Are You AI?

Have you ever called or ‘texted’ customer service and had a dialogue and wondered if this ‘person’ is real or an AI?  I have had lots of fun and not much success with communicating with several of them.

I have found the best way to determine if you have been talking/typing to an AI is to cuss them out.  A Real Person will hang up or disconnect but the AI will persist; they are designed that way.

Now, there is not a thing wrong with AI and as a matter of fact it runs much of our infrastructure and even flies our transcontinental and transoceanic aircraft and who knows what else?  Elon Musk almost has his self-driving car ready to go; but I’ll never get in one!

While these things seem almost magical, as we have all witnessed with ‘Alexa’ and other simple AI systems, they are only as good as the team that programmed them and They make mistakes.  We have seen the horrors that AI’s and ‘bots’ have done to Twitter as has been exposed by Elon Musk and there will be more to come.

Most of these AI are fine for simple tasks of answering questions but are disastrous in trying to solve a true problem or to handle a complex question; about anything.  They are currently dumb as bricks but Are getting smarter and that is the scarry bit!

As they get smarter you may not be able to determine that this is not a real person at the other end of the phone or the text/typing window.  Even now it is a bit difficult; especially at first!  These AI are currently only able to respond to pre-programmed dialogues and, for the most part, you can quickly determine this.  They cannot respond properly outside a specific set of domain parameters.

Shouldn’t they announce that they are AI and not a real person?   While there is no issue with dealing with an AI, oftentimes they are more proficient than a human, shouldn’t you be made aware, in the beginning of the dialogue, that you are dealing with a non-human machine program?

As I write this and thinking, I’m not sure it actually matters.  As I indicated, oftentimes the AI is more proficient and has more resources at its disposal than a human agent would.  But I think I would like to KNOW, up front, to whom I am speaking.

So where does that leave us?  Heck, I really don’t know. I started out writing this thinking it would be a cool idea but now, not so sure.  I think humanity is going to be in for either a revelation or a revolution as machines and AI continue to develop.  I do believe that some computer labs have developed self-evolving programs and labs are experimenting with self-replicating nano-viruses and That is one hell of a scary idea.

Will Humanity retain control of our planet of loose it?  Orwell predicted a disaster and revolution, but I can only hope for a revelation and wonderful future for Humanity that will propel us through the galaxy and beyond.  We have accomplished much but there is much yet to do. I just want to know when I’m talking to an AI or a human!

To Infinity and Beyond!