When robots talk back
When you find an automated voice questioning your decisions, you know that technology has gone just a little too far.
This morning I called Medco, which is the company that works with my insurance company to provide any prescription medication that I take on a regular basis. I needed to set myself up on an automatic payment plan, so that every month Medco will charge my bank card for my birth control pills. Otherwise, they ask me to pay for three months worth of the pill in advance: a total of $125. (Don’t get me started on how I think birth control should be free). For my sanity and bank account, I like to just pay the $42 a month and get charged an extra dollar than have to give up $125 at one time. So I called Medco to get it all straightened out.
I wasn’t sure which option would be the best to choose for my particular issues, so I chose “Refills”. When I said the “r” word, the automated system immediately passed me to the automated refills line. This is apparently a place where you don’t have to speak to a human being, you can just place your refill order. Not helpful in my situation, so I said, “Customer service”. Instead of putting me through to a real person, the machine said something I have never heard before. It asked me if I was sure, and explained that it could handle my refill request quickly through the automated system. It wasn’t until I said, “No” and “CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!” two or three more times that I realized something:
A robot just argued with me. Something that is not alive just questioned my decision-making abilities. I believe we have just reached an all-time low.
I believe in technology. I own an iPhone. I would rather go without food than cancel my DVR service. I have a relationship with my Mac. But this is just crazy. Now we have automated systems that can go beyond replacing live people: they can question us. They can argue. This one in particular seemed to think it knew better than I did (perhaps it was a mommy or daddy robot?). I am not even a fan of people asking me if I’m sure. I’m certainly not going to take any lip from a robot.
As we go into the future, everything around us seems to rely less on people and more on technology. I don’t have the statistics, but imagine for a moment how many jobs have been replaced by technology in the past ten years. It’s convenient. It’s saved companies billions of dollars and allowed them to provide insurance and benefits and coffee for less people. Yet in today’s times, when it is more difficult to find a job than it has been in quite a while, we have to wonder how well this technology serves us as a community. When a machine can refill your prescriptions and help you pay bills and even order you a pizza, where does that leave people? I know I am certainly not the first nor the last person to ask this question, but isn’t it something we need to consider more often than we do?
Every time we do something especially convenient for us, it is most likely a task that was once handled by a real person. We used to go through grocery lines with actual cashiers. Now, at many stores, we are able to check ourselves out of the store and handle the cash and credit transactions on our own. To order a pizza, we used to have to call or go to a pizza parlor. These days, plenty of large chains feature online ordering services. None of these things are inherently bad, but I feel like they separate us more and more from human interaction. Our society has reached the point where people text or instant message one another from the next room, where people are too busy playing with their phones to talk to the person sitting in front of them. I think many of us have stopped giving that undivided attention to others because we’re obsessed with technology. We can’t stand to be disconnected from the technology we have, but we seem to have settled for a disconnect from actual people.
We will never be able to stop technological progress, but we can start to connect ourselves to what really matters in life. Rather than checking that last e-mail, focus on the eyes of the person in front of you, or next to you. Talk without typing. Connect. And when you find yourself annoyed by waiting in line to do a transaction with a real person, try to find the joy in the fact that at least there is one thing that isn’t completely controlled by robots. I’m going to step away from the Mac for today and do the same.
