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Deplorable
Sep. 13th, 2023 11:17 am I was sitting on the hill by the Wish Tower talking to an old lady who was down from Filey on a coaching holiday. She deplored the modern world and while I don't deplore it the way she does I agreed with her about the mechanisation of everyday life.
The disppearance of ticket offices in railway stations, for instance. Yes, that's a real pain. How much pleasanter to deal with an actual human being who appreciates nuance, exhibits patience (if needed) and can lighten the transaction with humour. Machines are fine for the commuter who travels the same route every day, but for the occasional traveller who has a complicated journey to plan they're tiresome.
My new friend had recently been in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, I think) and stayed in a hotel where the tables were cleared by Dalek-sized robots with pussycat faces. How amusing, how cute- but are they really as efficient as the human waiters whose jobs they're taking away? I doubt it.
This morning I contacted our local medical practice. One does it now through an app called Engage/Consult. I'd not used it before. You put in your email address, you put in your password and then you answer the written questions asked by a fairly rudimentary AI. Doctors scare me and the AI doesn't so there's the uptick. On the other hand the AI isn't canny, or empathetic or able to pick up on what's not being said. If the human doctor who eventually gets to look at the transcript thinks its worth their while they'll ring me- and we'll have a proper conversation- but only through a machine- so we won't be face to face and neither of us will be able to read the other's body language...
The disppearance of ticket offices in railway stations, for instance. Yes, that's a real pain. How much pleasanter to deal with an actual human being who appreciates nuance, exhibits patience (if needed) and can lighten the transaction with humour. Machines are fine for the commuter who travels the same route every day, but for the occasional traveller who has a complicated journey to plan they're tiresome.
My new friend had recently been in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, I think) and stayed in a hotel where the tables were cleared by Dalek-sized robots with pussycat faces. How amusing, how cute- but are they really as efficient as the human waiters whose jobs they're taking away? I doubt it.
This morning I contacted our local medical practice. One does it now through an app called Engage/Consult. I'd not used it before. You put in your email address, you put in your password and then you answer the written questions asked by a fairly rudimentary AI. Doctors scare me and the AI doesn't so there's the uptick. On the other hand the AI isn't canny, or empathetic or able to pick up on what's not being said. If the human doctor who eventually gets to look at the transcript thinks its worth their while they'll ring me- and we'll have a proper conversation- but only through a machine- so we won't be face to face and neither of us will be able to read the other's body language...
