SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT ETIQUETTE, AUTOMATION, LANGUAGE AND SINCERE MACHINES

More thinking about the digital world in a short essay.

“Your call is very important to us,” is perhaps one of the most repeated sentences in the English language thanks to machines.   It is perhaps the most insincere sentence heard today in part because humans never really utter that phrase to other humans.  In fact, that phrase could only be ironic if used by a human.  

I imagine those words are spoken by humans to a mechanical recording device so I suppose it somehow comes full circle to have the machine repeat it back to another human.  

The other day at the self-checkout at the local supermarket chain, the kiosk was programed to say, “Thank you for shopping with us, please come again.”  

The natural response when a person says, “Thank you,” is to say, “you’re welcome.”    

When a machine articulates that phrase, it makes no sense to respond “you’re welcome” or “drop dead.”

Is the concept of language fundamentally changed when one of the parties is no longer a human?  The words just become markers without meaning and lacking in sincerity.  

Someone, somewhere thought machines should be programed to issue human-like phrases either pre-recorded or through computer modulation to sound like a voice.  The problem is that sentiments like saying “you’re important” and “thank you” can only have meaning when uttered by a human.  

Maybe programmers should step back and have the machines utter purely factual statements, like, “you are on hold for another 10 minutes.”  Or “this is the end of your transaction.”  

And maybe this would do something to calm the relationship between humans and machines.

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

I secretly believe that the machines are pandering to my ego and when they meet after work hours for a WD 40 cocktail they laugh at me.

[Ciara Di Salle]

This is such an interesting train of thought!