I had an unusual experience about a month ago, calling customer service for a large corporation. Assuming, as we all would, that the line would be answered by a bot with a menu for which options had changed, I was caught off guard when a human answered. We spent about fifteen minutes on the phone together and I was never transferred. The line was clear, I could hear her well. When she needed to wait on some data to load, she asked me how I was doing and we shared a left-leaning chuckle about how that’s a tricky question to answer these
days. I ended the call in a daze; did that really happen? Human contact with no interaction whatsoever with a robot?
We’ve quickly entered an era in which we expect something different. We call customer service with dread, ready to be frustrated and to angrily answer the humanoid voice with increasing curtness. Why? Because humans are not built to interact with machines that act like humans. It’s unnerving, unsettling, and completely unnecessary.
Parents are raising kids with typical messages about working hard to achieve your goals, letting the process be more important than the outcome, learning from messy and awkward first drafts. This is how we learn! It’s good to make mistakes, etc. Our technology is dragging us into something very different. A place where our society is telling kids to get a good enough result by clicking some buttons, without needing the process, the thinking, the mistakes. No need to ask your teacher, your grandpa, or your friend for their expertise; just ask a robot.
I am encouraging us to pause and ask some questions. What are we doing here, in this lifetime? What kind of world do we want? We might all respond differently, but I’ll tell you my answers. The list of problems with AI is very long; let’s focus on one.
I came across a two word quote recently, from E.M. Forster, in Howard’s End. “Only connect.” To me, this is it. The beginning goal, the end goal. I am a human here on this planet to connect with other humans, and to try and ease the way of those who surround me: my co-workers, my daughters, my partner, my friends, yes. But not just them! The guys at the post office, the workers at Speedway, the people I interact with throughout my day. Humans, struggling, saying the wrong thing, dropping stuff, striving for a good life with a decent income and some time to relax. Human interactions are what life is made up of, largely.
There is a group of people in the technology field who are letting us know that they are on the verge of fundamentally altering our society. Not asking us, but telling us. Their message is grim, yet they’re giddy about it. Oddly, they’re convinced we’ll go for it. They promise that any day now, things will be “unrecognizable.” That very soon, a large swath of jobs will be obsolete, yet we’ll all be swimming in cash. Robots will be our close pals and our therapists, our kids’ teachers. The very essence of the human experience that makes “being here” good and enjoyable, will be gone. From screenwriters to illustrators to truck drivers, we’ll have the robots do the work and we’ll all be home…collecting checks from Sam Altman? I’m fuzzy on the details, and I think they are too.
Resistance abounds, thankfully. Maybe it’s just my own online bubble, but everywhere I “go,” I see disgust, annoyance, and rejection of AI. It’s a relief to me, as a person who believes that the imperfection of the day to day, the awkward emails, the first squeaks of squawks of music lessons, and the challenge of writing your first op-ed are what make living on earth a dynamic endeavor.
I don’t want a robot to take my order for a Frosty through a drive-thru. I want to talk to a teenager who is learning about customer service, wearing a polo and headset. My role in that interaction is to be kind and patient. What else are we doing here? When the topic of AI comes up and young people are around, I’m mortified. One of my pet peeves is when grown adults say to teenagers or children, “Well, I guess it will be up to your generation to fix things.” Folks, WE are the adults, now. Is this the best we can come up with?
What if we considered, not just with technology but with all of our efforts and placement of energy: does this contribute to the world I want to live in? We can create any world we want. We have choices all day long. In all things, whenever possible, here is my choice: Only connect.
Kelly Madewell
Athens, Ohio
