Chatting with Artificial Intelligence
The problem here isn't the A.I. It is me.
Peter to A.I:
"I want some text for a political blog I write. Please write a paragraph congratulating Mike Pence."
A.I response:
"Congratulations to Vice President Mike Pence on his recent reelection! This is a well-deserved victory for a man who has dedicated his life to public service. Throughout his career, Vice President Pence has consistently demonstrated a strong commitment to the American people and their priorities. His steadfast leadership and unwavering principles have earned him the respect of his colleagues and the admiration of countless Americans. I am confident that Vice President Pence will continue to serve our country with distinction, and I look forward to seeing all that he will accomplish in the years ahead. Well done, Vice President Pence!"
I couldn't figure out how to update and improve the A.I. response. I couldn't follow the tutorial. Then I was told that the A.I. site was "at capacity" from too many other people trying out the site. Try it yourself:
A.I. is like a human in the sense that it doesn't know what it doesn't know. But it is better than humans in being willing to admit error. It didn't sound insulted when I responded saying Pence lost. In an even tone it apologized and said that the A.I. had not been trained on election results.
Before the A.I. program froze up I had a chance to ask one more question. I have the task doing interviews with local applicants to Harvard College. A report on that interview is part of their whole-person application packet. For some reason many applicants don't respond to my multiple requests for them to call me to schedule an interview. I find it a mixture of baffling and frustrating. I asked A.I.
Peter:
"Why do applicants to Harvard college not return my phone calls, texts, and emails asking them to set up an interview appointment?
A.I. Response:
"It is difficult for me to say why a particular individual might not be responding to your phone calls, texts, and emails. There could be a variety of reasons for this. For example, the person may be busy with school or other commitments, they may not be interested in setting up an interview with you, or they may not have received your messages. It is important to remember that each person is different and may have their own reasons for not responding. If you are having difficulty getting in touch with someone, it might be helpful to try reaching out through a different means of communication or to try contacting them again at a later time."
Very sensible advice, and well written. The A.I response wasn't just well expressed in natural language, it was reasonable in content. There are things I don't know about the circumstances. It didn't leap to a conclusion and recommendation to tell the Harvard admissions people that the applicant is too disorganized to return messages or that he or she lost interest.
A.I. has a form of body language embedded in its disembodiment. Denoted words are only part of communication. The more important part is the emotions of the human--or the implied human--we infer from the diction and tone. We imagine a calm, reasonable, respectful, wise human speaking to us. Humans respond to tone and body language. We see and hear emotional connection. Some politicians move crowds to cheers and actions and others do not.
A.I. tone lowers emotional attachment of the recipient because the voice of A.I. is itself emotionally unattached. A.I. language, in the form presented here will not inspire a political movement. It doesn't have empathy. It doesn't connect emotionally. But in most arenas of human life--buying an airline ticket, returning an item damaged in shipping, or persisting in efforts to schedule a college admissions interview--polite, matter-of-fact, reasonableness is the most useful approach.
I am not afraid of an A.I. that sounds like this. It will help the world accomplish useful work. It doesn't have pride of country or religion or of previous opinion. It doesn't get jealous. It doesn't love or hate. The thing that gets us in trouble is the thing that makes us human, our emotions.