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As a kid, I thought voice recognition would be awesome. Robots were the shit, and talking to a computers was the coolest thing ever. As a kid, Short Circuit, Robocop, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Terminator, etc, were the coolest fucking movies ever. I wanted to play with robots like Johnny Five, I wanted to talk to my appliances to turn on the lights, to change channels, turn on an oven, etc.
I pay my car insurance once every 6 months to get a discount. I received a bill the other day, and decided to call and make a payment over telephone. I'm the type of person that would rather have all my bills automatically billed to a credit card, rather than fill out checks. Seems more reliable, and I get frequent flier points for my regular monthly bills, so why not?
I just called and spoke with the insurance company to pay my bill with credit card; I didn't speak with a representative from the company, though... I actually spoke to the "company." With a computer. I never pressed a button on my phone... I navigated through all menus by voice; I spoke all credit card information by voice. I did it all by speaking what I wanted, and the computer flowed what it was saying like a fucking person! Reading numbers, balances, etc, it all sounded like a real person. If (1) I weren't told that I was navigating by menu by voice instead of by numbers, and (2) the "voice" had shown a little emotion, e.g. laughter/chuckling/change in the voice's pitch, I don't think I would've ever fucking known that it was a computer!
That scares the hell out of me. I want to know how many jobs the "voice" replaced at Progressive. I want to know how much longer before companies start replacing all of their "customer service"-type jobs. I want to know how long it'll take me before I'm desensitized to talking conversations to a fucking computer. But most of all, I want to know what's going to happen to the millions of people that lose their jobs, and can't find any others because of voice lines, or the extremely-soon-to-come robots, that will serve the public once paid for with a one-time fee.
I don't know if it's just me, but I was shuddering while talking on the phone... it made me feel like less of a person and more of a serial number or bar code. This shit is going to take some serious getting used to
I pay my car insurance once every 6 months to get a discount. I received a bill the other day, and decided to call and make a payment over telephone. I'm the type of person that would rather have all my bills automatically billed to a credit card, rather than fill out checks. Seems more reliable, and I get frequent flier points for my regular monthly bills, so why not?
I just called and spoke with the insurance company to pay my bill with credit card; I didn't speak with a representative from the company, though... I actually spoke to the "company." With a computer. I never pressed a button on my phone... I navigated through all menus by voice; I spoke all credit card information by voice. I did it all by speaking what I wanted, and the computer flowed what it was saying like a fucking person! Reading numbers, balances, etc, it all sounded like a real person. If (1) I weren't told that I was navigating by menu by voice instead of by numbers, and (2) the "voice" had shown a little emotion, e.g. laughter/chuckling/change in the voice's pitch, I don't think I would've ever fucking known that it was a computer!
That scares the hell out of me. I want to know how many jobs the "voice" replaced at Progressive. I want to know how much longer before companies start replacing all of their "customer service"-type jobs. I want to know how long it'll take me before I'm desensitized to talking conversations to a fucking computer. But most of all, I want to know what's going to happen to the millions of people that lose their jobs, and can't find any others because of voice lines, or the extremely-soon-to-come robots, that will serve the public once paid for with a one-time fee.
I don't know if it's just me, but I was shuddering while talking on the phone... it made me feel like less of a person and more of a serial number or bar code. This shit is going to take some serious getting used to
That just life i guess pickles, technology moves fast and folks get left behind.
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