a puddle.")
I naively assumed she would be monitoring a single conversation, stepping in if things went awry, and then moving on to the next caller. I never imagined the nightmare of handling all those conversations at once.
... although maybe I should have; the whole thing reminded me a bit of the texting I did for political candidates over the past few years, where conversations would pop up, and I would tag them, and try to provide the appropriate canned response, and soften the language when appropriate. But dealing with THAT much pressure, that much repetition, that level of unrelenting overwhelm -
I feel battered just reading about it.
I swear, when I run the world, every manager and supervisor and executive will have to spend one day a month (or one day a week for higher-ups) doing the actual work of their employees.
I hope Preston got well over $1000 for this, and I hope she's doing well, and prospering. This piece was so well crafted and so personal - and did such a good job of revealing the ways the work hammered her person - and I hope her work is rewarded with more than just my appreciation.
(I wish I could find out more about her, and her work; all I see is her Twitter account, but that will probably lead me to some other sites when I have more time to look.)
Thank you for posting that, brainwane. I am sorry she went through that, and I hope she recovered; I am deeply dismayed about that job, but I am glad to have read what she had to say about it.
posted by kristi at 7:05 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
That was disturbing and evocative.
Preston's way with words and images really shines here and there ("The days did not arrange themselves in a sequence but gathered in a puddle.")
I naively assumed she would be monitoring a single conversation, stepping in if things went awry, and then moving on to the next caller. I never imagined the nightmare of handling all those conversations at once.
... although maybe I should have; the whole thing reminded me a bit of the texting I did for political candidates over the past few years, where conversations would pop up, and I would tag them, and try to provide the appropriate canned response, and soften the language when appropriate. But dealing with THAT much pressure, that much repetition, that level of unrelenting overwhelm -
I feel battered just reading about it.
I swear, when I run the world, every manager and supervisor and executive will have to spend one day a month (or one day a week for higher-ups) doing the actual work of their employees.
I hope Preston got well over $1000 for this, and I hope she's doing well, and prospering. This piece was so well crafted and so personal - and did such a good job of revealing the ways the work hammered her person - and I hope her work is rewarded with more than just my appreciation.
(I wish I could find out more about her, and her work; all I see is her Twitter account, but that will probably lead me to some other sites when I have more time to look.)
Thank you for posting that, brainwane. I am sorry she went through that, and I hope she recovered; I am deeply dismayed about that job, but I am glad to have read what she had to say about it.
posted by kristi at 7:05 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
(stevil, if you're referring to "Once Brenda queued up her response," that strikes me as a phrase where either spelling is correct, depending on intent: the responses are going into a queue, after all. Or am I misunderstanding your comment?)
posted by kristi at 7:07 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by kristi at 7:07 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
So THIS is the kind of job English majors get?
I have to think of myself as a "service robot" at work--my language is always policed--but this is absolutely taking the cake at that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:42 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have to think of myself as a "service robot" at work--my language is always policed--but this is absolutely taking the cake at that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:42 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Eventually I reached a level of virtuosity where I could clear the inbox without much mental effort. The work no longer felt language-based. I was not reading messages one word after another, but perceiving each message as a unified cipher, as if the block of text were an image. My eyes would apprehend the web of critical words—pets, rent, utilities—and my hands would hit keys like notes in a musical passage. I stopped worrying about Brenda’s tone and began letting any message through as long as it was factually accurate.
y'know, in this case it really seems like the AI trained her ...
posted by chavenet at 4:23 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
y'know, in this case it really seems like the AI trained her ...
posted by chavenet at 4:23 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
It reminds me of my years spent as a legal secretary/administrative assistant/office manager, except at home and with much worse working conditions. Jobs like this, which require literacy, skill, the ability to do repetitive craft work that also requires initiative, and absorption, were always the province of women. Businesses got rid of many secretaries once management learned to type and use a computer, because management hates relying on the judgment of inferiors.
At least I could go to the bathroom when I needed to, and I had an hour for lunch. I quit when I earned my Ph.D., unlike the writer here; the weaknesses of the job were (a) low status and (b) people could leave for better work.
With the advent of better trained AI and the corporate ownership of real estate, I suspect this kind of job will also disappear sooner rather than later, first getting farmed out to English speakers who don't charge as much and then evaporating.
posted by Peach at 6:09 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
At least I could go to the bathroom when I needed to, and I had an hour for lunch. I quit when I earned my Ph.D., unlike the writer here; the weaknesses of the job were (a) low status and (b) people could leave for better work.
With the advent of better trained AI and the corporate ownership of real estate, I suspect this kind of job will also disappear sooner rather than later, first getting farmed out to English speakers who don't charge as much and then evaporating.
posted by Peach at 6:09 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
This tenant was a renter for life, whose workplace was their primary address, and who would nevertheless be unable to afford property for as long as they lived. No matter: their job might take them to Omaha one year and to El Paso the next, but they would always find a home just like this one, as frictionless as the internet, which means that it wasn’t a home somewhere, but everywhere, which was nowhere at all.
This is a cyberpunk story. I was half expecting the author to be getting a chat implant by the end.
In the 90s I had a temp job at the IRS where I was a human fallback for people who didn't have touchtone phones and were trying to navigate the voicemail system. They'd call up and get a recording saying, for example "please speak your social security number" or asking yes or no questions, and then I would key it in. I had a button that let play "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, please try again," if I didn't hear them, or I made a mistake. And that was the only interaction I could have with them. Sometimes I'd get people who were furious, demanding an operator, cursing the robot, but two or three plays of "I'm sorry..." would send them on their way.
After a few days of that, my bosses boss found out I could draw, so I spent the rest of the month drawing motivational posters for the office and hiding out, and then I chose not to apply for a permanent position. A few months after that, a friend who worked at the office noticed the posters were all still on my desk, and stole them for me.
posted by surlyben at 12:36 PM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is a cyberpunk story. I was half expecting the author to be getting a chat implant by the end.
In the 90s I had a temp job at the IRS where I was a human fallback for people who didn't have touchtone phones and were trying to navigate the voicemail system. They'd call up and get a recording saying, for example "please speak your social security number" or asking yes or no questions, and then I would key it in. I had a button that let play "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, please try again," if I didn't hear them, or I made a mistake. And that was the only interaction I could have with them. Sometimes I'd get people who were furious, demanding an operator, cursing the robot, but two or three plays of "I'm sorry..." would send them on their way.
After a few days of that, my bosses boss found out I could draw, so I spent the rest of the month drawing motivational posters for the office and hiding out, and then I chose not to apply for a permanent position. A few months after that, a friend who worked at the office noticed the posters were all still on my desk, and stole them for me.
posted by surlyben at 12:36 PM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
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posted by stevil at 6:59 PM on March 8, 2023