I'm typing it all into caps, or what I call “Shout Capitals.” This is ridiculous, I write, groaning in frustration as I hit the key a little harder than I probably would. “Have you all lost Ryan's passport?!”
“You know you're arguing with the robot,” says Ryan, who says his reading glasses slide down his nose from his normal stop, where both pugs lie on his lap.
I realized this is an AI bot after getting three different versions of the same response. The variation was “I understand this is frustrating and I can call service personnel tomorrow during normal business hours.”
I swear with a bot, tease it, write something like “blus blus blus blus blus” and risk eventually giving up and closing the chat window, confiscating this fight with an entirely imaginary enemy.
When Ryan and I needed to renew my passport, I decided to use hellogov.com. This was because the State Department was worried that it was dry and no one was actually working, so he promised to “make your passport faster, not guess.” I imagined this empty building blowing with broken windows and abandoned cubicles.
He fired over $200 per passport and promised to provide his passport within six weeks. My passport arrived about three weeks later, but Ryan didn't. After repeated attempts to call real people, I was told by someone who sounded a bit too much like a college stoner.
“What does that mean, did it get lost?” I replied, not to lose it. “What exactly are we paying for? Did you not track it?”
“Yeah, but who was the last time you received the information you were tracked down in Memphis, Tennessee?” The man says this is a question and not true. “The tracking number is invalid after that.”
It is said that you will need to apply for a lost passport. I don't even realize how boring and frustrating the whole process can start from scratch and how boring and frustrating the whole process can be.
What really got stabbed was how AI monopolized the experience. From automated phone recordings to two or three exchanges before I realized that the voice I was speaking was completely computer generated, so from automated phone recordings to discussions of text chains that are so awful that no one else was. It was the equivalent of screaming at the wind and paying almost $500 for privilege.
It is difficult to quantify how morale-recognizing that no one actually hears it can be. It's just a server with a blink light, as it processes information at a rate we never guessed. What's even more challenging is to fully understand all the ways in which this rapidly evolving technology takes over our lives, and all the ways in which we will celebrate it perfectly one day. I don't want to get all the science fiction fantasies here, but the future is hell, much closer than we all thought. And it's as scary as all those movies promised.
AI is more than just annoying customer service experiences. As of yesterday, I officially lost my officially remaining copywriting client. Because Chat GPT can come up with something for free, so why would someone want to hire me? Is original thinking and sentences created by real people with skills and experience worth it now worth it, especially when it comes to things that are as inactive as the real estate industry? Certainly, I didn't like writing this type of thing. Equipped easily as a freshman at the university, he drafted articles for press releases and newsletters. I was writing a gig about cat trash recently. everyone. Cat waste! So it's made from recycled wood chips and sounds a bit cool, but it's just sad to think that my decades-long writing career led me here.
Don't get me wrong, I still believe that the human mind and creativity cannot be quantified. My idealist hopes that this technology will make originality even more valuable in the long run. I'm also excited to pivot to writing a piece that means something to me and has an impact and value that exceeds triple digits salary. This may be, in many ways, something I need to push myself to make myself better.
It's like I'm trying to think about all the madness in the world right now. Maybe we are just on the wrong side of the huge pendulum swing that we have to go back to?
I hope Ryan's passport arrives in time for his flight to Costa Rica. From there, I don't know where this is heading. You should probably ask chatgpt.
