Stop Talking
Stop talking -- those were the words uttered by the driver of the car in which I was a passenger recently. The driver was attempting to set a different route than the one the GPS marked but the device did not accept the change. It kept selling the usual route while the driver knew that part of that road was closed to traffic. The driver lost patience and essentially told the GPS to shut up.
That’s where we are now, arguing with devices as more and more of them talk to us.
Is that something we really need? I mean, if my new clothes dryer tells me that my load will be totally dry in two minutes ten seconds, how much difference does that make in my life? I see it as simply annoying.
And don’t get me started about the likes of Alexa – let’s face it these devices are spies reporting to their masters what goes on in households all over the land so that ads can be targeted and thus be more efficient. These things are sold as being essential because they can provide information but they are far from essential! I know many people who have gotten rid of them because they invade on privacy which we are slowly losing.
But millions of “connected” home gadgets with voice recognition capability – for lights, doors, stoves, refrigerators, etc. -- will be sold this year alone. We no longer need to move a finger we simply tell a machine to do things for us. Some will say that it frees us for more meaningful activities, but does it?
Does it simply mean that robots are getting ready to take over the world as we know it? As employers are bemoaning the fact that they have trouble finding workers it looks like we’re running out of human beings. As a result will automation become more and more part of our lives? Could such devices prove to be smarter than us humans?
I doubt that automation will mean that machines can make decisions like humans do. However, we may be surprised if they simply learn to ignore us because we’ve told them to stop talking once too many times!
