The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing
32 comments
·May 4, 2025trollbridge
800-GOOG-411 was planned to do a similar thing; the difference is that was online for 3 years and unceremoniously shut down, versus this one which is still in operation 72 years later.
kaonwarb
Google has squandered so much good will over the years. This is a good example: expenses wouldn't even be a rounding error, and it could have given so many average folks a positive experience with the company.
BMc2020
I'm still using 2 RSS readers (Inoreader and TheOldReader) that I switched to after Google Reader shut down.
crossroadsguy
Aha! Minor blast from the past. I just realised my a/c might still be alive on there and there it was. I think I logged in after 3 or 4 years. Old Reader. I think I had deleted my a/c on Ino Reader. I used to follow couple of niche Hindi blogs and they shut down years ago; some Engish language as well (from all over the world). Most of them were anon. I kept coming back for years but they were gone. That's what killed the RSS/blogs for me, not the demise of Google Reader. It stopped being the place I knew in my own individual/idiosyncratic way.
I suspect something similar would happen to podcasts for me, maybe sooner than I am hoping for. And podcast player apps.
bigthymer
It probably would have turned into a customer service line for all of their products they notoriously fail to adequately support.
Etheryte
The true Google way, someone got a promotion and then the product dies.
ryukoposting
What a heartbreaking way to end that article... but, what a way to make the message stick.
delichon
Somewhere someone is probably still working as an elevator operator too. Like when I was a kid I had a job shoveling coal into a boiler. And someone is still manufacturing buggy whips. The future is unevenly distributed. Call Bunny Watson and ask her, she'll confirm.
potato3732842
There's probably some high bureaucracy workplace somewhere where only certain people are allowed to use the freight elevator but it needs to be used by others so much they just station someone who can use it there.
theobeers
As recently as five years ago, the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave. in Chicago employed elevator operators. It probably still does.
FroshKiller
I visited a shopping mall in India in 2019 that still employed elevator operators.
LadyCailin
Haha, I’m on such another plane of technology these days, my initial reaction upon reading the headline was that there was some persistent seismic event near the border of Mississippi xD
kcatskcolbdi
This is such a lovely read! I might even call the line later today.
timcobb
It's probably voip :/
choonway
how far is the deep learning stack close to replacing them?
rafram
They were already “replaced” by the internet decades ago, but people keep calling. As the article explains, there are still people in the US without access to the internet or knowledge of how to use it, as well as a lot of people who just want to talk to a human being.
You can call 1-800-CHATGPT if you want, but there’s clearly still a place for this service.
slyfox125
By definition, it will never replace "them."
charcircuit
You could hook up one of the voice based LLMs to do this instead of the students.
Normal_gaussian
The value, it would seem, comes from it being precisely not that.
charcircuit
Being precisely not a mobile app. I am saying that they can expose this functionality through the phone system like they are currently doing.
frohrer
You can already call 1-800-242-8478 if you want to talk to a computer, this is not that.
slyfox125
The point of it all is the human connection - not the answers.
charcircuit
The AI can provide both the human connection and the answers.
jdiff
It is a severe reach to say that AI can provide human connection. At best, it can provide the illusion, for some. And for those people, I'm not going to say that that's not valuable or legitimate for them. But it's pushing it one step too far to imply that that's a good idea for everyone.
slyfox125
It cannot because it is not human. It can emulate the experience but it will never be genuine. Generally, if a caller ever became aware that it wasn't truly a person on the other end it would lessen the interaction. Whether that is justified or not is debatable, but it is nonetheless the case and thus the end result is not the same.
null
greenie_beans
yes let's remove every social bond we have and replace it with a computer
cubefox
Problem with voice based LLMs is that they don't know when it's their turn to talk.
What a fun surprise to hear about the Foy info desk on HN! When I went to student orientation at Auburn, they made a point to call the desk as a demonstration and ask how many M&Ms would fit into Jordan-Hare Stadium. The answer was provided in under a minute.
Back in the early 2010s when I was going to Auburn, the smartphone internet was still pretty young. It wasn't uncommon to call the Foy info desk to settle an argument.
Really makes me want to swing back to Auburn for a visit. War damn Eagle!