Yesterday I spent more time talking to machines than to people. Admittedly and thankfully, that was a fluke caused by our failure to communicate. It took four hours and 40 minutes—solid—to find out an answer to what (I laughingly thought) was a simple question.
So, I Googled it: What are the effects on humans of talking to machines? Who knew? There are lots and lots of effects. Talking to machines can have an effect on both human behavior and human psychology.
Research suggests that humans can be more open and honest when talking to a machine than to a human. Really? I haven’t tried it so this is secondhand not firsthand experience, but I hear if you spew a string of swear words, the machine will respond, “Please hold, we are connecting you with customer service.”
This brings up another thing I learned in that four-hour-and-40-minute period. The machine does not actually know the meaning of the words you are saying. You are talking to nuts and bolts. It is a bot or AI (neither artificial nor intelligent); that is, a preprogrammed machine only able to provide a few choices and understand a few predetermined answers—“please select from the following.”
If you cannot select from the following, if you try to actually talk to a machine, provide context, speak outside the box (and I do mean box), it will suggest we “switch to numbers—one is yes; two is no.” So, the question you could not ask “in a few words,” simply enough for the machine to understand, the machine’s response is to limit you to a binary choice. Do we progress?
I was wondering how many questions in my life, now, in the past, or in my future, can be answered, “one is for yes; two is for no.” The reason I was wondering, beyond spending four hours 40 minutes on the phone with a machine and having nothing better to do, was another study that found humans are more open and honest with machines. OMG, please tell me why! What do they think is receiving their open honest communication? This is a thing-a-jig that can be programmed, given a voice, predetermined to say, “I am sorry” (people identify that as their favorite response) if it hears a certain cue. Now I grant that the programmer may be intelligent, compassionate, empathetic, and able to synthesize information and produce a new idea, but the machine isn’t and can’t.
This I learned firsthand. After about two hours of being disconnected because I did not choose why I called from the list the machine provided, I did learn. What did I learn? That although my question was not among those proposed, you must pick one anyway to satisfy the machine or it will not move on. Instead, it will say, “Goodbye,” and cause me to redial. This time I wised up and selected from the list. Such positive reinforcement, it told me it would answer my question. All I had to do was provide a bit more information. It asked for my account number. No idea. So I said, “The rain in Spain falls mostly on the plain.” The machine thanked me, and we moved to the next step toward an answer—three hours. There were rapids and white water ahead.
This is a great time to tell you that, secondhand, I learned something else. I will pass it on to you in an effort to aid my fellow man’s and woman’s sanity. If you press “0” four times, the machine’s response is to connect you to a live human being.
Now here is the bigger, maybe the biggest, effect on humans. We are all going to learn to do it the machine’s way. The machine doesn’t offer the choice to do it your way. Welcome to the 21st century.
So, what are those effects on humans from talking to machines? It is suggested we diminish the value of characteristics that humans possess but machines do not. Those might include empathy, sympathy, and intelligence —not to mention forming compound sentences and writing long hand.
At the same time, we may become more accepting of stupid and repetitive answers. We may rely increasingly on machines to do things and forget, or never learn, how to do them ourselves. We may reduce human interaction—not by choice but by necessity as machines replace humans in many jobs. For now, connecting to customer service means the relief of talking to a person and just asking the one question I had four hours and 40 minutes ago without strictures or pushing a button. But don’t imagine that will last long. Soon customer service will be another machine programmed differently.
Some may smugly consider there are things machines cannot do but humans can, such as create, recognize facial expressions, or read emotions in body language or voice. But wait: They can. There is facial-recognition software, and if you yell at that machine, it will criticize your manners and say, “Goodbye.” That is now. Each day a coterie of folks are dedicated to making them better, programming them to do more. I don’t know why, and I hope there isn’t an inverse ratio: The more the machines know how to do, the less we know how to do.
