Hi I’m Alexa, how may I help you?

I won’t be buying an Alexa bot. On ‘Word of mouth’ an expert on social bots, Head of Conversational Linguistics no less, explained how they worked and how amazing they will become. The worrying thing was he sounded like one, not his voice his brain. Whilst I yearn for grumpy bots, funny bots, even Conservative bots I can swear at his conversation was pre-programmed to be informative, passive and agreeable, and well all the things that would drive me away from a conversation at a party. I worked on a swearing vulture twenty years ago, I didn’t sell it, but it was way more enjoyable than, “Yes Gordon. They contain 57% unsaturated fats. Do you have any other questions about peanuts? Or were you referring to the cartoon by Charles M. Schmultz that ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000?The H of CL mentioned an early version had to be axed after being hacked to say deplorable sexist remarks. Yes you TWAT that’s what humans find entertaining! That’s why we talk to each other! It’s frightening how quickly a human brain can learn to think algorithmically. Watch a clip of Mark Zuckerberg giving evidence here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCDvOsdL9Q If he’s the new face of human social interaction I’m glad I’m 74. It’s simple. The human brain is far more sophisticated than any AI so it has way more capacity to adapt to AI than AI has to adapt to the human brain. So the direction of adaptation will be towards AI. The H of CL and Mark Zuckerberg are compelling evidence of this. I’m beginning to notice a new category of bad habits I need to avoid.

I Am Racist.

Listening to a recent conversation that ran along racist lines I had to concede some made valid points but all felt the need to sign off with, “but I’ll not racist.” Absolutely because ‘being racist’ is currently the greatest slur on a persons character one could impute. As a result there is an unspeakable prohibition to all things black, white, coloured and squinty eyed, or any form of racial differences. It’s a sort of Pandora’s box we have managed to close, and everyone knows it’s opening the thing that is where the danger lies. Nobody talks about the danger of closing it. But like all prohibitions life goes on underneath. So now we all have feelings we dare not talk about that cloud as in the closed off feted atmosphere of a smoking den. What should I say? Personally I do discriminate between African and Irish, Japanese and French, even you and him. Over the years my mind has formed experiential templates that however easily overruled by acquaintance still exist. I’m sexist and even bird-ist preferring blackbirds to starlings with a soft spot for Robins. I have a very different template for the Israeli government than I have for the Jewish people. The list goes on. For me the unredeemable slur of these ‘ists’ has gone too far. They damage public debate and the public mind almost as much as the blinkered doctrinaire indiscriminate racism they were created to overcome. I doubt I’m alone in having experiential templates for every race under the sun but we English have become so scared of expressing the evidence of our own experience we are in danger of losing who we are and what we stand for.