The newest AI Agents are much more advanced that "FAQ bots", they kind of have hybrid deterministic and non-deterministic flows in how they handle customer requests, depending on the request.
Some companies set them up exactly as you describe, they handle the low effort, easy to solve issues and then escalate to a human for "bigger" things. There is still a lot of value in that process as now maybe 76% of your customer requests are solved without human intervention and the humans agents can focus on the more meatier requests.
Some companies do not though, I know of Airlines using AI Agents with full flight re-booking flows happening end to end with no human intervention and its working well.
I think AI Customer Service Agents have already moved beyond what you yourself have personally witnessed.
Is this really "additional"? do you not do design docs/adrs/rfcs etc and talk about them with your team? do you take any notes or write out your design/plan in some way even for yourself?
Calling European countries "freeloaders" is such a one dimensional way of looking at this. Europe "outsourced" most of its defense to the US because the US wanted it that way, for soft power, influence, access to military bases and probably many other reasons.
This will become undeniably obvious when Europe stops being "freeloaders" and the US will complain about that too.
Are State elections also badly affected by gerrymandering?
I have only ever seen examples of it at the Federal Election level, so wondering if your first point is actually completely accurate. (I believe the States themselves control the "maps" but forgive my ignorance if not)
Most likely they are actually, every country will have a certain "% of GDP" threshold where once they go above that number, it makes more sense for them to spend the money in their own home grown defense industry vs buying US made weapons.
It has also certainly served US interests to keep certain European countries "down" and have them reliant on the US for their security for other reasons too.
The idea that the US decided to "subsidize" European defense for multiple decades, out of their own generosity is.... nothing short of completely laughable imo.
People struggle to wrap their head around logic like yours because it is essentially just being pedantic.
- Before the war the Taliban controlled Afghanistan.
- The US (+ Allies) invaded and conquered the country.
- 20 years later the US Military has left the county.
- The Taliban now controls the country again.
- At no point during that 20 years was the Taliban actually "defeated" like claimed.
Whether you like it or not "Money and patience ran out" = losing the war.
There are many other "lost wars" where they were lost for the same reason. The most obvious one in this context being the Vietnam war.... which is also a popular one for people to argue that the US Military didn't lose either.
> Sure, Russia gained some territory, resources, potential conscripts.
You just "hand wave away" gaining territory the size of the 2nd biggest country in Europe after Russia, Trillions in resources and 40 million people (a 30% increase in "Russian" population). I think you may be slightly undervaluing these things lol.
And then I just don't really understand your general point which seems to be that because you believe Russia could not successfully defeat Europe/Poland that they are not more threatening than they were 10 years ago?
- Russia will have gained a huge amount of combat experience.
- Russia will also have learned from fighting against a force using NATO equipment.
- Russia will have gained the immense wealth of Ukraine's natural resources.
- Russia will have increased their population by about 30% (+/- based on refugee point below)
- Russia will have basically doubled the size of their border with Poland (counting Belarus as part of Russia because why not)
- Russia will have added borders with 4 more European countries (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova)
- Russia has likely rooted out some of the corruption that plagued the military before/during this invasion as it would have become more apparent.
- Russia will have built up domestic production of weapons as much as they can (taking sanctions into account)
- Russia will have been emboldened by its "success" in conquering Ukraine.
- Russia will have seen how slow/scared the West was to respond to their invasion and encourage more "asymmetric" warfare in preparation for the next country (aka "the price of eggs are too high, we can't afford to save <insert country with Russian border here>)
- Russia will VERY likely have increased the amount of Ukrainian refugees to the rest of Europe by 100s of 1000s, possibly even millions. Further stretching the resources of those countries and feeding into the previous point in regards to the cost of intervening "next time".
All this, combined with a US President openly making disparaging remarks about NATO, but you think Europe should not be more worried about Russia than in 2015?
I worked at a company with a process like that when I was an "Engineer" looking for a promotion to "Senior Engineer", at least for me it felt insulting that I had 3 years of performances reviews "exceeding expectations" and "already performing at the level of Senior Engineer" to then be told, ok now you have to do an interview and a presentation to say why you deserve to be promoted to Senior. I declined to go through the process and then left a few months later to become a Senior Engineer at a different company.
Some companies set them up exactly as you describe, they handle the low effort, easy to solve issues and then escalate to a human for "bigger" things. There is still a lot of value in that process as now maybe 76% of your customer requests are solved without human intervention and the humans agents can focus on the more meatier requests.
Some companies do not though, I know of Airlines using AI Agents with full flight re-booking flows happening end to end with no human intervention and its working well.
I think AI Customer Service Agents have already moved beyond what you yourself have personally witnessed.