One reason I don't read HN as much as I used to is because I can't help translating numbers like that into the amount of research that could be accomplished with the same amount, and then I get angry.

WSU faculty here. The Cosmic Crisp is under license to Washington state growers for ten years, starting in about 2019, so it will be a few years yet.

Yeah - this scenario presupposes that if I need my car fixed I'm going to wait for you to give me a call back, rather than continue working down my list.

The AI doesn’t have to solve every problem to solve some problems. If it can answer 10% of questions, isn’t that 10% better than having all of them go to voicemail unanswered?

I mean... Maybe?

The data the bot has to work with is stated to already be available the website. Therefore, I'd never call on the phone to find those answers -- but those are the only answers the bot has to offer.

The only reason I'd ever call is for answers that the website (and therefore, the bot) does not provide. Calling on the phone and getting a bot that insists on giving me data that I already have would only serve to waste my time and frustrate me.

It would probably frustrate me enough to hang up and call a different shop immediately, and name-and-shame the place.

I know how to Google shit. By the time I start dialing telephone numbers, I've already Googled this shit.

When I call a local shop I want to talk to someone at that local shop (or at very least, their voicemail) -- not a regurgitating bot.

But, again, that's just me.

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So I'm imagining my dad, who's in his mid-70s and has never Googled a single thing in his entire life. At least superficially, he sounds like an ideal candidate that can be helped with this automated receptionist.

Except: When he calls the shop and has to talk to the bot instead of a person or their voicemail, he's also definitely hanging up immediately and calling the next place on his list. This doesn't help him at all, nor does it help the shop.

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For the shop, the cost of frustrated people who vent to their friends about the experience may very well be higher the cost of not always being available to answer the phone.

Have your estimate be off by enough to annoy me a time or two and you'll also blast through my continuing to be a customer.

Using AI tells me you don't care about the quality of your service.

Or maybe customer appetite can be markedly different depending on context.

This is very variable based on field. HN is heavily biased toward ArXiv-friendly fields.

bioRxiv is already housed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which is an independent non-profit.

Given the last two years and what has been done to science funding, having a load bearing thing like ArXiv not housed with the U.S. government is, I think, pretty self-evidently a good idea.

Every university I've worked in has been dominated by this paradigm, has an office set up to support it, and a bunch of policies around what it means for your doctoral supervisor to also be your employer, etc.

Nowhere in deciding to attack Iran was "maybe this will help wind, solar and electric cars."

plans change… :)

This would require there to be a plan in the first place..

no plan is not a plan? :)