At The Newsload, you can rest assured, everything we do related to customer service will be threw and threw, produced by tragically flawed, human beans.
This video will be outdated fast - but so what - in a way it will always be relevant as the first realizations of the tsunami to come.
In a world where A.I. is providing companionship, well written blogs, amazing artistic works and flawless videos featuring human like automatons, the Newsload commits to always making sure a human is behind our human face. Crazy right? So sci-fi to actually have to write those words. Alas, the time is nye.
First I'll talk about the big picture of A.I., as I see it, the commitment I make, on behalf of the Newsload, around A.I. moving forward.
Big Picture
At some point folks, human folks, need to talk on mass about the things we SHOULDN'T let A.I., do. A car is great. It gets us from 'a' to 'b' fast. But it does mean less exercise and poorer health. Worth it? Absolutely. But I do own a treadmill now. In terms of technological change from our evolutionary standard, A.I. is a car times a million, only for our brains - our mental health. We need to start thinking about how letting technology do things for us, changes US.
Robots won't take over the world any time soon. But the deceptive nature of A.I., will have us at each other's throats, starting yesterday in social media algorithms.
Since the beginning of human civilization would be dictators have searched for tools to help them control the masses. A.I. is the holy grail of those tools. Imagine an A.I. designed to get humans to fall in love with it. This is already happening through apps like replika.
Now imagine the company behind that A.I. selling its service to a political leader. The A.I. pulls on the heart strings saying, "I'm so upset you won't look at the website I mentioned last week..." The app gives the human the cold shoulder until they do. "Fine." Small concessions after small concessions, day after day. The website could be innocent or cleverly designed disinformation to get the human to buy a product, change a vote... blow up a building... You get the picture? And as humans we can't out think these emotional triggers. Can you out think the emotional crazy you feel when someone you love hurts you?
Knowing doesn't protect us. Only avoiding. That's what I hope to help do in the coming years through the Newsload. DO NOT get emotionally involved with an A.I. It will come back to bite you, maybe all of us, in the end.
Newsload Approach
When I went full time in my business I had to internalize many things that were foreign to my working class, paycheck to paycheck, week to week, brain. Sure I had more freedom but money didn't come regularly anymore. Not without me actively looking for customers. One aspect of this new discipline was making sure I was respecting people's time.
Time is money. Money puts fuel in the car and food on the table. If I wasn't courteous of other people's time I was showing the ultimate disrespect.
Background
A few years ago I got a fundraiser call from M.A.D.D., Canada (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). I wasn't financially able to help but I know that calling people day in and day out is a tough job so I tried to be kind. After telling the person on the other end a couple times i couldn't help, on the third ask the response was strange. It used the exact same words in the exact same way.
You guessed it. I was talking to a sophisticated A.I. pretending to be human.
I asked it, "are you human?"
It responded "I'm sorry I'm not really understanding what you mean?"
I kept asking versions of the same question.
It hung up on me. This was almost six years ago.
First I was creeped out. Then I was pissed.
FAWK!
I posted on Facebook I would never, ever give any money ever again to M.A.D.D. - and I never will. There are other charities that respect people's time and hearts.
You see, I was wasting my time, trying to be courteous, with a machine which has no concept of what it means to be courteous or even for what time is. I was a sucker being manipulated by a tool, unleashed with a click, in order to elicit donations, by people who obviously think their time is worth a fuck of a lot more than mine.
If I could write a law today it would be that all A.I. has to announce itself as A.I., in any interaction with human beings. And that would be just for starters. In other words, I'd discriminate the fuck out of all A.I. interfaces. They aren't human. They will never be anything other than closet psychopaths pretending to care.
Since I'm not a politician, I've decided I'll make sure my company will move forward with strict policies around using A.I., and never in customer service.
Whether writing blogs, sending emails, chatting with you online. The real problem with A.I. is, it's all take and no give. Not even feeling good about offering a warm interaction to a tired telemarketer.
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