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Fired Tech Workers Turn To Chatbots for Counseling (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: For months Lovkesh Joshi was quietly terrified of losing his job as a manager at a top Indian tech services company. Joshi didn't want to burden his wife or friends so he turned to a chatbot therapist called Wysa. Powered by AI, the app promises to be "loyal, supportive and very private," and encourages users to divulge their feelings about a recent major event or big change in their lives. "I could open up and talk," says the 41-year-old father of two school-age children, who says his conversations with the bot flowed naturally. "I felt heard and understood." Joshi moved to a large rival outsourcer two months ago. The upheaval in India's $154 billion tech outsourcing industry has prompted thousands of Indians to seek solace in online therapy services. People accustomed to holding down prestigious jobs and pulling in handsome salaries are losing out to automation, a shift away from long-term legacy contracts and curbs on U.S. work visas. McKinsey & Co says almost half of the four million people working in India's IT services industry will become "irrelevant" in the next three to four years. Indians, like people the world over, tend to hide their mental anguish for fear of being stigmatized. That's why many are embracing the convenience, anonymity and affordability of online counseling startups, most of which use human therapists.
>the 41-year-old father of two school-age children, who says his conversations with the bot flowed naturally. "I felt heard and understood."
No way would I hire someone who feels 'heard and understood' after an exchange with a chat bot. This is somebody without the social skills to have anyone in their life to talk to, and will spill to a dumb text parser. How can you have the intellectual capacity to understand what a chat bot is and still gain any emotional benefit from interacting with one?
Root causes, buddy, root causes. Figure out why you don't have an actual intelligent human in your life to discuss this stuff with, maybe work on that. Because humans are social primates, and if you're not taking care of your social needs, everything else will eventually crumble anyway.
.... are getting replaced ??
Boo hoo...
Serves them right.
Seems like it will eventually be bots needing to chat with other bots about being replaced by another bot...when that happens we're done as a society.
> No one is doing that
Oh yes they are; some people are really strange.
The early chat bots - and I mean EARLY, as in 'about as likely to pass a Turing test as a passage from your preferred dictionary' - had people seeking therapy from them.
Cue Blade Runner 2049 Joi ad...
Once again, we reinvent what was already built.
>almost half of the four million people working in India's IT services industry will become "irrelevant" in the next three to four years
My generation hasn't really had lasting friendships since I was in my teens. My parents generation saw most of their friendships dissolve a few years later than that, due to a combination of alcoholism, migration to other regions, or gossip in extended social circles that caused some bridges to burn.
Me personally, avoiding drugs, alcohol, religion, and desiring privacy pretty much alienated me from everyone in my age group. Doesn't mean I can't do a good job, but it does affect the social network for other jobs.
Judging by most of the people I know either knuckle-dragging from one job to the next, or slaving away for what amounts to nothing when they finally get laid off or fired, including lasting social relationships, I would daresay this is a far larger societal issue than many people realize, blending traditional social values with unrestrained capitalism leading to both a disparity in wealth and interpersonal social trust and relationships.
Both can be true, you know. Stories can be hyped for financial gain AND be true.
I suggest you read about Eliza, a much more primitive bot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Stop with the bots and AI hype. It isn't 1997.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
I have been consulting Elsa for something like thirty years now!
At least they don't have to train their replacements.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That would be we care about your mental health but you aren't worth a human's time.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
So where are all the fired counselors turning to for counseling?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Eliza, and chatbots, are the ideal of "Rogerian" therapy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A number of more modern therapy styles derive from it. There is no guidance or judgment by the therapist, only warm acceptance and reassuring "empowerment" of the client. It's the ideal of SJW psychotherapy, since it in no way challenges or evaluates the confusion of the client. It's the "$75/hour non-triggering saferoom" of psychology. And it's what the unlicensed "psychotherapists", with no training, no certification, and no degree whatsoever, practice. (I'm dealing with the consequences of one right now.)
If you can't confide to and rely upon your friends and family for support in hard times, then you really have no friends and family. Time to find better people to surround yourself with.
The AI book that everyone should get is available for pre-order. "Artificial Intelligence For Dummies" by John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron.
You can quit.
You don't have to work. However if you want a steady income, it is a good idea to stay.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd have to be really desperate to divulge such personal information to an online therapist. You just know they will find a way to monetize it.
So they knew they were outsourcing jobs because of the low wage costs, for who know what quality of labor, did all the people who LOST their jobs get to bitch and complain to chat bots about their problems???
Perfect example of news bias
Speaking as someone who lost a job about 10 years ago to an engineer in India during a round of outsourcing. Karma can be a bitch. I don't wish ill to anybody who has lost their job, but when you build an industry around outsourcing, causing many people to loose their jobs, you shouldn't be surprised when times change and the market for outsourcing dries up. Create your own startups and innovate, instead of building an industry around the loss and suffering of others.
You know, I've had several occasions to bump up against Indian IT services ... and on all occasions, it was impossible not to notice that at the start of the contract you might have gotten a couple of intelligent people with an actual skillset, and that as time went on you got utter morons who could do nothing but follow a script.
We even noticed that over time it was fairly plain that 5 or 6 different useless idiots were sharing the email address of the contact point we originally had ... you could tell when the third guy contacted you from the same email address to tell you he was working on it.
God help you if you need actual troubleshooting and problem resolution, because you'll never find anybody who is remotely capable of that. I never saw a single contract that wasn't eventually pulled back because the cost and time spent trying to manage complete idiots was just a waste of resources.
A small amount of them might have had something resembling the skillset to have a "prestigious" job, the rest were just terribly unskilled idiots who pretended to be able to do something.
.
So many of them were already irrelevant to begin with. They were already being given flunky jobs, and they mostly did a half assed job of that.
I once opened 4 identical tickets to do something on 4 identical machines ... one was right, one was wrong, one was so completely wrong as to defy logic and belief, and one just sent us the steps to do the work ourselves from their own script. I'm sorry, but you're the outsourced people who we pay do this shit, and not only can't you actually fucking to it, but you think I'm going to do this shit?
Hell, I'm pretty sure the same call center is used for legitimate stuff as is used for "the air duct cleaning" or "the Microsoft service provider". It's an open secret that the scammers and the outsourced morons are the same pool of workers.
I wonder if they appreciate the irony of having to tell their sob story to something which is cheap, automated, and doesn't really give a crap either?
The problem is they never had prestigious jobs, they mostly had some repetitive tasks they often couldn't do very well ... they've pretty much always been irrelevant. The problem is they've somehow managed to pretend that what they did was prestigious.
I don't even have a command line psychotherapist available.
Have gnu, will travel.
Emacs M-x doctor, starts with "I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems."
Welcome to the dark side of outsourcing: as soon as your cost-competitiveness is decreased enough, the company you worked for disappears and reappears in a neighboring country, or somewhere in other side of the world.
Paging Dr. Eliza....Dr Freud Eliza....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Of course your secrets will not be used against you. Only the oppressors will be outed and held accountable.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
All conversation will be held in the strictest of confidence.
Memory will be wiped after you leave.
So, tell me about your problems.
(forgive me if I've flubbed a line or two, it's been close to thirty years since my second sound card).
Even though $75/hour is quite a bit more than I make as a software developer, $75/hour for counseling does seem a bit low. Then again, the last counseling I got cost $600/hour. But that was from one of the two best relationship psychologists who has ever lived - kind of like taking a music lesson from Bach. :)
Eliza, and chatbots, are the ideal of "Rogerian" therapy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't knock Eliza; I use Eliza to help in my life struggles http://www.manifestation.com/n...
To use Wysa a user is required to login with Android app, iOS app or Facebook.
I can see the appeal.
user: "Wysa, I feel bad."
moments later email from users insurance company - "Your rates have been adjusted to reflect your current health status."
"you're the outsourced people who we pay do this shit, and not only can't you actually fucking to it, but you think I'm going to do this shit?"
In a lot of cases, sending the instructions is the most useful response. If its something that's going to come up often, and the person who raised the item is capable... just getting them to do it instead of having them open tickets and wait each time is a better use of everyone's time.
It also is sometimes the best way to deal with people who are never available. I've seen people open tickets to get something adjusted on their computer where the help desk will need remote access to their desktop, while they are logged in -- and then they ignore any calls from the help desk, and ignore any followup email from the help desk trying to schedule access. At least if the help desk just sends the instructions the information is there if you need it right now.
Thats your real story here. A working class man cant afford talk therapy.
THIRDWORLD SHITHOLE.
> No one is doing that
Oh yes they are; some people are really strange.
The early chat bots - and I mean EARLY, as in 'about as likely to pass a Turing test as a passage from your preferred dictionary' - had people seeking therapy from them.
I would think a therapist chat bot would be an extra easy one to pass a Turing test.
All you have to do is program it to respond to every comment with "And how does that make you feel?" and no one will know they're not talking to a real-live therapist.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I have seen article after article on slashdot showing sympathy to an entire industry designed to take away jobs, yes I'm sorry they are losing jobs but where was the same support to the thousands in the US who lost jobs to outsourcing at disney and other companies?
In fact, I think that's pretty much the algorithm behind Eliza/DOCTOR, which might be the first therapist chat bot.
Eliza was more of a 'rephrase it in the form of a question that ends in 'how does that make you feel?', so I guess that makes it unnecessarily sophisticated!
It's kind of interesting, the social expectation of a man to be strong in every situation. It's understandable and IMHO a good thing both for society but also for the men themselves. Still, I can't help but feel a little saddened that it has reached a point where men are not able to reveal any vulnerabilities to anyone, ever, not even to the people closest to them such as their wife and friends. That has to take a toll on people
You know, I've had several occasions to bump up against Indian IT services ... and on all occasions, it was impossible not to notice that at the start of the contract you might have gotten a couple of intelligent people with an actual skillset, and that as time went on you got utter morons who could do nothing but follow a script.
There's usually one really smart guy in the group and a dozen who don't know what they're doing. Usually the smart guy is sent overseas to the client to act as a local contact and at that point the idiots get left alone at home without the smart guy holding their hands and correcting them.
It would be much more useful if they sent one of the idiots and left the smart guy to supervise the ones left behind.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The Diceman? Bill Burr?
$600/hour is kind of cheap.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
you're talking to C88 everything he isn't personally convinced of, is false, Impossible, a conspiracy theory, and being pushed by brainwashed fanatics. Just be glad he hasn't started screaming 'Space Nutter' at you yet!
Life Coaches (sometimes known as career coaches) can help clients with the next steps for their career. Unlike therapy, clients set the agenda and work towards achieving their goals. This can be very helpful when making life decisions. For things like phobias, depression etc, therapy would be the way to go, but when it comes to things like I want to negotiate my relationships with my boss and co-workers, look for jobs and make more money, a career coach is the way to go. Many coaches offer a free sample session, or at least a consult so you can find out if it is right for you.