gozzterLeave a Comment on Bot did you say?

Bot did you say?

I was raised in the ‘please and thank you’ era. Long before I managed to make it through childhood, I learned that I got more dessert after dinner if I was polite. I learned that even if my reward was denied and if I expected a second chance, my acceptance of the decision should be met with a smile, not a scowl. It was a ‘hope’ thing I suppose -much of childhood is…

Manners are no doubt culture-specific; the words in whatever language would be different, of course, but I suspect the intention is the same: showing due respect and consideration for the feelings of others involved in the interaction.

A question that has troubled me from when I first learned them however, was what if the response to my politeness was not reciprocated; if I was not treated accordingly? Was I then allowed to deviate? To retaliate?

School was a laboratory in responses, ranging from simply walking away, to answering in kind; from anger, to fighting -especially with someone who was deliberately trying to provoke me. How to gauge an appropriate response is partly what socialization teaches -that and maturity. Coping skills do not come easily to some of us however, especially after repeated infractions.

I have friends like that: friends who repeatedly refuse to answer a question however innocently expressed. If the answer is an important one for me, I will sometimes attempt to rephrase it in case it wasn’t understood. Or volunteer an answer for them (usually the answer for which I was hoping). If that fails, I will either ask something similar but related to the original question, or if it was posed over the phone and I can’t judge their body language simply end the phone call unrequited.

Still, a non-answer, or a deflection doesn’t solve the original problem does it? It’s the school playground revisited. I have yet to discover a suitable response- or at least one that doesn’t threaten a toxic situational adjustment reaction if it remains unresolved.

One might hope that situations like this are unusual: we’re conditioned to solve them, or if the question itself is inconsequential, forget about it. But, in this bourgeoning digital age with its often automated response systems attempting to answer questions with non-human lack of concern for non-answers, Hope does not spring eternal from an alien breast…

I recently finished reading a book, The Path, about Chinese philosophers and what they can teach us about a good life. I was struck by the section on Confucius and his thoughts about how rituals (li) can help us. Apparently, in Confucian thought, rituals are not necessarily ceremonies but also everyday forms of interaction such as a greeting or gestures of gratitude. They matter, because as they are repeated again and again (think of handshakes, or smiles), we become the kind of people who do them: they shape us into more mutually respectful agents; social agents.

But what about our seemingly frequent interactions with chatbots instead of humans to answer our questions? Do our genuine social instincts -our li– also apply to bots? I mean, should we thank bots for their help? Do our brains, so conditioned to social verbal interactions, automatically kick in when we hear a voice? Or do we try to override our li with rudeness once we realize how silly it would be to personify a nameless, emotionless non-chatty bot?

I suppose that the obvious concern would be whether the ease of overriding our social instincts with bots might generalize, however slowly, to our interactions with human (or animal) others. And furthermore, I suppose that with time and AI, the bots will be ‘trained’ to act more appropriately to our social conventions: programmed to seem sympathetic, or even pretend to feel empathy, to the problems for which they have been summoned.

Could bots be programmed to learn the subtleties of conversation like perhaps a friend might exhibit: knowing when to listen and how to respond as if they truly cared?

Of course not all of us know when or how to sound sympathetic, do we? Texting, or Emails allow us to circumvent attachment, or at least give us a chance to think things through before replying. I certainly prefer to resort to ‘written’ and rehearsed replies when I feel awkward, or when I disagree with the advice I’m being given not only by a bot, but even by a friend.

I have to admit, though, that if a bot could sufficiently mimic the empathy I would expect from a friend talking to me in person, I might have difficulty choosing. I fear the personal chatbots with which, it is rumoured, people can fall in love with; can confide in; and might prefer because (I suppose) they can be programmed to flatter egos.

Somehow, I think I could trust someone who occasionally disagreed with me, if only to set me on a better path. This makes me wonder whether the ability of current bots was purposely designed to elicit negative emotions in their summoners, designed to frustrate deeper questioning, and enable further introspection and problem solving.

My father used to let me bumble my way through little problems to teach me how to solve them. As my readers might remember, he used to insist that the world was filled with answers. We just had to figure out the correct questions to unlock them. So, are some bots like that: frustrating us to the point where we realize we simply have to elicit the answers with our own questions? That we just haven’t taken enough time to organize our thoughts?

I wonder…

, , , , ,

Leave a Reply

search previous next tag category expand menu location phone mail time cart zoom edit close