There has been a lot of fear-mongering around AI, and if too many CEO’s believe like this one, people are right to be afraid of it invading businesses around the globe.

The CEO in question is 31-year-old Suumit Shah, who runs an e-commerce platform called Dukaan. They’re getting reamed online after firing 90% of their customer support staff after claiming AI was outperforming them.

We had to layoff 90% of our support team because of this AI chatbot.

Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.

The results?

Time to first response went from 1m 44s to INSTANT!
Resolution time went from 2h 13m to 3m 12s
Customer support costs reduced by ~85%

Here's how's we did it 🧵

— Suumit Shah (@suumitshah) July 10, 2023

“We ha to layoff 90 percent of our support team because of this AI chatbot. Tough? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.”

They argued that AI response times were a few minutes at most, after lingering at over two hours when humans were manning the chat.

Not everyone is buying it, though, claiming that the real reason for the layoffs was funding and the imminent closure of the business.

Note to all young starry eyed startup folks –

Make no mistake. The support team was laid off here because business is failing and funding is dry. Not because of AI. https://t.co/nMr64wv2EA

— Aditya⚡ (@adityarao310) July 11, 2023

This person also mentions that the quality of those customer service interactions has plummeted as well.

Suumit, in doing so also ruined your customer support.

It wasn’t answering as I needed it to. I tried tweaking my questions several ways because I know it was a bot. It just didn’t reply properly. It left me frustrated and ultimately didn’t bother renewing my premium plan.

— Vishnu Sheth (@vishnu_sheth) July 10, 2023

Others aren’t looking forward to a future where there is no human on the other end of any interaction.

Comment
byu/thegravity98ms2 from discussion
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Shah doesn’t regret the layoffs, but has admitted he probably shouldn’t have talked about them on Twitter.

Regardless of all the hate he’s been getting, the fact is that many tech companies are heading the same direction. Experts believe humans will lose many jobs to AI in the near future.

Still, perhaps we could at least learn to not gloat about firing your staff on Twitter.

As a general rule.