{"id":19844,"date":"2017-08-05T10:06:45","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=19844"},"modified":"2017-08-05T10:10:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:10:26","slug":"getting-up-in-siris-grill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2017\/08\/05\/getting-up-in-siris-grill\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting up in Siri’s grill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scotty<\/a>

Scotty trying to have a conversation with a Mac Classic. Image: still from “The Voyage Home”<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence lately, some of it kind of scary. Myself, I worry more about the decline of human intelligence than the rise of the machines. Recent news that Facebook AI networks were beginning to converse in a language they invented themselves was not a problem for me. Actually, any evidence of intelligence in my Facebook feed would be welcome.<\/p>\n

I’m much more annoyed by machines that speak English. It may be protoplasmic chauvinism, but I don’t like to talk to machines, and I really don’t like it when machines talk back to me. Siri, smart speakers, talking cars, chatbots \u2013 no thanks. To misquote the Most Interesting Man in the World. “I don’t always talk, but when I do talk, I prefer to talk with people.” And yelling at the radio doesn’t count; if it ever starts talking back directly to me, it’s time to change my meds.<\/p>\n

Moreover, with people, I prefer not to talk through<\/em> machines. I don’t like the phone; I don’t like Skype – and don’t get me started on webinars. I want to be in the room, even if the other person had garlic for lunch. To put it in machine terms, I want the thickest data feed possible: body language, body odor and all.<\/p>\n

There’s no substitute for being present, and a chat is more than stringing words together in the air. The only non-human intelligence I would really enjoy having a conversation with would be a porpoise. Flipper might have something really interesting to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence lately, some of it kind of scary. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19847,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19844\/revisions\/19847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}