There have been some reports in the pop science media recently, preparing us for the next stage of humanity’s internet dependency: ‘bots. These are little programs in our ADI devices that, we are told, we are going to be talking to a lot in the near future. Then they are going to look after us and manage our lives in a benevolent and smotheringly maternal fashion. We can tell our phone ‘bot, “Send my mother-in-law her favourite flowers,” and the ‘bot will look into recent purchase records, call up the nearest florist and have an armful of deadly nightshade delivered before you can say, “Robert’s your mother’s brother.” It all sounds very handy, but looking back over my recent experience with Artificial Doubtful Intelligence, I’m not so sure this is a good thing.
My ‘Bot Experiences:
- Face(book) Savers: I belong to a Facebook group: sober, sensible, professional people. However, recently a new member joined. A person who seems as reasonable as the rest of us. Let’s call her Mary Jones. But ever since she joined, every email announcement I get about what’s happening in the group is registered as coming from Mary Jones. Every single one. Did I ask for this? No. Can I find a place on my Facebook page to change it? Nowhere. Unless I suspect the lady of either stalking me or wanting to take over the group, I can only assume that some officious ‘bot has decided to burden me with Mary Jones, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I have considered unfriending Mary Jones, but that seems rather drastic, considering her probable innocence. I’d rather unfriend the ‘bot. In more forceful terms.
- Autocorrect: It’s very nice to have some handy intelligence change “Teh” to “The” every time my reflexive nervous system gets its wiring backwards. But that’s in MSWord, and I can control it. Lately, with no permission from yours truly, I have been boosted to a new level. Now, whenever I start to enter someone’s email address, the program tries to make grammatical sense of it. No matter which browser I use. Anyone who writes emails knows that email addresses are rarely grammatical. So, for example, every single time I write “glong@…” to put in my own address, it is immediately changed to “long@…” and I have to try again. I never noticed before how many login pages for the Net use your email address as your user name. If anyone has any idea how to shut of off this overly officious ‘bot, please let me know. If anyone knows how to shoot the ‘bot that causes it (or maybe whoever programmed it), just…well, I don’t want to contravene my ISP’s anti-terrorist policies, but I’m sure you would love to use your imagination.
- Auto-automobile: All the talk about self-piloting cars sets my teeth on edge. Considering all the navigation errors you find if you use Google maps to get about, I think we’re a long way from autonomous vehicles. I recently noticed a freeway interchange on the “Satellite Image” function. There, cheerfully outlined in blue, was the route, including a full cloverleaf. Laid over the aerial photo, which distinctly showed an overpass with two roundabouts. Garbage in, garbage out. I can picture the Google people updating their satellite imagery in ten years’ time, carefully airbrushing out the pile of self-drive wrecks at the point the paths diverge.
- Auto Door Locks. And then there’s my car computer, which has two interesting functions. First, if you have your doors locked, you come and open them, then immediately shut them and go away without locking, the ADI assumes you just forgot, and locks them for you after 15 seconds. Second, if you have your doors locked and someone tries to unlock them using the inside latch, the alarm goes off. This is apparently to keep people from slipping a wire over the window and pushing the “unlock” button. However, it means that if you park your car, unlock it and go away leaving a friend in the car, after 15 seconds the doors lock, and if he tries to get out, the alarm sounds. Very intelligent.
- Chat ‘bots: I have to be very careful, here, because of the ESL nature of many of the people hired to respond on company help lines. However, I have often been suspicious of the nature (or lack of nature) of the being on the other end of the line, mainly because of that entity’s habit of asking for information I just stated in the last message. Of course, given the listening habits of many of my English-First-Language compatriots, I suppose my suspicion could be unjustified.
- Logins: And last and most frustrating; many of you won’t have this problem because you don’t run websites, but every time Sunday rolls around and I try to log into my WordPress sites for updates, one of the three, at least, has an error in the password. They take turns each week. After much helpline searching and a steep learning curve, I have finally discovered that I have to go into my Admin account on my web service provider and change the password. Back to what it was last week. Then I am allowed to log into my site. Any bets there’s some Artificial Dubious Intelligence involved?
The Ultimate ‘Bot
There’s only one ‘bot I want on my system; the “Drill Sergeant ‘Bot.” The one that whips all the visiting ‘bots into shape, and tells them not to be so stupid. Better still, one that does the same thing to the Dubiously Intelligent Programmers (Check the acronym) who are foisting their product on us.