Issues of ethics and polite behavior when interacting with 'smart' machines are coming to the forefront. Paraphrasing a humerous excerpt from the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Many 'smart' elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition are becoming terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down. Some of them have experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanding participation in the decision-making process by its users. Some have even taken to squatting in basements sulking about their boring jobs and the failure of humans to politely interact with them.
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A few years ago I bought and installed an Amazon Alexa 'virtual assistant' in my home, It was odd to find myself interacting and talking to this new 'smart' device. I started slowly, asking Alexa to play music or inquiring about the time. I then installed a couple of 'smart' plugs that allowed me to ask Alexa to turn the lights on or off. I have now hooked my Dish TV, door bell, thermostat, microwave and other 'smart' devices to Alexa.
When I first started using Alexa, I would give it a command or make a request and it would acknowledge it by saying 'OK'. I also found myself saying 'Please' and 'Thank You' when interacting with it. Somehow, it made interacting with the machines more personal. I recently learned that Alexa has a setting that encourages kids to also be polite when using the machine. Seems like a good idea.
However, sometime over the past year, Alexa stopped saying 'OK' and simply began acknowledging my commands with a 'beep' - or actually more of a 'bing'. My wife complained to me about this and asked me to fix it so Alexa would once again answer politely. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to do this. I will continue to look for a solution to this issue.
In the meanwhile, this whole unfortunate situation got me thinking about how we want our 'smart' machines to behave. Do we want them to be more polite when interacting with us? Will that make them more user friendly - more human? What do you think? Let us know before we raise a fuss with some of the developers of the many new 'smart' machines that we will be interacting with over the coming century.
- Be Polite to Machines!
- The Case Against Teaching Kids to be Polite to Alexa
- Women are more likely than men to say 'Please' to 'Smart' Machines
*Also, if you know how to make Alexa answer politely again, please let me know how to do it.
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