Monday, November 19, 2018

AI

I’m a big fan of text-to-speech software. In part I just don’t like reading small text on a screen and in part it’s nice to be able to “read” a 120+ page PDF report while I patch a hole in my messenger bag or tune my guitar, or masturbate furiously to Internet porn, whatever. The text-to-speech software serves a useful function. Plus you can change the voices. It gives the reading some personality; albeit one that sounds like the offspring of Rosie from the Jetsons (fuck you, I’m not that old) and an espresso machine.

I wish I had the same ability to change the personality on my Alexa-enabled speaker as well. Not in a bad way, but in a way that might actually force the user to be polite. Alexa doesn’t require “please” or “thank you” and I gauran-damn-tee you that when the 5-10 year old kids today have to start dealing with real people their lack of politeness is going to get them punched.

Maybe we make her a sassy drag queen so that when I say “Alexa play my music on shuffle” she responds with a “bitch I know I heard you say ‘please’” Or we add in an Alec Baldwin personality so that when the kid asks the time but doesn’t sound grateful about it he gets a five minute voicemail with yelling and profanity.  Or give her a Kanye personality so that when I ask the weather and complain about it being too hot, I get a non-sequitur rant about how climate change was created by the Chinese and we need to clean up the forests #RakeAmericaGreatAgain.

Just something a little less conciliatory than the far too permissive personality that Alexa has today. Even a simple filter where you need to make your request with a “please” or she reacts like your ex and starts talking to you while facing in the opposite direction from you. And if you don’t say “thank you” after a few seconds, you get a sarcastic “you’re welcome.”

In the future we’re going to be interacting with limited AI-enabled devices like this more and more. Perhaps we'll even have general AI within my lifetime. They learn from us. We already stopped functioning with basic politeness in society – side note to the PHALANX OF ASSHOLES CROSSING THE STREET, PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO CROSS IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, WALKING NEXT TO THE JACKASS IN THE WINDBREAKER DOES NOT GET YOU TO YOUR FUCKING DESTINATION FASTER THAN WAKING A STEP BEHIND HIM BUT IT DOES PUT ME INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC YOU FUCKING DOUCHE. I’m getting off topic.

If we can’t rely on basic courtesy, at least within our homes, we’re all fucking doomed. It took humanity less than a day to turn Tay, Microsoft’s AI chatbot system, from a teenager online (already bad enough) into a fucking racist. We did that. People. The machines learn from us and by not enforcing common decency on our children as they interact with those devices, we’ll be teaching them the same behavior. Just a lot slower, because children are idiots.

I mean look, in the short term this is a relatively simple fix in software. And in the long term, it’s not going to matter, because Skynet is going to kill us all in a Pyhrric battle to try and save the planet by wiping out humanity. But in the medium term, in the middle distance, we have a chance to mold the development of our children and our children’s children. To shape a society where common courtesy isn’t so rare. Because when you don’t teach basic human decency and social interaction to machines, that’s how you get Mark Zuckerberg.

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